460 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



leges which are now enjoyed. And in this view I see little to 

 tempt the farmer of New England to exchange what he has 

 here for a something which he hopes to enjoy elsewhere here- 

 after. 



The crowning glory of New England is her institutions and 

 the moral and social influences which they exert. And these, 

 it should be remembered, are the growth and development of 

 two centuries — rendering her unsurpassed, as a moral, intelli- 

 gent, and independent community, by any other on the globe. 

 And what does a man gain in exchange for these in the new 

 regions to which he is invited ? what for the schools, the 

 churches, the public libraries, the good neighborhood, the good 

 roads, the mills, the workshops, the health that nerves his arm, 

 and the neatness and comfort with which he is surrounded here ? 

 Harvests whose very abundance impoverishes the owner by 

 depressing prices in the distant markets to which he must look 

 for a return for his labor ; a population almost necessarily too 

 sparse to share adequately in the benefits of schools, collected 

 from every quarter of the globe, which a century will hardly 

 assimilate or reduce to a common tone of sympathy or feeling ; 

 disease in its various forms lurking unseen, and scattering its 

 subtile poison along some of the richest valleys and through 

 the most tempting portions of that fertile region ; while the 

 means of moral and intellectual culture of the young are neces- 

 sarily limited, and the temptations to ease and indolence must 

 be always such as a feasible and fertile soil never fails to hold 

 out to the farmer who tills it. These are some of the incidents 

 which must for years, and perhaps generations, attend the sac- 

 rifice of a New England home for the chance of raising a larger 

 crop of corn or wheat than ordinarily waves along the furrows 

 of a New England farm. 



There is, however, one spot in that region which holds out 

 to the true-hearted man of the North attractions beyond the 

 teeming harvests with which a virgin soil allures the emigrant, 

 not in the ease which he is to earn there, but in the deeds 

 which he is to do. I refer to that spot now memorable in the 

 history of political affairs, once consecrated to Freedom, but 

 now to be desecrated by the accursed institution of Slavery 

 unless preoccupied by the homes and institutions of freemen. 



