96 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



try. The early history of the origin and progress of nations 

 discloses to us most important truths touching the condition 

 and employment of the human race. The first advance beyond 

 the normal condition consists in the domestication of animals, 

 or maintaining large flocks and herds, wandering by day over 

 vast plains, pitching their rude tents nightly beneath Egyptian 

 skies, or encamping round about the hills of Palestine. This 

 seems to have been the employment of the nomadic tribes of 

 the oriental world. From this state of society the race in- 

 stinctively tends to the agricultural, because it lies in what may 

 be called the spontaneous course of events. 



The first example in the history of the world of a well- 

 ordered national industry is that of England. This small 

 island, set apart from the^great continents, standing alone in the 

 open sea, performs the most conspicuous part in the magnificent 

 drama of tlie world. With a territory containing only about 

 50,000 square miles, or little more than 37,000,000 imperial 

 acres, with a home population of less than seventeen millions, 

 it holds the first rank in wealth, in maritime strength, in moral 

 force, and that intellectuality which rules the nations of the 

 earth. Her present superiority is the result of a well-directed 

 industry in agriculture, in commerce and manufactures. 



In the United States all labor is respectable ; in idleness there 

 is disgrace. The early settlers of this country inured them- 

 selves to the hardships and privations attendent upon the 

 colonization of a new and uncultivated domain. Tliey came 

 hither to enjoy those inestimable blessings of civil, and religious 

 liberty, which were not to be obtained in the parent country. 



And when they settled in New England, they secured an 

 interest in the soil, which was ultimately to ripen into that 

 permanent ownership, without which the present form of gov- 

 ernment would never have been established. The colonies 

 held the lands by virtue of charters granted by the crown, and 

 notwithstanding great efforts were made by individuals to obtain 

 patents of large tracts of territory, thereby creating landed 

 proprietaries of immense power, yet the simple mode of sub- 

 dividing estates prevailed in the northern colonies, and remains 

 the same ; and in all the free States of the Union has proved to 

 be the great safeguard of the rights of the laborer. 



The area of the United States, at the peace of 1783, was 

 820,000 square miles ; by various treaties and purchases the 



