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ESSAY. v 



the land in every direction ; there is more wooded land 

 in Massachusetts to-day, than there was fifty years ago. 

 If all these signs indicate that the fewer acres are 

 tilled better, or by the application of more science, as 

 great products are obtained from less land, it might 

 be well; but they speak of the identification of Massa- 

 chusetts with manufactures ; of swarms that have over- 

 spread the West, pouring from the New England hive, 

 and of the abandonment of agriculture for other pursuits. 

 Manufactures cannot furnish a basis for a perfect 

 state. In the World's History those states which 

 have been founded principally on Agriculture, have 

 been alone enduring. Agricultural Home lived long, and 

 hardened he* muscles by war, until overcome by fresher 

 agricultural nomadic blood, and the back-bone of the 

 Southern Rebellion has been southern-corn. Any 

 other states lack the deep roots, which can alone give 

 them long existence. A merchant state is subject to 

 the shifting caprices of trade. England owes her free- 

 dom from invasion more to her agriculture, than to the 

 fleets which cruise the British Channel; and the shores of 

 the Mediterranean are studded with ephemeral merchant 

 states*. In. no two centuries has the political confor- 

 mation of the, world been the same. It has been 

 continually shifting through growth, decay, conquest 

 and diplomacy. A move on the political chess-board » 

 the rise, or the overthrow of a nation ; the discovery of 

 a passage; the cutting a ship canal; a little jostle, making 

 new avenues of trade, dry up the old channels of com- 

 merce, and leave the states through which they flowed, 

 high and dry upon their margins. When goods were ' 

 transferred from the backs of camels to the holds of 

 ships, the cities of the East, through which the commerce 



