Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/248

236 in the newspapers, and thunders in the pulpit:—I know all these things, and do not pretend to disguise them; and still I think no city of the old world, of the same population, has so much which good men prize, and so little which good men deplore.

See the increase of material wealth; the buildings for trade and for homes; the shops and ships. This year Boston will add to her possessions some ten or twenty millions of dollars, honestly and earnestly got. Observe the neatness of the streets, the industry of the inhabitants, their activity of mind, the orderliness of the people, the signs of comfort. Then consider the charities of Boston; those limited to our own border, and those which extend further, those beautiful charities which encompass the earth with their sweet influence. Look at the schools, a monument of which the city may well be proud, in spite of their defects.

But Boston, though we proudly call it the Athens of America, is not the pleasantest thing in New England to look at; it is the part of Massachusetts which I like the least to look at, spite of its excellence. Look further, at the whole of Massachusetts, and you see a fairer spectacle. There is less wealth at Provincetown, in proportion to the numbers, but there is less want; there is more comfort; property is more evenly and equally distributed there than here, and the welfare of a country never so much depends upon the amount of its wealth, as on the mode in which its wealth is distributed. In the State, there are about one hundred and fifty thousand families—some nine hundred and seventy-five thousand persons, living with a degree of comfort, which, I think, is not anywhere enjoyed by such a population in the old world. They are mainly industrious, sober, intelligent, and moral. Everything thrives; agriculture, manufactures, commerce. "The carpenter encourages the goldsmith; he that smites the anvil, him that smootheth with the hammer." Look at the farms, where intelligent labour wins bread and beauty both, out of the sterile soil and climate not over-indulgent. Behold the shops all over the State; the small shops where the shoemaker holds his work in his lap, and draws his thread by his own strong muscles; and the large shops where machines, animate with human intelligence, hold, with