220 EVIL EFFECTS OF LAND-JOBBING. 



and the blackened stumps, and the occasional fellings 

 and burnings, told of our approach to the limits of com- 

 plete settlement — to the wilderness lands, over which the 

 living tide of redundant European energy is so rapidly- 

 diffusing itself. 



Along the line of this great thoroughfare in the State 

 of New York, comparatively few emigrants now linger. 

 Farmers, with capital to stock a good farm at home, 

 occasionally find eligible farms to buy, upon which they 

 can comfortably settle, and bring up their families with- 

 out fear of rent-days or shifting corn-laws. But the 

 mass of movers, who are men of comparatively small 

 means, pass on without inquiring whether or not the 

 State of New York has still any suitable land to sell. 



It may at first sight be considered as a remarkable 

 circumstance, indeed, that, in a country so large and so 

 new as the State of New York, containing 46,200 

 square miles, only 350,000 acres were public property 

 at the beginning of 1849. Of these only 25,000 be- 

 longed to the State, 11,000 to the Literature Fund, and 

 314,000 to the School Fund. But a little inquiry soon 

 shows that when people are flocking in from foreign 

 countries, and lands are for sale at a fixed price, land- 

 speculators will spring up, in whose hands large tracts 

 will accumulate, to be held till a rise in price enables the 

 first purchasers to sell with a profit. It is by land-job- 

 bing, in fact, that the largest fortunes have been made 

 in most of the States. Though this land-jobbing has 

 made it the interest of individuals to use all efforts to 

 turn the tide of emigration in particular directions, and 

 has thus at first more rapidly increased the population 

 of the new States, it has undoubtedly, in the end, the 

 effect of retarding the settlement of a country and the 

 development of its natural resources ; and it is one of 

 the internal evils under which our own North American 

 colonies are now to a considerable extent suffering. 



