10 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



Their taste is beyond criticism, if the palate may decide the 

 award. But thereafter comes the man who must "eat his bread 

 in the sweat of his face," challenging these aspirants, who would 

 fain be guide, philosopher, and friend, of tlie multitude with votes, 

 to pledge themselves that the gardener or orchardist shall surely 

 gather where he has strewn ! To guaranty the laborer in fur- 

 row or vineyard, immunity from the depredations of those 

 chevaliers who have received their accolade in that ultimate grade 

 of modern chivalry, whereof the insignia is two tired hands sur- 

 mounted by a jawbone in ceaseless motion ! Will their influence 

 be exerted to safeguard those whose work is not, and cannot be, 

 regulated by the clock, — a mere measure of time, — but rather by 

 the multiform exigencies of varying seasons ? Will they abolish 

 all that so-called protection which aims to put the cripple or 

 shiftless upon a plane with the diligent and vigorous ; that hybrid 

 paternalism which ignores lavvs old as crcMtion, — the alternations 

 of heat and cold, the countless vicissitudes of drought or flood ; 

 enacting that industry and laziness shall be meted with like 

 measure ; that the Statute-book and not the laws of Nature shall 

 determine the hours of labor; and that the sluggard, to whom 

 adze or broad-axe are as one, shall hew to the line with either 

 indifferently, nothing but chips resulting. " Property is Rob- 

 bery ! " shrieked Prudhon. Proprius in Latin, — that which is 

 our own ; peculiar to oneself! I take a tract of waste land, sub- 

 due it, plant it, and naturally expect to reap where I have sown. 

 But the serfs from effete despotisms, imported to toil in our mills 

 that thereby " Home Industry " may be protected ! construe 

 what little law they know to suit their appetites, prowling around 

 with tire-arms and taking, with reckless violence, whatsoever they 

 And to hand. The civil authority taxes the owner and grower 

 upon his realty and its produce. Is there no reciprocal obliga- 

 tion ? Does not the levy and collection of a tax imply a corre- 

 sponding duty ? Why do I pay a tax, at all ? Not simply 

 because it has been levied, and I cannot help myself; since then 

 it is resolved into a wanton exaction : but on account of the 

 security to my property and life which the whole community 

 bind themselves theoretically, howsoever they may fall short in 

 fact, to afford me in return for the assessment. What satisfac- 



