MR. braman's address, 17 



expected from those whose interest in the soil will be termi- 

 nated ill a comparatively short period. Unless the proprietors 

 themselves embark in these extensive schemes of improve- 

 ment, they will not be undertaken. But there are too many 

 whose taste inclines them in a different direction, and they ex- 

 pend in luxuries, and equipage, and the fine arts and splendid 

 architecture, that revenue which might receive a vastly more 

 useful application in adding to the productiveness of their land- 

 ed possessions. The landlords of Ireland desert their estates, 

 and they are found rioting in the indulgences of the splendid 

 capitals of Europe. Foreign artists and tradesmen and ser- 

 vants receive the profits of that expenditure which might add 

 a deeper hue to the green fields of their own country, and 

 make unhappy Ireland a paradise of humanity, as it is now a 

 paradise of nature. It must be conceded that in England and 

 Scotland, within later periods, the great landholders are turn- 

 ing their attention in this direction ; and their vast and splen- 

 did schemes of improvements are on a scale commensurate 

 with the extent of their possessions, and worthy of the grandeur 

 of the renowned empire which they inhabit. But it is an illustra- 

 tion of the truth of the general proposition, that agriculture can 

 only make its highest advances from the efforts of those in whom 

 ownership and immediate occupancy are united. Long leases, 

 it is true, furnish some encouragement to the tenants for par- 

 tial efforts to increase the permanent fertility of the soil ; and 

 they might be extended through so long a period, and embrace 

 so many generations as to amount in the effects to independent 

 ownership. But such leases as proprietors would be willing to 

 grant, are not long enough to produce any such beneficial re- 

 sults. De Tocqueville says that one of the effects of democrat- 

 ic institutions is to shorten the term of leases ; and he give a 

 profound and apparently just reason for it, that in "ages ol 

 equality the prevailing notion is that nothing abides, and man 

 is haunted by the thought of mutability, and that under this 

 impression not only the landlords, but tenants, are averse to 

 protracted terms of obligation, they are afraid of being tied up 

 to-morrow by the contract which benefits them to-day." Now 

 the spirit of democracy, in its large and true sense is constant- 

 3 



