1854. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



553 



ment be correct — and it seems to us consistent — it and adventurous, penetrating and keen in their 

 is a pretty important matter that all our cattle Pursuit of it ; yet their avidity was tempered by 



are well provided for in this respect. 



BOSTON IN 1774. 



The following description of Boston, just before 

 the breaking out of the American Revolution, is 

 extracted from the sixth volume of Bancroft's 

 History of the United States, just published. 

 Mr. Bancroft remarks that the king had set him, 

 self, and his ministry and parliament, and all 

 Great Britain, to subdue to hia will one stubborn 

 little town on the sterile coast of Massachusetts, 

 and proceeds as follows : — 



" The old world had not its parallel. I* counted 

 about sixteen thousand inhabitants of European 

 origin, all of whom had learned to read and write. 

 Good public schools were the foundation of its 

 political system ; and Benjamin Franklin, one of 

 their pupils, in his youth apprenticed to the art 

 which makes knowledge the common property of 

 mankind, had gone forth from them to stand be- 

 fore the nations as the representative of the mod- 

 ern plebeian class. 



As its schools were for all its children, so the 

 great body of its male inhabitants, of twenty-one 

 years of age, when assembled in a hall which 

 Faneuil, of Huguenot ancestry, had built for 

 them, was the source of all municipal authority. 

 In the meeting of the town its taxes were voted, 

 its affairs discussed and settled, its agents and 

 public servants annually elected by ballot, and 

 abstract political principles freely debated. A 

 small property qualification was attached to the 

 right of suffrage, but did not exclude enough to 

 change the chai-acter of the institution. There 

 had never existed a considerable municipality ap- 

 proaching so nearly to a pure democracy ; and, 

 for so populous a place, it was undoubtedly the 

 most orderly and best governed in the world. 



Its ecclesiastical polity was in like manner re- 

 publican. The great mass were Congregation- 

 alists ; each church wao «xn nj^sembly formed by 

 voluntary agreement — self-constitutea, a^lf-gup- 

 ported and independent. They were clear thai 

 no person or church had power over another 

 church. There was not a Roman Catholic altar 

 in the place; the usages of "papists" were 

 looked upon as worn-out superstitions, fit only for 

 the ignorant. But the people were not merely 

 the fiercest enemies of " Popery and Slavery ; " 

 they were Protestants even against Protestantism ; 

 and, though the English Church was tolerated, 

 Boston kept up its exasperation against prelacy. 

 Its ministers were still its prophets and its guides ; 

 its pulpit, in which, now that Mayhow was no 

 more, Cooper was admired above all otiiers for 

 eloquence and patriotism, by weekly appeals, in- 

 flamed alike by tlie fervor of piety and of lil)erty. 

 In the Boston Gazette it enjoyed a free presH, 

 which gave currency to its conclusions on the 

 natural right of man to self-government. 



Its citizens were inquisitive, seeking to know 

 the causes of things, and to search for the reason 

 of existing institutions in the laws of nature. 

 Yet they controlled their speculative turn by if worldly prosperity contiiined in itself the true 

 practical judgment, exhibiting the seeming con- principles of human felicity. But as it possesses 

 tradiction of susceptibility to enthusiasm and cal- them not, the very reverse of those consequences 

 culating shrewdness. They were fond of gain, I generally obtains. Prosperity debilitates, instead 



a well-considered and continuing liberality. Near- 

 y every man was struggling to make his own 

 way in the world and his own fortune ; and yet 

 individually and as a body they were public 

 spirited. In the seventeenth century the commu- 

 nity had been distracted by those who were 

 thought to pursue the great truth of justification 

 by faith to Antinomian a>)surditics ; the philoso- 

 phy of the eighteenth century had not been 

 without an influence on theological opinion ; and 

 thougli the larger number still acknowledged the 

 fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless 

 certainty from all eternity of election and of 

 reprobation, there were not wanting, even among 

 the clergy, some who had modified the sternness 

 of the ancient doctrine by making the self-direction 

 of the active powers of man, with freedom of in- 

 quiry and private judgment, the central idea of a 

 protest against Calvinism. Still more were they 

 boldly speculative on questions respecting their 

 constitution. Every house was a school of poli- 

 tics ; every man was a little statesman, discussed 

 the affairs of the world, studied more or less the 

 laws of his own land, and was sure of his ability 

 to ascertain and to make good his rights. The 

 ministers, whose prayers, being from no book, 

 were colored with the hue of the times ; the mer- 

 chants, cramped in their enterprise by legal re- 

 strictions ; the mechanics, who, by their skill in 

 ship-building, bore away the palm from all other 

 nations, and by their numbers were rulcis of the 

 town ; all alike, clergy and laity, in the pulpit or 

 closet, on the wharf or in the counting-room, at 

 their ship-yards or in their social gatherings, 

 reasoned upon government. They had not ac- 

 quired estates by a feudal tenure, nor had lived 

 under feudal insiitutions ; and as the true de- 

 scendants of the Puritans of England, they had 

 not much more of superstitious veneration for 

 monarchy than for priestcraft. Such was their 

 power of analysis that they almost unconsciously 

 developed the tlieory of an independent representa- 

 tive commonwealth ; and such their instinctive 

 capacity for organization, that tliey had actually 

 setti .. •♦'^nvfintion of the people of the province 

 start into life at tucii. u-.aj:„« While the earth 

 was still wrapped in gloom, they wcicuuxvji-j-- 

 day-break of popular freedom, and, like the young 

 eagle in his upward soarings, looked undazzled 

 into the beams of the morning." 



Effects of Prosperity. — How unavailing 

 worldly prosperity is, since in the midst of it, a 

 single disappointment is suflicient to embitter all 

 its pleasures. We might at first imagine, that 

 the natural effect of prosperity would be, to dif- 

 fuse over tiie mind a prevailing satisfaction, Avhich 

 the lesser evils of life could not ruflle or disturb. 

 We might expect that, as one in the full glow of 

 health despises the inclemency of weather, so 

 one in possession of all tlie advantages of high 

 power and station, should disregard sliglit in- 

 juries; and, at perfect ease with himself, should 

 view, in the most favorable light, tlie behavior of 

 others around. Such effects would indeed follow. 



