BARB WIRE FENCES. 201 



This pride and enjoyment of the fenced field, and the 

 assurance of protected enjoyment which it gives, have gone 

 with English life and living to all parts of the globe : to 

 American States, Canadian Provinces, and the colonies of the 

 far East. 



Bonndaries of land have been cared for from tlie most 

 ancient times. Among many peoples the severest penalties 

 have been set to protect the neighbor's landmark. At least 

 one Roman emperor poured annual libations to landmarks. 

 But the fenced field, the outworks of the Englishman's castle, 

 his home, however humble, have had and held, through 

 generations, a meaning dear to all of English descent. 

 Could the Roman emperor who ordered libations to be 

 poured to shadowy boundary lines have called from his bards 

 such lyrics as have been written of the hedgerows of 

 England and the rural homes they enclose ? To claim too 

 much for this would be to assert that our farmers in America 

 are willing to pay far too roundly for a mere sentiment, and of 

 that they will not, in their thrift, be suspected. Nevertheless, 

 the well fenced farm stands the symbol of the well kept 

 farm, and the sluggard's neglected acres first tell their story 

 in his dilapidated fences. 



THE FENCE IN AMERICA. 



And it was in the beginning of this period of English 

 fencing above referred to that settlements in America began. 

 Fence laws were among the first to be entered upon the 

 statute books of the Colonies. The fence question caused 

 the first delegate convention ever held on this continent, in 

 that May of 1634, when the town representatives of Boston, 

 Charlestown, Roxbury, Watertown, Dorchester, Saugus and 

 Salem came together to look into a certain order of the 

 General Court, that "any man may kill -any swyne that 

 comes into his corne " {Drake's Boston, 154), and the town 

 deputies held regular sessions after that, until, curiously 

 enough, anotlicr stray hog in 1636 created what Governor 

 Winthrop a little petulantly declares in his memoirs (Vol. 

 2, p. 82) "a great business on a very small occasion;" 

 for, as one quaint writer has declared, "Mistress Sherman's 

 pig w^as progenitor of the INIassachusetts Senate." ( Wash- 

 burn's Judicial History of Massachusetts, p. 22.) 



