SIZE OF FARMS. AND DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 381 



it broke up these restrictive laws, and in general left property ill 

 land to follow the usual course of other property ; and, above all. 

 made it universally attainable. 



In the United States, where land is abundant, and where 

 countless millions of acres must remain for countless years unoc 

 cupied, laws restraining the monopoly of land are far less neces 

 sary ; but even in the United States they should have a care to 

 guard against the perpetual appropriation of land for any objects 

 whatever, whether under the plea of pious or of moral uses, as in 

 fact a direct violation of the rights of every generation to judge 

 for itself, and to judge only for itself, what shall or shall not be 

 maintained ; and secondly, as conferring a power which experi 

 ence shows is liable to gross and injurious abuses. 



A principal objection urged against this subdivision of land is, 

 that it prevents any system of extensive improvement of the soil 

 by the great processes of modern discovery, draining and sub- 

 soiling. This argument has some force j but we may hope that 

 in many cases the owners, seeing their own interests clearly con 

 cerned in such improvements, may combine their forces to effect 

 them. In many of these small holdings, likewise, the cultivation 

 being by the spade, and not by the plough, the land will be 

 trenched as a substitute for subsoiling, and an equal productive 

 ness secured. Where such improvements are obviously demanded, 

 and they might be too great for individual effort to accomplish, 

 there seems no reason why the government itself should not 

 undertake them, assessing the expense upon the different owners 

 of the land in such forms as would be equitable, and made 

 payable at such periods as would render its discharge easily 

 practicable. 



It is objected likewise that these small farmers having no 

 capital to apply in the cultivation of their lands, and being of a 

 class not likely to be acquainted with modern improvements in 

 husbandry, their agriculture will probably be of an inferior char 

 acter. These objections must be allowed some weight ; but then 

 the holders of these small parcels are acting under the most 

 powerful of all stimulants that of their own immediate self-inter 

 est. They themselves being the owners of the soil, whatever 

 improvements it receives, and whatever crops it produces, must 

 accrue directly to their own benefit. The holding being small, 

 it becomes the more important that it should be forced to the 



