52 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



in pucli cases is simply rest, and a sufficient supply of nutritious 

 food. 



The minute subdivision of land in France lias liad a most 

 important influence upon the political history of that country, 

 and an influence l>y no means salutary. The illustrious 

 Niebuhr, who died in 1831, said: "What can be the end of 

 the Frendi system of infinite divisibility of the soil, except 

 general |w^■erty, a struggle between anarchy and despotism, 

 and the final triumph of that military tyranny of which the 

 Empire exhibited the frightful perfection." We have lived to 

 see this remarkable prediction come to pass. This great histo- 

 rian and haidly less great statesman would have found his 

 ideal Commonwealth upon the soil of Massachusetts. His 

 leading political ideas were municipal liberty and self-govern- 

 ment, and an independent yeomanry, owning the soil they 

 cultivate. 



The relation between man and the soil, in Massachusetts, is 

 at that happy point which best combines agricultural moduc- 

 tiveness, with political security and stability. Here men own 

 the farms which they cultivate, and the farms are of moderate 

 extent, averaging about a hundred acres, though as a portion 

 of the mnjority of farms is woodland, the amount actually 

 under cultivation is somewhat less. The division of our teiri- 

 tory into farms of this extent, has come naturally, we hardly 

 know how. It is the growth of the sound, practical sense 

 of New England, unaided by legislation. The diversity of 

 employments among us, of which I have before spoken, and 

 the attractions presented by the fertile fields of the West, have 

 helped to arrest the process of subdivision, and prevented its 

 going below a certain point. Our farms are large enougii for 

 these plans of progressive improvement which give dignity to 

 agriculture, involving the application of knowledge and the 

 expenditure of capital ; and yet small enough to leave a 

 personal relation between the farmer and the land he tills. 

 Material benefits are not purchased at moral cost. The great 

 proprietor, who owns a landscape — whose princii)ality is tilled 

 for him by a little army of laborers — has his affcctiolfs dissi- 

 pated by the very extent of his possessions. The farmers of 

 Massachusetts form a class, the value and importance of which 

 arc hardly felt till they have ceased to exist. In some conn- 



