TENURE OF LANDS. 15 



the fact ? If, for instance, we could take two children of equal 

 natural capacities and place them upon different estates even in 

 the same neighboriiood, the one to grow up upon a hard, cold 

 and exhausted farm, where every thing is managed stingily 

 and without regard to comfort ; the other to be reared upon a 

 generous soil, with pleasant surroundings of scenery and taste 

 and culture, who can doubt that those two children would 

 grow up into men almost as different as the estates upon which 

 they have learned their business of farming. 



I make these familiar illustrations and common place 

 remarks because of their application to men in the broader 

 relations of states and communities. The character and con- 

 dition of the fixed and stable portions of a population is felt 

 upon every part of it. And it is for this reason that whatever 

 affects agriculture as a pursuit, and tends to fix upon the men 

 employed in it any peculiarity of character, stamps its impress 

 upon the institutions of the State itself. The farmer in that 

 way becomes the type and representative of the community in 

 which he lives. The importance of this truth will at once 

 present itself when it is remembered that while in our own 

 country the men engaged in this pursuit outnumber those of 

 any other class in every State, in some of the States they con- 

 siderably exceed the aggregate of all other occupations. 



If the men who till the soil are intelligent, frugal and indus- 

 trious, and especially if the acres which they till they may call 

 their own, it can hardly fail to give a tone of freedom to 

 thought and an independence to spirit which we should look for 

 in vain in a nation of tenants who hold their lands at the beck 

 of a few old and lordly proprietors. Every school boy knows 

 that the age of true Roman virtue and valor was when 

 Cincinnatus was found at his plough, where he was named 

 dictator, and returned again to the cultivation of his little farm, 

 by his own hand, the moment he had at the head of his legions 

 achieved a triumph over the public enemy. He knows too 

 that, though mistress of the world, the empire had imbibed the 

 fatal elements of weakness and dissolution in that policy which, 

 among other evils, secured to the Patrician families large 

 domains out of conquered provinces to be cultivated and carried 

 on by the labor of slaves. 



