fanner — the holder of arable land — will do well to remem- 

 ber that he is in a hopeless minority in this community — 

 that he is no longer where Timothy Pickering left him, but 

 — thanks to railroads and cotton-mills and machine methods 

 generally — he is now outnumbered two to one b}" the citj- 

 populations. The centre of gravity is shifted. Only one- 

 ninth of the people of this state, in 1817-18, lived in the 

 two towns, Boston and Salem, Avhich had at that time 

 population enough for a city charter. The other eight- 

 ninths of the people lived in towns of less tlian twelve 

 thousand inhabitants, or, in other words, eight times as many 

 people lived in the country as in the city. To-day, consid- 

 ■erably more than two-thirds of the people of this common- 

 wealth live under city governments. Or in other words — 

 more than twice as many people are living in the cities to- 

 day as are living in the country, where they can smell the 

 breath of kine and drink in the odors of the fresh-turned 

 sod. The farmers of Essex County and the State, with 

 quite as much acreage as ever to be taxed, and every foot 

 of it quite as much in evidence as ever, find >their voting 

 strength as compared with the whole population, fatally 

 belittled. Less than 50,000 acres of the soil of Essex 

 County lie within the area of heT seven cities. More than 

 225,000 acres of it lie in the twenty-eight towns of the 

 count}^ The proportion in other parts of the state is pretty 

 constant. I need not trouble you with the figures. So 

 far, then, as the matter of a single land-tax is likely to be- 

 come an issue to be determined between the city and the 

 rural population, the dwellers under city charters, more 

 than two-thirds of the people of the state, will find their 

 interests little menaced by the proposal. The question 

 involves a score of nice and difficult considerations. But 

 it is easy to see, precisely for the reason of their difficulty 

 and delicacy, that, to the average city dweller who gets his 

 income from trade, from transportation, from the cotton- 



