Excerpt from Historical Remarks Concerning the Mechanic Street Burial Ground, in the City of Worcester: Offered to the Joint Committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts; March 14, 1878

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust inclosed here: Blest be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.

The. Project to disinter the multitude of all ages, who have been inhumed, some for more than half a century, in the Mechanic Street Burial Ground, is liable to so many valid Objections, that it is difficult, within proper limits, to expose them all, or indeed to exhibit any with that force and fulness which the whole truth would require. If, in our remarks, the selection of topics shall not be the most judicious, care shall be taken to introduce none that is unimportant and if the manner shall fail to be what some might desire, it shall at least be as courteous as may comport with an honest plainness of speech, such as the nature and condition of the subject seem to demand.

In respect, then, to the proposal to convoke a Town-meeting, to empty at once a thousand graves, and carry Off their quiet owners, none knows whith er, and under the supervision of none knows whom, though, in many cases, they would be certain to be strangers to the untimely risen dead, if not to the country itself, there are questions which may well be put, though not so well answered by the advocates of so unusual an experiment on the endur ance of humanity.

We might, not impertinently, inquire into the rights of Towns in such matters, and the rights of individuals as well as communities. We might inquire into the nature and extent of the pledge which seems to be at least virtually given to those who bury their dead in a public cemetery, and whether a Town that has authorized such sepulture has any reserved right, either from the nature of its powers or any special provision of the statute book, to eject the tenants of the grave at its own deliberate will, or as pop ular caprice may be blown In the direction of such an experiment on the dead and the living.

We might ask, without any extravagant presumption, whether, both to the dead and their surviving friends, a pledge is not given, for full and cer tain reliance, that the repose of the grave shall be protected by the public care and vigilance, and not be broken by the popular wisdom of to-day, that may be its repented folly to-morrow.

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