6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



caste, or serfdom, or slavery can make sycophants of steam or 

 electricity. They acknowledge no sovereignty but that of the 

 people — the sovereignty of man. The engines of mechanical 

 force are the great democratizers of states. What makes Massa- 

 chusetts so preeminently a democratic commonwealth ? It is the 

 fact, that a social power produced by mechanical «art, and equiv- 

 alent to a hundred million men, is distributed among the million 

 and a fifth of her actual population, and diffuses through the 

 whole mass, the inspiration of a larger personality, and a more 

 aspiring manhood. The development of her new industries, 

 and the revival that stirred the hearts of her people so deeply, 

 and reestablished in her institutions on a firmer basis, the principle 

 of universal education, were contemporaneous, and under the 

 auspices of the same public men. 



The social power of mechanical and manufacturing pro- 

 duction in England, is the keen and watchful rival of the 

 aristocracy. Under the lead of Cobden, and to give the 

 mechanic cheaper food, it abolished the corn laws, which pro- 

 tected the privileged class and the culture of their immense 

 estates. To-day, it demands through John Bright, legislation 

 that shall liberalize the tenure of land ; and with the sanction 

 of Gladstone, England's future prime-minister, seeks an exten- 

 sion of the suffrage. The student of nations, who follows 

 through the last forty years the policy of Russia in developing 

 her mechanical and manufacturing industry, is prepared to 

 understand how such statesmanship should culminate in the 

 thunder-flash of that emancipating edict which made twenty- 

 three million serfs, freemen. 



The history of mechanical progress shown in one implement 

 of agriculture, the plough, contains in epitome the history of 

 man's contest with nature, and his ascent to civilized supremacy. 

 A hafted wooden tooth, drawn through the ground by a shaft, 

 and leaving but a slender superficial groove, is the rudiment. 

 It is held and drawn, with painful, exhausting toil, by slaves. 

 With the ploughshare, the coulter, the mould-board, the two 

 handles, and the yoked oxen come the deeper and broader 

 gauge of the furrow, relief to the overtasked ploughman, and 

 a free yeomanry. The polished instrument of iron, with the 

 bended beam, and nicely balanced adjustment of weight, lines, 

 curves and angles, with which its parts are put together, and 



