36 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



cratic or democratic condition of society. Large estates tend 

 to great social inequality. 



Landed proprietors are regarded as the superior class — the 

 only true citizens : and the condition of the actual laborers on 

 the soil, if not that of slavery or serfdom, tends strongly in 

 that direction. Multiply the number of proprietors of the soil, 

 and you secure more intelligence and independence in those 

 who cultivate it — a hardy, virtuous, freedom-loving yeomanry, 

 such as constitute the best citizens of a free State. In England 

 the number of proprietors is less, compared with the extent of 

 land, than in any other country of Europe ; and England is 

 the most aristocratic country in the world. With an accumula- 

 tion of wealth never equalled in the history of the world, 

 about one-tenth of its entire population are paupers — that is, 

 they receive eleemosynary aid from the public purse. Much of 

 this pauperism may be attributed to the intemperate and 

 improvident habits of the poorer classes ; but they would be 

 much more likely to be temperate and provident, if they were 

 owners of an amount of land sufficient, with temperance, 

 prudence, and industry, to support a family in comfort, and 

 gradually to raise them to a higher social position. Besides, in 

 the vast estates of the nobles, large tracts of land are wholly 

 unproductive, devoted to parks for game, and other aristocratic 

 uses. 



In Ireland, the evils of tliis overgrown ownership of land, 

 aggravated by the privilege of entail and the abuse of non- 

 residence, had become intolerable ; and the government was 

 obliged to provide a remedy, by an Act of Parliament, requiring 

 the sale and division of encumbered estates. Since that Act was 

 passed, less than fifteen years ago, about one hundred and fifty 

 million dollars' worth of property has changed hands. And it 

 is a significant fact, that within these limits of time, the 

 number of children in the national schools has increased by 

 more than half a million, althougli the population has been 

 reduced by emigration during the same j>eriod, fully two 

 million five luindred thousand. To express the change in the 

 form of a })roportion, the attendance in the schools has increased 

 two hundred eighty-five per cent., (from two hundred eighty- 

 two thousand in 1848, to eight hundred four thousand in 1861,) 

 while the population has diminished thirty per cent., (from 



