21 



touching in this simple statement. Nothing can be less sensitive 

 and less impressible than the mind of an English laborer ; and 

 yet, under the pressure of hopeless poverty that mind sometimes 

 gives way. The cure in such cases is simply rest and a sufficient 

 supply of nutritious food. 



The minute subdivision of land in France has had a most im- 

 portant influence upon the political history of that country, and an 

 influence by no means salutary. The illustrious Niebuhr, -who 

 died in 1831, said: " What can be the end of the French system 

 of infinite divisibihty of the soil, except general poverty, a strug- 

 gle between anarchy and despotism, and the final triumph of that 

 military tyranny of which the Empire exhibited the frightful per- 

 fection," We have lived to see this remarkable prediction come 

 to pass. This great historian and hardly less great statesman 

 would have found his ideal Commonwealth upon the soil of Mas- 

 sachusetts. Ilis leading political ideas were municipal liberty and 

 self-government, and an independent yeomanry, owning the soil 

 they cultivate. 



The relation between man and the soil, in Massachusetts, is at 

 that happy point which best combines agricultural productiveness 

 with political security and stability. Here men own the farms 

 which they cultivate, and the farms are of moderate extent, aver- 

 aging about a hundred acres, though as a portion of the majority 

 of farms is woodland, the amount actually under cultivation is 

 somewhat less. The division of our territory into farms of this 

 extent, has come naturally, we hardly know how. It is the growth 

 of the sound practical sense of New England, unaided by legisla- 

 tion. The diversity of employments among us, of which I have 

 before spoken, and the attractions presented by the fertile fields 

 of the West, have helped to arrest the process of subdivision, and 

 prevented its going below a certain point. Our farms are large 

 enough for these plans of progressive improvement which give 

 dignity to agriculture, involving the application of knoAvledge and 

 the expenditure of capital ; and yet small enough to leave a per- 

 sonal relation between the farmer and the land he tills. Material 

 benefits are not purchased at moral cost. The great proprietor, 

 who owns a landscape — whose principality is tilled for him by a 

 little army of laborers — has his afi"ections dissipated by the very 



