AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 63 



as a whole, beyond almost any precedent. I am not disposed, 

 in any offensive form, to profess my own preferences for insti 

 tutions to which birth and education may have strongly attached 

 me, founded as they are on the great principles of universal 

 liberty as the birthright of every man, and of social equality as 

 conformable to nature, and the only relation in which men can 

 stand to their Creator, or under which they would dare to ap 

 proach him. But, to my mind, it is obvious that no great im 

 provement can take place in the character and condition of the 

 laboring population while they remain a distinct and servile class, 

 without any power of rising above their condition. At present, 

 the most imaginative and sanguine see no probability of their 

 rising above their condition, of being any thing but laborers, or 

 of belonging to any other than a servile and dependent class. 

 The low state of their wages absolutely forbids the accumula 

 tion of any property. They cannot own any of the soil which 

 they cultivate. The houses which they occupy belong not to 

 themselves, and they may at any time be turned out of them. 

 They must ask leave to live, or they must take it by violence or 

 plunder when they will not be suffered to live. Their only 

 home is the grave. 



In a country where labor is superabundant, and the price of 

 land places it utterly beyond the reach of those who have no 

 means to purchase but from the scanty products of their own 

 manual labor, the condition of the laborer is that of absolute 

 dependence. In a condition of society where artificial ranks and 

 classes exist, and where all the wealth and all the power are in 

 the possession of the upper, or, as they are sometimes denom 

 inated, the favored classes, the barriers which hem in the lowest 

 class without property, without power, without education, 

 without even a home which they can call their own are, of 

 course, impassable. In a country where labor is scarce, where 

 land is cheap and free, and where the advantages of a good edu 

 cation are offered gratuitously to all, where no arbitrary distinc 

 tions of rank exist, and every man, by the force of his own talents 

 and character, may occupy that condition in society to which he 

 chooses to aspire, it is obvious how different is the situation of 

 the laboring portion. 



I believe it is impossible for a man who lives in a state of 

 entire dependence upon others to have the spirit of a man j and 



