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lecture-room, they erected for their mental culture, the church 

 for their moral and religious elevation. They founded a sys- 

 tem of state and society here which required of them and 

 requires of us, also, a liberal expenditure both for public and 

 private necessities and luxuries. In a community founded as 

 they founded theirs, taxes must necessarily be somewhat 

 heavy ; personal expenses must be somewhat large ; the 

 adornments of home must be provided for ; the public enter- 

 tainments will be enjoyed ; the children must be well clad, 

 provided with books, and supplied with a good education. And 

 this is the American system of land-holding, with all its 

 duties, privileges and opportunities — a system which the states- 

 men of the Old World study with profound interest and great 

 care. It may be attended by a great deal of careless and 

 unprofitable and unskilful farming, as every other system is, 



but it produces great results, and is the foundation of great 

 public and private prosperity. 



Our attention is often called to an analogous system of land- 

 holding established in France by the Code Napoleon more 

 than three-quarters of a century ago. But engrafted as this 

 system has been on a people unused to it and ignorant of its 

 effect upon the political economy of the State, it has not 

 secured those popular advantages which, in our own country, 

 led the eminent French philosopher, De Tocqueville, to at- 

 tribute to it the stability and vital force of our institutions — a 

 lesson learned here and not in France. In accurate and 

 economical farming we may perhaps learn a lesson from 

 France. In her area of 207,480 square miles, not larger than 

 the largest State in the Union, her wheat crop is equal to our 

 own. Her production of local and staple crops is enormous. 

 Her cattle and horses almost reach our number, and her sheep 



