76 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



enter so fully into the condition of the rural population in Eng 

 land, when we have nothing which bears a resemblance to it in 

 the United States. This latter is one of the very reasons why 

 I do it; but I hope that others will present themselves, upon 

 reflection, which will at least excuse, if not justify me. I may 

 as well give some of those reasons in this place ; then, perhaps, 

 I may be heard with more patience. 



I have promised my friends here, and in the United States, 

 that they shall have my honest impressions of whatever comes 

 under my observation connected with agricultural and rural 

 affairs, and the condition of the rural population. In the next 

 place, I see in the list of my subscribers the names of many, who 

 will take a much stronger interest in such views, than in details 

 of crops, accounts of live stock, and the practical operations of 

 husbandry, which I shall go into at large in the course of my 

 reports j certainly I am bound to consult, in some measure, their 

 tastes. In the next place, we shall find in the management of 

 small farms arid small allotments, examples of successful culti 

 vation, which cannot be without their use and application to 

 farming on a much more extended scale. Lastly, I cannot think 

 it will be without its use to compare the condition of a laborer, 

 where to him land, under the present condition of things, is unat 

 tainable, and labor superabundant, with a condition of labor 

 where, as in the free states, every industrious man can have land 

 of the most fertile and productive character almost at his pleasure, 

 and where the price of land places it within reach of his labor ; 

 where every man may have his home, and sit down quietly 

 without the apprehension of removal ; where it is not a necessary 

 study with him how often he may have meat, or how many 

 days in the week he may have bread but where, with industry, 

 sobriety, and frugality, he may always have more meat and more 

 bread than he requires, and something for the poor and the 

 stranger. 



I shall take the liberty here of inserting an account, sent me 

 by a kind friend, of the working of the allotment system in a 

 village within his neighborhood I believe in Lincolnshire. It 

 is an interesting and instructive account. His opinions respect 

 ing the size of farms must rest upon his own responsibility. I 

 neither endorse nor deny them. On the subject of the size of 

 farms I shall speak at large when my views have become matured 

 by further observation. 



