26 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



law. All Acts affecting highways, all Acts affecting schools or 

 school children, are said to be general laws. Let us take one 

 for example. It provides that " any town may raise money in 

 taxes or otherwise, to be expended by the school committee in 

 providing for the conveyance of pupils to and from public 

 schools." In our day we walked, some of us, miles to and from 

 school, and were all the better for the exercise. Our mothers 

 walked to school. The ruddy glow of health', the invigorated 

 constitution, made them the happy mothers of families of nu- 

 merous children. Their driven-in-a-carriage-to-school grand- 

 daughters, if we may believe one of the most learned and labo- 

 rious of our physicians, are becoming physically incapable of 

 perpetuating the race of New England men ! 



It is somewhat difficult to classify the " Act to prevent the 

 taking of trout in Avery Brook, within the limits of the towns 

 of Charlemont or Heath, without a written license from the 

 owners or lessees." At first thought, one would suppose that a 

 private Act ; but when the taking of the trout is made a crime, 

 to be recovered by complaint or indictment in the name of the 

 Commonwealth, it would seem sufficiently to interest the public 

 to be classed as a public one. Again, one would have thought 

 that the Act concerning the manufacture and sale of intoxicat- 

 ing liquors had been sufficiently discussed and examined not to 

 require supplemental legislation at the same session of its pas- 

 sage ; and yet, within three days thereafter, we are told, by 

 grave enactment of public law, that the word " constable, wher- 

 ever it occurs in chapter 415 in the Acts of the present year, 

 shall be construed to mean the constable of the Commonwealth 

 and his deputies." Why not have said so in the original Act, as 

 everybody knew that it was substantially to be enforced by those 

 officers ? 



Agriculture asks for no special legislation. It is not benefited 

 by any legislation whatever, except such as shall preserve the 

 morals of the people and the rights of property and person. 

 Indeed, the best legislation to aid the tilling of the earth is that 

 which lets it most severely alone. But what ought to be com- 

 plained of is the fostering of every interest by special laws, giv- 

 ing to them every power that law can give to association and 

 combination — all interests save one. Looking through this large 

 volume of Acts, we find no Act in aid of labor, or authorizing 



