CONCLUSION. 271 



as a field for the investment and employment of 

 capital, its promotion of human skill and invention, 

 its contribution to the employment and the happi- 

 ness of the greatest number, than all the mere phys- 

 ical improvements that could be enumerated or de- 

 tailed, were every " Clay Farm " in merry England 

 to supply its " Chronicle."* 



* This severe and richly merited rebuke to the landed 

 system of Britain will not only impress its entire justice upon 

 the American mind, but cause it to swell in thankfulness to 

 the superior wisdom of the founders of our American institu- 

 tions, who have placed the landed system of this country 

 so far in advance of that which exists in Great Britain ; and 

 which she must inevitably, in time, abandon, although most 

 reluctantly it may be done, to the adoption, as near as cir- 

 cumstances will admit, of a system akin to our own. Grasp- 

 ing, illiberal, and overbearing as the British system is, yet it 

 has been guided by an enlightened policy in developing the 

 highest resources of the soil by the aid of vast capital ex- 

 pended in its improvement and cultivation. Restricted within 

 narrow limits, a teeming population has demanded the utmost 

 stretch of human ingenuity and invention to aid in the pro- 

 duction of life-sustaining elements within their own territory ; 

 and in this a sagacious and powerful state policy has illus- 

 trated its wisdom. On the contrary, an almost boundless 

 stretch of fertile territory, free to enterprise and capital, 

 almost as the light of heaven, with no restrictions to its 

 alienation, and no immediate incentive to its monopoly, the- 



