464 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



estimated that in every hundred traders but seven succeed in 

 acquiring wealth." 



Of eleven hundred and twelve bankrupts who took the benefit 

 of that law in Massachusetts, he stated that only fourteen were 

 farmers ; and of twenty-five hundred and fifty bankrupts in New 

 York, only forty-six were farmers. 



And when I turn to the personal history of my own profes- 

 sion in this county, it is painful to recall the number who, within 

 the limits of my own memory, have toiled through life in a 

 constant struggle to sustain an appearance which public opinion 

 imposed upon them, and left, at last, little else as an inheritance 

 for their children than the name which they had striven to pre- 

 serve from oblivion. 



And in respect to one other of the professions, I apprehend 

 the language of one of the earliest and most distinguished of 

 their number might be borrowed in respect to the acquisition 

 of wealth : " If in this life only they have hope, they are of all 

 men most miserable." 



What I mean by these remarks is, that the man who allows 

 himself to be dazzled by the brilliant success of another in 

 some different calling from his own, and is thereby led to in- 

 dulge in feelings of discontent, acts against the light of reason 

 and experience ; and, above all, that the farmer who yields to 

 such a weakness overlooks altogether the means of independ- 

 ence which lie within his grasp. 



Nor do I in this measure life by mere worldly goods — by 

 tons of hay, or bushels of grain, or heads of cattle. I do not 

 test its value by a reference to the books of the assessors to 

 ascertain the actual value of the acres he may own, or the 

 amount of money for which he may pay taxes. I take a young 

 man, as I find most of our farmers' sons in New England, care- 

 fully trained in morals, well taught in the rudiments of knowl- 

 edge at our free schools, and his common sense sharpened by 

 the very expedients to which his parents may have been obliged 

 to resort in bringing up a large family upon the income of a 

 little farm, and I send him into the world with nothing, if you 

 please, but his hands and a hopeful heart; and with these he is 

 to win his way in the world. lie finds labor honorable and 

 well rewarded; he finds in an old community like ours accumu- 



