SECRETARY'S REPORT. 



OOO 



fathers, hated " book farming," were slow to experiment, and 

 thought him a fool who did. They had got into the ruts, and 

 nothing could get them out, while they owned the land and 

 had their own way. 



Then came on the war, involving immense expenditures, 

 requiring large revenues and largely increased taxes, which 

 fell most heavily upon landed property. The question natu- 

 rally suggested itself whether it would not be better to sell 

 land and become a tenant farmer. With many it was answered 

 in the affirmative, from mere economy, with many others there 

 was no alternative. On the other hand, the large landed pro- 

 prietors, the moneyed aristocracy, stood ready to purcliase, and 

 hence the rapid consolidation of estates, the absorption of the 

 smaller in the larger, till the number of land-owners has 

 become comparatively .small, while in France the system of 

 minute subdivision has gone on multiplying the number of 

 land proprietors, without leaving in their hands a requisite 

 amount of working capital to make their lands productive. 

 Nothing has been more clearly shown in the progress of Eng- 

 lish agriculture, than tliat capital is as essential to the full 

 development of the productive resources of the soil, as to that 

 of any other art or business of life, and no doubt the great 

 want of capital among the smaller land-owners will explain the 

 backward condition of the agriculture of France. 



Prussia imitated the example of France, and broke up the 

 old r(^gime, the system of large landed estates, more than half 

 a century ago, by abolishing the system of serfdom, or peasant 

 tenantry, and opening the way for the purchase and ownership of 

 land among the peasant classes, for the purpose of instilling 

 into them an interest in the institutions of the country and 

 enabling the government to raise armies the more readily and 

 carry on the expensive wars in which the country was at that 

 time engaged. The war with Napoleon, and the first edict of 

 1807, began to loosen the bonds of serfdom, which was accom- 

 plished more completely in 1810, but not till 1821 did the last 

 vestige of this feudal serfdom disappear entirely. The people 

 have not, therefore, been sufficiently long emancipated to com- 

 prehend and enjoy the full extent of their rights. But the 

 government still keeps them in tutelage. An army of three 

 millions of government officials still holds the people in a kind 



