30 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and should be managed for the benefit of the people thereof, and 

 not, as now, for the benefit of the few having them in charge, 

 and scarcely even in behalf of the stockholders. We are not 

 complaining of railroads ; we are not complaining of business 

 enterprises ; but we are complaining of those laws and tha.t 

 theory of law-making which gives one man an advantage over 

 others. 



Let us take an illustration. It is said there is a gentleman 

 in a neighboring State, who at twenty-one, was employed in con- 

 veying passengers with a single pair of oars from New Jersey to 

 New York, who, by his enterprise — by taking advantage of the 

 laws regulating the means of transportation of passengers and 

 merchandise — at the age of threescore and ten has accumulated 

 as many millions of dollars. Now we do not object to the 

 enterprise, the industry and energy which can accumulate so 

 much ; but what we do object to is, that the laws regulating 

 what has become a prime necessity of life — the transportation 

 of food and merchandise and the person — the common high- 

 ways of the people, by land and by sea, can be so manipulated 

 that any man in a single lifetime, by any means, can accumu- 

 late such a fortune. He cannot have made so great a mass of 

 wealth without taking from others what should have been by 

 them enjoyed. In other words, he has got more, much more 

 than his share, giving credit for all the ability he possesses. He 

 may not be blamable in having acquired so much ; but what 

 shall we say of the laws which in a country of equal rights, and 

 therefore of what should be equal laws, will make it possible for 

 one man so to overtop all others in wealth, which must be pro- 

 duced by labor from the earth at last ? 



When our fathers abolished primogeniture and entail by 

 constitutional enactment, they proposed that the law should re- 

 quire such frequent distributions of property, through the death 

 of the holder, that no man could get inordinately rich. They 

 saw in the old world that the immense riches which made an 

 aristocracy of wealth arose from continued accumulations in a 

 single family, guarded from distribution by law. They assumed 

 that in a single lifetime great accumulations would be impossi- 

 ble, however successful or liowever enterprising a man might be. 

 That was true in their generation. In 1799 two men died — the 

 great farmer of the country, George Washington, and the great 



