248 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Yet England ha.« been =o impressed with the importance of improving 

 the condition of the people, of increasing the wealth of the nation, of 

 enricliing both tenant and landloid, by draining the land, that the history 

 of her legislation, in aid of such operations, affords a lesson of progress 

 even to fast Young America. Powers have been granted, by which 

 encumbered estates may be charged with the expenses of drainage, so 

 that remainder-men and reversioners, without their consent, shall be 

 compelled to contribute to present improvements ; so that careless or 

 obstinate adjacent proprietors shall be compelled to keep open their 

 ditches for outfalls to their neighbors' drains; so that mill-dams, and 

 other obstructions to the natural flow of the water, may be removed for the 

 benefit of agriculture ; and, finally, the government has itself furnished 

 funds, by way of loans, of millions of pounds, in aid of improvements of 

 this character. 



In America, whore private indi\idual right is usually compelled to 

 yield to the good of the whole, and where selfishness and obstinacy do 

 not long stand in the ])athway of progress, obstructing manifest improve- 

 ment in the condition of the people, we are yet far behind England in 

 legal facilities for jjromoting the improvement of land culture. This is 

 because the attention of the public has not been particularly called to 

 the subject. 



Manufacturing corporations are created by special acts of legislation* 

 In many States, rights to flow, and ruin, by inundation, most valuable 

 lands along the course of rivers, and by the banks of ponds and lakes, 

 to aid the water-power of mills, are granted to companies, and the land- 

 owner is compelled to part with his meadows for such compensation as 

 a committee or jury shall assess. 



In almost every town in New England there are hundreds, and often 

 thousands of acres of lands, that might be most productive to the 

 farmer, overflowed half the year with water, to drive some old saw- 

 mill, or grist-mill, or cotton-mill, Avhich has not made a dividend, or paid 

 expenses, for a quarter of a century. The whole water-power, which, 

 perhaps, ruins for cultivation a thousand acres of fertile land, and 

 divides and breaks up farms, by creating little creeks and swamps 

 throughout all the neighboring valleys, is not worth, and would not be 

 assessed, by impartial men, at one thousand dollars. Yet, though there 

 is power to take the farmer's land for the benefit of manufacturers, 

 there is no power to take down the comjiany's dam for the benefit of 

 agriculture. An old saw-mill, which can only run a few days in a 

 Spring freshet, often swamps a half-township of land, because some- 

 body's great-grandfather had a prescriptive right to flow, when lauds 

 were of no value, and saw-mills were a public blessing. 



