36 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



witliout, and purchase hoops and dresses for his wife and 

 daughters, see how much he has got left to indorse upon his 

 outstanding mortgage, or lend to a neighbor, or lay out to add a 

 few acres to his farm. If he has enough for all these, and a 

 little to spare, every year, he is richer than Rothschild, and is 

 independent as tlie Czar of all the Russians. 



But why should we test every thing by this vulgar standard 

 of dollars and cents ? Is there nothing in life for a farmer 

 worth having but what he puts into his barn, or files away in his 

 desk ? Is tliere nothing in social position, in mental culture, in 

 domestic comfort, in the education of his children, in the 

 personal freedom and independence of spirit which none but the 

 master of his own acres ever can feel ? In all these I assert 

 without fear of contradiction, and I wish I could make my voice 

 heard in every farmer's house in our State, — that in no part of 

 God's heritage does any class stand in a more favored condition 

 than the farmers of Massachusetts. 



I have no wisli to flatter any one in what I say ; and if we 

 analyze the grounds on which I place this claim, far more is due 

 to a wise form of government and a kind Providence, than the 

 exertions of tlie individual man. Indeed, too many of them are 

 unconscious of what their true condition is : and I would say a 

 word upon this subject, not by the way of boasting, but to excite, 

 if possible, feelings of satisfaction and contentment, and to keep 

 our sons and daughters at home, to occupy the places of their 

 fathers and mothers. We have, it may be, a hardy soil and a 

 fickle climate ; we may be obliged to work hard, and content 

 ourselves with small crops ; but the soil is our own, and there 

 is health in our pure air, though it sometimes sweeps by us in 

 the tempest. We have a market for our products at our doors, 

 and we have laws that protect us in the enjoyment of those 

 fruits of honest labor. 



If it were not so costly an experiment, I would gladly see 

 every New England farmer who feels restless and discontented 

 when he hears of the wheat crops and corn fields of the prairie 

 States, shut up his comfortable farm-house, take his wife and 

 children and go to that promised land, and stay there long 

 enough to contrast the two. 1 have not read the character for 

 wisdom and shrewdness of the yeomanry of New England aright, 

 or he would conclude, that, in the single life he has to live in 



