WANT OF LOCAL ATTACHMENT. 163 



youthful days upon it. Speaking generally, every farm 

 from Eastport in Maine, to Buffalo on Lake Erie, is for 

 sale. The owner has already fixed a price in his mind 

 for which he would be willing, and even hopes to sell, 

 believing that, with the same money, he could do better 

 for himself and his family by going still farther west. 

 Thus, to lay out money in improvements is actually to 

 bury what he does not hope to be able to get out of his 

 land again, when the opportunity for selling presents itself. 



With us the mode of looking at improvement questions 

 is diiferent. A proprietor says, this is my own residence; 

 I will make it as comfortable as I can — as valuable as I 

 can — improve it as much as my means will allow — make 

 it equal, if possible, to the best land of my neighbours. 

 If I should spend a good deal of money upon it, I am 

 depositing it in a sure bank, if I go prudently and skil- 

 fully to work ; and my children, at all events, will reap 

 the benefit. 



Or, if he is a tenant holding the land on a lease for so 

 many years certain, he balances the cost of drainage 

 against the increase of produce, and the diminution of 

 expense in working his land, taken together, during the 

 term for w^hich the holding is secured to him ; and he 

 drains, or the contrary, as this balance proves encou- 

 raging or otherwise. The owner in New York, who also 

 farms his land, should consider the question of improve- 

 ment as the English or Scottish leaseholder does, were 

 it not that he is in reality a less fixed being than the 

 tenant-farmers are in our island. I do not know whether 

 we^ ought to consider that the moral force which origin- 

 ally projected them or their fathers from Europe is still 

 partially unexpended, and thus tends, at any unwary 

 moment, to bear them still farther off; or whether, as 

 some think, the climate of North America creates in the 

 Anglo-Saxon race a nervous restlessness which conti- 

 nually incites to change ; — but certainly " forwards," in a 



