FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 113 



for the welfare of society that the land should be 

 cultivated by an independent yeomanry, who own the 

 soil they till, we mean only that this should be the 

 general state or condition of things; not that there 

 should be no such thing as a wealthy proprietor, whose 

 lands in whole or in part are cultivated by a tenant, no 

 such thing as a prudent husbandman taking a farm on 

 a lease, or an industrious young man, without any 

 capital but his hands, laboring in the employment of 

 his neighbor. These are parts of the system as it 

 exists among us; and we maintain that it is a better 

 system than the division of the country into a few vast 

 domains, cultivated by a dependent tenantry, to the 

 almost total exclusion of the class of small, independ- 

 ent farmers. 



Am I asked, why it is better? This is a question not 

 easy to bring down to a dry argument. It involves 

 political and moral considerations; it trenches upon 

 the province of the feelings; it concerns the whole 

 character of a people. In a pecuniary point of view it 

 is, of course, not maintained, that, because it is desir- 

 able that the cultivator of the soil should own a farm, 

 it is therefore expedient in all cases that he should 

 attempt to purchase one. It cannot be assumed, as a 

 general rule, that it is better for a young man to buy a 

 farm than to hire one, supposing him to have no more 

 capital than is necessary to stock his farm and pur- 

 chase implements of husbandry. But supposing that 

 he is so circumstanced, that, besides stocking his farm, 

 he can do something towards purchasing it at the out- 

 set, with a reasonable expectation that in the course of 

 time, with industry and frugality and temperance, he 

 can make it his own, then it is better that he should 

 purchase than hire. The owner makes improvements 

 with zeal and spirit, for he makes them in the assur- 

 ance that he or his children will reap the benefit of 

 them; and every new improvement furnishes a new 

 stimulus to those efforts which are necessary to pay off 



