ENGLISH CAPITAL. 13 



expensive ways of doing things to my own countrymen. We 

 have not the means the capital for accomplishing them ; but 

 we might gather from them a useful lesson ; for, in general, we 

 err by an opposite extreme. We build too slightly we do not 

 execute our improvements thoroughly we have little capital to 

 expend, without which, of course, no substantial improvements 

 can be effected ; and labor, with us, is with more difficulty ob 

 tained, with far more difficulty managed, and requires to be much 

 more highly paid than here. I hope I shall be pardoned for 

 adding, as my deliberate conviction, that we are too shy of in 

 vesting money in improvements of this nature, however secure, 

 because they do not yield so large a percentage as many other 

 investments somewhat more questionable in a moral view, and 

 vastly more so in respect to the security which they offer. 



There are circumstances in the condition of things here, which 

 certainly warrant a much more liberal expenditure in improve 

 ments than would be eligible with us. Here exist the right of 

 primogeniture and the law of entail, so that an estate remains in 

 the same family for centuries; and a man is comparatively sure 

 that the improvements which he makes will be enjoyed by his 

 children s children. Things are entirely different with us 

 houses in our cities are continually changing hands, and are 

 scarcely occupied by one life ; and in the country, even in staid 

 New England, few estates are in the hands of the third or fourth 

 generation in the direct line of descent. I shall not at all dis 

 cuss the comparative advantages, expediency, or propriety of one 

 or the other system. I leave those inferences to others rny 

 business is with the fact as it is ; and, like short leases, it has an 

 obvious tendency to hinder or discourage improvements of a 

 substantial and permanent character, involving a large expense. 



V. ENGLISH CAPITAL. 



Another marked distinction, already alluded to, between the 

 condition of the proprietors of the soil here and with us, is in 

 the amount of capital existing here. It is absolutely enormous, 

 and almost distances the system of enumeration which we are 



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