120 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



ing to obtain a farm. He who is looking exclu 

 sively for upland and meadow, all ready for the 

 plough or scythe, will be startled should he be told 

 that he can do better by buying a swamp. The 

 reader himself will probably be staggered by the 

 proposition. It is a new one, truly, but will justify 

 examination and analysis. 



More than fifty years ago, Mr. Ricardo communi 

 cated to the world his discovery of how men came 

 to pay rent, and others to exact it. His work was 

 accepted by political economists as a text-book ; 

 his views were assented to without dispute ; and 

 for forty years no one ventured to doubt their 

 correctness. His theory was a very simple one. 

 He laid it down as law, that in the commencement 

 of cultivation, when population is small and land 

 abundant, the best soils, such as yield the largest 

 returns, are the on!} 7 &quot; ones cultivated ; that as 

 population increases, land becomes less abundant, 

 creating a necessity for cultivating a less pro 

 ductive quality, when, as population again in 

 creases, resort is had to still more inferior land, 

 then to a third, and afterward to a fourth class of 

 soils. 



These propositions, with the theories established 

 on them, were for many years accepted throughout 

 Europe, as well as in this country, as undeniable. 

 But our distinguished political economist, Mr. Henry 

 C. Carey, in his &quot; Past, Present, and Future,&quot; pub 

 lished in 1848, has demonstrated their entire falsity. 

 The foundation thus knocked away, the fabric of 

 theory which Ricardo had reared upon it fell to the 



