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I doubt not they will discover in the cheap and luxuriant 

 grazing lands of Texas, the source of our profitable production 

 of beef, and in the fertile valleys of Illinois and Iowa and 

 Indiana, the profitable grain fields from which our own people 

 and theirs are fed. But I would have them study also our 

 tenure of land, and learn the " great advantage" of a " con- 

 siderable number of small proprietors" over that system of 

 land-holding which in their own country is generally declared 

 to be a failure. This system I have already described, and I 

 repeat that it should be called among the various systems now 

 recognized and discussed, the citizen-proprietorship of the soil. 

 The question of the capacity of this system to support a 

 great moral population on American soil is the American Proh- 

 lem, to which I have already referred. That it encourages and 

 fosters a spirit of freedom, and is managed by an intelligent 

 and ambitious body of citizens, and is promotive of social and 

 domestic peace and happiness, two centuries and a half of 

 colonial and national life have satisfactorily demonstrated. 

 That it supported an industrious and hardy and educated peo- 

 ple in the early days of our republic, before other industries 

 had been established here, is well known. The question now 

 is — Will it continue to prosper under the increased demands of 

 our own day, and enable the land-owner and cultivator to meet 

 the demands made on him by the public and private wants 

 incident to American civilization ? Tenant-farming in England 

 has failed, the peasant proprietorship of France offers no temp- 

 tations to us ; will our own system continue to prosper, and 

 amidst all obstacles be accepted as the successful agricultural 

 system of the world — a system supporting not a peasantry but 

 a body of citizens enjoying all the rights and privileges which 

 free citizenship can bestow ? I am aware of the discouragement 



