40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tioiial prosperity, has been recognized by the best thinkers. 

 Hallam, the acute historian of the middle ages, has justly ob- 

 served, " that even in the least civilized people there were not 

 wanting partial encouragements to cultivation, and the amelio- 

 rating principle of human industry struggled against destructive 

 rei^olutions and barbarous disorder. ^^ 



This conservative principle is what, in the present stage of our 

 history, we especially need, and which no class can supply but 

 that attached to the pursuits of agriculture. As a nation, we 

 are undoubtedly a fast people ; we have been satirically de- 

 scribed as running from morn to night, banner in hand, bawling 

 " Excelsior ! " We have been born, like Mercury, with wings on 

 our heels, and like Minerva, with a metallic head-piece. The 

 spirit of haste takes possession of all classes, except the agricul- 

 tural, from infancy, and impels them to hurry along as if, like 

 the wishes of Alexander, they had other worlds to conquer. We 

 have no sooner netted the land with railroads, dotted the waters 

 with ships, connected continents by wires under the ocean, fought 

 out the most terrible internecine war known in history, than we 

 hurry toward the north pole, annex any loose territory lying 

 round, negotiate for all the disposable islands in the mid-ocean, 

 and continue to hanker after the small " adjoining lots" of 

 Mexico, Cuba and Canada ! The same spirit of unrest infests the 

 industrial class, especially those on the highways of commerce 

 and manufactures, in their home and place of business. The 

 merchant forsakes his house and hurries to his counting-room in 

 haste to be rich, and is only enough acquainted with his family 

 affairs to eat and drink and sleep under his own roof, and ascer- 

 tain the number of his children by the annual bill from the 

 family doctor. The manufacturer adds building to building, 

 workmen to workmen, turns flesh and blood into mere adjuncts 

 of steam, and has scarcely time to look from the windows of his 

 factories and notice that the rest of the world is outside, and 

 that with all his pains he cannot absorb the whole of it. Mothers 

 have no time in our cities to rear large families. Young men 

 turn away with disgust from patient toil ; the young women, like 

 the gay butterflies of the wise man, toil not neither do they spin, 

 yet are clothed in gorgeous apparel. Education is forced, so 

 that our youth obtain a smattering of many things, but a knowl- 

 edge of little, and were it possible, there would be an abandon- 



