on, and it is asserted that business has increased 100 per cent. The streets bear witness to this prosperity, for in all weathers they present a bustling and animated appearance. Indeed, it is on wet days that farmers often prefer driving to the city, having little occupation at home in bad weather.

"Property has increased in value 15 per cent.; the population 25 per cent. A new trade has grown up. On the northern road, the woolen manufactures in operation, some few miles from Utica, were in the habit, on the one hand, of obtaining their supplies by the canal-and on the other, of importing their manufactured articles by the same communication. They now purchase the raw material at Utica, and sell their goods there-thus creating a more profitable and better kind of business. Generally, the plank roads about Utica prove that the travel is soon doubled. What rate of increase will follow cannot be anticipated. The surrounding woodlands have considerably increased in value; formerly, they were scarcely salable. The timber is now regularly cut; consequently cordwood has been reduced in value one dollar and a half a cord-the difference of carting from lots some short distance from Utica; and, as 35,000 cords are annually consumed in Utica, there is an annual saving of $52,000, which would be the original cost of about thirty miles of plank road.

"On the Rome and Utica road, property, some few miles from Utica, has gone up 25 per cent.

On the Utica and Ilion road, the advance is laid at 15 per cent.

"The Utica, Clinton, and Waterville, and the Utica and Waterville roads, furnish a good instance of the influence of plank roads. The latter was the old

main road, and when the former was built, all the traffic was turned to the new road; and the little village of New Hartford, situated on the old road, was quite deserted. The result was the determination of the residents there to continue a road direct from Waterville through New Hartford to Utica, by which means the lost travel not only returned to the road, but property increased in New Hartford about 10 per cent., and in Waterville 20 per cent.

"On the Utica and Frankfort road, the advance on property has been 15 per cent."

We make one other quotation, in which the author sums up the advantages of plank roads to the farmer.

"The farmer has what he never had before-a good road every day in the year-the same in all seasons. Formerly, the spring and fall were periods, when the avenues to the neighboring city were closed to him. On the plank road, he can select for his journey days when he cannot work on the farm, taking with greater ease, in half the time, three times what he formerly could carry; and while residing close to the road, he sees his neighbor living five miles off, bringing two wagons to the planks, and then transferring the contents into the larger, and moving off with it-he can load his single vehicle with the full amount it can carry, and proceed onward without delay. His woodlands acquire, intrinsi cally, a value which they had not before, for he can cart sufficiently in one load to pay him for the expense of carting and cutting, allowing a fair value for his timber. His farm increases in value from 10 to 50 per cent., and commands a sale from the fact that the produce never lacks a market, and has a more regular and higher net value. By the current price, he knows what he can count upon. His grain is worth what all grain fetches in the next market, deducting the cost of cartage to take it there, which he can calculate to a cent, and deliver when he needs money. The adjoining tannery (and the probability is there is one within twenty miles) will buy his bark. His cord-wood can be carried the same distance. He sells, for remunerating prices, his perishable produce, such as vege

tables and fruit, pumpkins, corn-stalk and fall apples, which brought him, previously, a very small sum, as the only market was in the small villages where there was little demand for them."

The history of plank roads is very brief. The first road of this kind built on this continent was in Canada in 1835-36. It ran east from Toronto. The first plank road in the United States was the "Salina and Central Square" road, which was built in 1847. Within the four years since that time, there have been constructed, or are now in course of construction, 2,106 miles of plank road in the State of New York, at an average cost of $1,833 a mile. The cost of 1,201 miles of railroad in that State, as reported in 1850, was $46,604,921: the cost of 2,106 miles of plank road is $3,860,296; and we are strongly impressed with the belief that the latter has been expended as profitably for the State as the former. The earnings of these roads have been literally enormous. Mr. Kingsford says that the stock of no one of them is under par, but most of them at a great advance-some cannot be bought at all.

We have not designed to treat this subject at length, but we think it has an importance which has not as yet been conceded to it in New England. We hope it may be more thoroughly discussed in journals, where perhaps the discussion will be more appropriate.

ART. IX-SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE HON. DAVID DAGGETT.

THE eminent public services of the Hon. David Daggett, lately deceased, and his wide reputation, especially as Professor in the Law Department of Yale College, and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, have induced the Editors of the New Englander to request for publication the following address, sketching his life and character, which was given on the occasion of his burial by. the Rev. S. W. S. Dutton.

There lies before us, in death, no more henceforth to be seen among the living, robed for the grave, the form of one whom we have long looked upon with admiration, affection and reverence; one, who, through a long life, has been eminent in the public service; one whom this town, and city, and College, and State, have willingly trusted and delighted to honor.

This mournful event has not come upon us suddenly. We have long felt that it must come soon. We have seen our friend, once vigorous and active," the observed of all observers" in our streets and public resorts, gradually withdrawn by the growing infirmities. of age to complete seclusion in his own dwelling. That voice, which once rung like a clarion in the halls of justice and of legislation, and in the clear music of social converse, has been losing its fullness and power. We have seen a falling away in that bold and strong Roman face, and dimness stealing the fire of that eagle eye. That brisk step, which was once seen in our streets before the sun of each morning, we have observed to grow more and more feeble and tottering. And that noble form, with its antique and peculiar but comely dress, which was once seen every day by our citizens, and in the sanctuary as regularly as the gates of Zion were opened on the Sabbath, has been gradually, and at length wholly, withdrawn from public view. We have known that the days of man's years are threescore years and ten; that if they are fourscore years, it is by reason of strength; and that when they are near to fourscore and ten, they must soon be cut off. And when it was learned that disease had come upon our friend in his extreme age, we all felt that but one event could be reasonably expected.

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But our expectation of this event, our certainty that it could not be long deferred, does not divest it of sorrow. Our sorrow is indeed calm and tranquil. It is not the sorrow of those who mourn over one cut down in the prime, or the midst, of his days and his usefulness for our friend is borne, a patriarch, to his grave, shock of corn cometh in its season." It is not the sorrow of disappointed expectations, broken plans and blighted hopes. It is not the sorrow of that overwhelming shock, which bears away the trusted, the honored and the loved in the full exercise of their activities; which rends away the pillar, when sustaining the weightiest responsibilities of the state, the church and the family: for, as often happens in the divine kindness, the gentle ministries of advancing age had removed, one by one, the ties which bound our friend to a life of activity and duty, and had transferred slowly, safely and completely to other hands the offices and labors which once were his. His public burdens had all been borne and laid aside. His trusts had all been discharged, both without and within his home. His work had all been done. Nor yet is our sorrow that bitterest of all -the sorrow of those who have no hope in respect to the future life of a friend departed.

Nevertheless, our sorrow is sorrow indeed-the sorrow of those who see worth and nobleness passing away from among us; and especially the sorrow which must flow from the tender ties of nature and affection, when sundered and bleeding. We are never ready

nature never can be ready-to have those ties severed; though faith and piety can submit to the event, reverently and cheerfully, when it comes.

It is well, then, for sorrowing friends, a sorrowing church, a sorrowing community, and more deeply sorrowing kindred, to mingle, in this hour, their griefs and sympathies. And especially is it wellit is due before we consign to the house of the grave one who has performed so many public services, to review his life and character, that we may be grateful for what God has done for our fathers and for us through him, and that we may gather wisdom from the survey of his virtues.

DAVID DAGGETT was born in Attleborough, in the county of Bristol, in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, on the 31st of December, 1764; and, of course, at the day of his decease, April 12, 1851, had passed through three months and twelve days of his eighty-seventh year. He was of that stock, which we have so much reason to honor and reverence, the Puritan stock of the New England Pilgrims; being the fifth in the direct line of descent from John Daggett, who came over from England with Winthrop's company in 1630, and settled in Watertown, in the Colony of Massachusetts. His son, Thomas Daggett, Esq., resided in Edgartown, on Martha's Vineyard. He remoyed thither, it is supposed, with the first Governor Mayhew, when he settled that island in 1644. He married Hannah, the oldest daughter of Governor Mayhew, was a magistrate of the island, and died about the year 1690. His son, Deacon John Daggett, the second in the line from the original settler, removed, with four sons, about the year 1707, from Martha's Vineyard to Attleborough, Bristol county, Massachusetts, where he built, for protection against the Indians, what was called a "garrison house," in which he lived. It is quite remarkable that of the four sons of this Deacon John Daggett, three have, for many generations, been represented by their descendants, in New Haven; viz., Mayhew Daggett, the grandfather of the late Henry Daggett, Esq., whose residence was on the corner of Chapel and High streets; Ebenezer Daggett, the father of Rev. Dr. Daggett, Professor of Divinity and President in Yale College, and grandfather of the late Captain Henry Daggett, whose residence was in George street; and Thomas Daggett, the grandfather of David Daggett, whose death we now mourn. The fourth son, Naphthali Daggett, met an untimely death by the falling of a tree in Attleborough. The fourth in this line of descent, also named Thomas Daggett, the father of our lamented friend, was a man of vigorous intellect, strong common sense, and decided and earnest religious character. I have often heard our venerable friend speak of his father's strong sympathy

with the friends of the "Great Awakening," which occurred in the earlier part of his manhood, under the preaching of Whitfield, Edwards, Bellamy and the Tennents. In the controversy, which in subsequent years grew out of that Awakening, he was earnestly on the side of its friends; so much so that he had a partiality for the "Separates" of that day, though he never united himself with them. He was a Baptist in sentiment; and his influence as such had a modifying, though not a decisive, effect on the opinions of his son through life. Under the nurture and admonition of such a father, the son received thorough and judicious religious instruction, commended by a corresponding example; and was well trained in the principles of virtue and piety.

At the age of sixteen he came to Yale College, and entered the Junior Class, two years in advance; induced to choose this rather than the nearer College at Harvard, probably by the fact that Rev. Dr. Daggett, the first cousin of his father, who deceased the year before, had been an officer in Yale. He graduated in due course, and with high honor, in the year 1783, in the same class with Samuel Austin, Abiel Holmes, and John Cotton Smith. Of this class, numbering forty-two at the time of graduation, he is the last survivor but one. His college life, it will be observed, was during the latter part of the stormy and trying period of the American Revolution. His class entered during the year in which the British troops, under General Tryon, invaded New Haven; and graduated in the very month in which the treaty of peace with Great Britain was signed. When he took his second, or Master's degree, he spoke an oration of such marked excellence that it received the honor, quite unusual in that day, of publication. Having a strong preference for the profession of the law, he commenced, soon after leaving College, the study preparatory to that profession, with Charles Chauncey, Esq., of New Haven, afterwards a Judge of the Superior Court; and continued therein till January, 1786, a little more than two years; when he was admitted to the bar of New Haven county, at the age of twenty-one, and immediately entered upon practice in this town. While pursuing his legal studies under Judge Chauncey, he supported himself by performing the duties of Butler in college, and of Preceptor in the Hopkins Grammar School. A few months after he was admitted to the Bar, he was chosen to the office of Tutor in Yale College: which he declined, being eager to pursue the practice of the profession which he had chosen.

Mr. Daggett was early called into political service. In 1791, he

Rev. Payson Williston, father of Hon. Samuel Williston, of Easthampton, Massachusetts.