CONCLUSION. 263 



grown and created result of the Legislation, and 

 Custom with the force of legislation, that have made 

 him what he is, and invested him with a step-mother 

 relation to the soil. By the Law of Primogeniture 

 applied to Land alone of all other kinds of property 

 and capital, you have set on foot in this country 

 a system which has nearly reached its climax 

 in the amassing and aggregation of land into the 

 hands of few and large owners.* The ancient 

 yeoman, the owner of his own farm, is becoming or 

 become an extinct genus animalium. By the enor- 

 mous and factitious costliness, delay, and difficulty 

 attending the Transfer of land, increasing in an 

 inverse ratio with the acreage, (for the relative 

 cost of "title" to an acre is beyond all comparison 

 with that of a hundred, and of a hundred in like 

 manner with a thousand,) you have secretly clenched 

 and fortified the process which entail and primogen- 

 iture had openly avowed and established; and 

 rendered it impossible, on the common principles 

 of prudence or economy, for any one to buy land 

 (except for building) otherwise than in large, and 

 increasingly larger quantities. The tendency is 

 not stationary; it is still going on. The man of 



* Happily, this bitter truth has no application to the Uni- 

 ted States. -ED. 



