AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 327 



When Americans acquire a similar fondness for ag 

 riculture, the possession of land will be as eagerly 

 desired by them. I admit that such a passion has 

 sensibly increased within twenty years ; but our 

 country is too vast in size, our population too lim 

 ited in numbers, and the wealth of the community 

 too small, for the present century to realize any ap 

 proximation to the intensity with which it animates 

 the popular heart in Europe. 

 The Philadelphia Ledger says : 



&quot; It has been remarked, by political economists, that the 

 sum per acre at which landed property is found to sell in 

 nearly all countries, and for long periods, proves that men 

 are glad to purchase it at a price at which they know be 

 forehand it will yield them less than the ordinary rate of 

 interest. In this country, men who could, on bond and 

 mortgage, easily get. six or seven per cent, will be glad 

 rather to purchase the same lot of land, even though they 

 can hardly thus make five ; and in England, where ordinary 

 interest is five per cent., they will purchase land where it 

 will not yield more than three. 



&quot; Various have been the methods taken to account for this 

 well-established fact. Some have attributed it to the tend 

 ency of landed property slowly and steadily to rise in value 

 as population becomes more dense, or roads and schools 

 become better, and the arts and habits of civilization more 

 complete. This may in part account for it, especially as 

 money has a tendency to depreciate in value very noticeably 

 in a long period. But after making every calculable al 

 lowance for that, the whole of this tendency in man to 

 become possessed of land at a less remunerative price is 

 not fully accounted for. The superior supposed security of- 



