TENURE OF LANDS. £3 



her sons, but as for mechanics, there were scarce any besides 

 wliat were necessary to meet- the more pressing domestic wants 

 of the people, and hundreds are now alive who saw the first 

 thread of cotton spun by machinery in a neighboring State, 

 while the grave has just closed over that sagacious and excellent 

 public spirited citizen whose far seeing policy conceived and 

 whose energy helped carry out the works at Waltham and 

 Lowell, and laid the foundation for that system to which 

 Massachusetts owes so much of her wealth and prosperity. 



This condition of agriculture, so suited to the tastes, habits, 

 and resources of the early settlers here, was perpetuated by laws 

 distributing the property of the parent equally among his chil- 

 dren, and providing for the free education of every one by 

 means of the common school. The consequence was that every 

 man felt that he was as good as his neighbor, and looked forwaid 

 to earning his own way to independence by his own industry. 

 Such a thing as a "poor white man," in the sense in which that 

 term is applied at the South, was, I apprehend, scarcely to be 

 found in all New England. Another consequence was that, 

 the moment these colonies were free of the mother country, 

 slavery disappeared from New England, and here labor upon 

 the farm and in the workshop has ever since been free. 



Agriculture here has neither asked nor received special favor 

 or special legislation at the hands of the government. It has 

 maintained a policy which forbids any one class from monpoliz- 

 ing power or influence. And in the formation of tlieir own 

 constitutions as well as the part they took in that of the federal 

 government, the people were disposed to delegate no more of 

 the sovereignty of the whole to its functionaries than was neces- 

 sary to organize the dwellers in the different States into a 

 mutual association for the common good of the whole — not as 

 a compact of towns or counties or states, even, but as " We the 

 People of the United States." 



The social policy of New England, fostering free labor, 

 excluding the idea of large monopolies of land, to be cultivated 

 by tenants or degraded operatives, giving to tlie farmer a social 

 rank and position on an equality with other branches of honor- 

 able industry, has been carried, with her sons, to their new 

 homes at the West, and has spread till the condition of agricul- 

 ture which prevailed among the planters of New England has 



