AS AN ART IN NORTH AMERICA. 357 



after effect upon the land. I speak, it will be borne in 

 mind, in these remarks, of the newly settled parts of 

 North America ; and the more newly settled the more 

 closely will they apply. I would not be understood to 

 calumniate those longer cultivated districts in which — the 

 first stage of their agricultural history being past — new 

 life and energy are now being brought to bear upon the 

 culture of the land, and by which the errors of past 

 ignorance and want of skill may by-and-by be repaired, 

 or of those happier new districts which men of knowledge 

 and capital are redeeming from a state of nature, and at 

 once submitting to a rational system of culture, capable 

 of being carried on for an indefinite period without injury 

 to the land. 



Were the population as fond of their homes, and as 

 stationary in numbers, as in the central regions of north- 

 ern Europe — as quiescent in character, their labour as 

 small in money-value, and everywhere as abundant, and 

 their institutions as repressive of exuberant energy — this 

 primitive condition of the agricultural practice would be 

 both less felt among themselves, and be a matter of less 

 observation to foreign countries. As in Poland and 

 Russia, land which had become unproductive would be 

 abandoned to nature, and new land broken up year by 

 year. Thus supplies of food comparatively uniform 

 would be yearly reaped, sufficient not only to meet the 

 wants of the native population, but to pour a large annual 

 surplus into foreign markets, wherever a demand might 

 happen to exist. 



But all these things are different in North America. 

 The population increases rapidly, not only by natural 

 growth, but by the crowding in of immigrants from the 

 various countries of Europe ; and thus the mouths are 

 greatly multiplied which are to be filled by the native 

 produce of the land. Labour is comparatively dear, so 

 that new land cannot be cleared and brought into culti- 



