THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK. 53 



now. If we look at the returns of our exports during ten 

 months ending April 30, 1875, we shall find that our exports 

 largely exceeded our imports. And if we examine that record 

 carefully, we shall also find that of all our exports, a very 

 large proportion was the product of the soil. Not in cotton 

 or woollen goods, or in machinery, or in any of the products 

 of the labor of the artisan and the mechanic, did our exports 

 abound. Of the $565,000,000 exported, we find $167,000,000 

 in cotton, $10,000,000 in wheat, $15,000,000 in flour, $7,500,- 

 000 in cheese, $10,000,000 in beef, a vast sum also in pork, 

 lard, hams, corn, tobacco, and all the various products of 

 agriculture. So that out of $565,000,000, nearly $400,000,000 

 were raised on the land, or worked up by the agricultural 

 population. This fact should never be lost sight of. And 

 we cannot too deeply congratulate ourselves that our farms are 

 still enabled to add so much to our national wealth, and 

 constitute so large a portion of our national industry. 



The connection of agriculture and the ownership of land 

 with our social and civil system, also forms an interesting 

 part of its history. The division of landed estates among a 

 people indicates more than almost anything else the character 

 of its institutions. The first thought of a powerful conqueror, 

 or an aspiring monarch, or a ruling aristocracy, has always 

 been to get possession of the land. The title of great lauded 

 estates in England springs from the crown, and all the laws 

 of England relating to land favor not only a feudal tenure, 

 but also the retaining of land iix large masses by one individual. 

 This was the law of all Europe previous to the code Napoleon, 

 which divided France into small estates. When the tenure 

 of land was fixed in this country, such a system was set aside, 

 and the division of the land into small farms by the Plymouth 

 colony became, at last, the universal law here, — a custom 

 which, since the war, has been fixed even in those States 

 which previously were occupied by landed proprietors on the 

 one hand and a servile class on the other. When De Tocque- 

 ville visited this country, he pronounced this to be the funda- 

 mental genius of our institutions, and he thought he discovered 

 in our people and their love of land, and in our civil system 

 and this easy division of land, the secret of our national 

 power. He considered, it is true, the civil rights which go 



