2 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



most carefully guarded records. Whoever looks orer the farms 

 of New England, even, will see that quantity of land in the 

 hands of the individual was all that was sought for, while in the 

 far West, where land was practically illimitable, and to be had 

 almost without price, we hear of farmers counting their acres 

 by thousands upon thousands. And in New York, in the earlier 

 days, the manors of the patroons equalled in extent and ex- 

 ceeded in richness of soil many a German principality. Singu- 

 larly enough, the laws of primogeniture and entail, in their 

 principles and effects, although not in force, took strong hold 

 upon our people, so that the father, in fact, gave the bulk of his 

 land substantially to one of his sons. Both these laws made 

 strong battle to maintain themselves as a part of our systems of 

 government in the conventions which formed the earlier consti- 

 tutions in most of the States, and not by strong votes in numbers 

 were they cast out. But while the law, through its enactments, 

 divided the estates among the children equally, yet in practice, 

 almost as a rule, the farm went to one. Who ever in New Eng- 

 land thought, or who ever now thinks, of dividing his land among 

 his daughters ? How rarely is the land divided by will among 

 the sons ? The practice which has obtained is, as we all know, 

 for some one of the sons to remain with the father with the ex- 

 pectation of being given the farm, either by paying small lega- 

 cies to his sisters and larger ones to his brothers, or when the 

 estate is inconsiderable in value, or, as a very common practice, 

 by being the assured recipient of the farm, by giving a bond for 

 the maintenance of his parents during their lives. 



Thus has it come to pass that the agricultural land of New 

 England — and it is equally true of Massachusetts — has remained 

 substantially vm divided. The boundaries of many farms are 

 the same that they were in the time of the Revolution, save 

 where house lots may have been sold from them, if bordering 

 on a village. Some have been increased in their boundaries ; 

 and is it not to-day a boast among some of the farmers who sit 

 before me, that the boundaries of their farms are the same as 

 those of their fathers, their grandfathers, back even to the third 

 and fourth generations ? 



In the settlement of the country there were reasons for this 

 aggregation of land which do not now obtain. New England 

 men depended upon the forest for their fuel and for their tim- 



