8 



or distributed, and their populations must suffer and perish for 

 lack of food. The last census in a single fact represents in its 

 enormous magnitude the accumulated contribution which me- 

 chanical art makes to the resources of American agriculture. 

 The tables of the last census prove that in the ten years over 

 which its reckoning extends, an addition was made to the im- 

 proved land of the country of fifty million acres. The whole 

 improved land of the United States amounts to one hundred 

 and sixty-three million acres. In the ten years from 1850 to 

 18G0 agriculture subdued to itself an extent of territory very 

 nearly one-half as large as that of the whole improved land 

 that had resulted from the farming of the country since its 

 first settlement. 



Agriculture and the farmer have received not only these 

 advantages, but they have shared the benefits of the general 

 movement which has attended the progress of the mechanical 

 arts, and improved the condition of society. The mechanic 

 and the manufactures have won the first great triumphs under 

 that leader of the race who raised the standard of dominion 

 over nature, as the rightful realm of man. The spoils they 

 win, however, are divided with all. They cannot contrive a 

 mode by which the enhanced productiveness of their industry, 

 shall not redound to the common weal. The million man- 

 power of machinery can be wielded only for mankind. No 

 single class can appropriate its capacity for human aggrandize- 

 ment. No system of caste, or serfdom, or slavery can make 

 sycophants of steam or electricity. They acknowledge no sov- 

 ereignty but that of the people — the sovereignty of man. The 

 engines of mechanical force are the great democratizers of 

 states. What makes Massachusetts so pre-eminently a demo- 

 cratic commonwealth ? It is the fact, that a social power pro- 

 duced by mechanical art, and equivalent to a hundred million 

 men, is distributed among the million and a fifth of her actual 

 population, and diffuses through the whole mass, the inspira- 

 tion of a larger personality, and a more aspiring manhood. 

 The development of her new industries, and the revival that 



