10 



slate of agriculture, consequent upon a dense population and 

 enhanced price of land, may not be Ipst in another on this 

 same account; for land, cheap land^.is^a j,;great conservative 

 element ; and when a farm is within 5th^^rea(|h and the means of 

 every man who wishes to obtain onef.ths>, jasfilutions of society 



;■ V- 4 ■ 



run little risk of disturbance or ol^erthj'bw.V).-- This cheap land too 

 is a great element of national power an4iigreatness. The growth 

 and increase of the United States may in no small degree be 

 attributed to the great amount of Public Lands of the most 

 fertile character for sale in such quantities as may be desired, and 

 at such a price that every man who is industrious and prudent can 

 buy to a reasonable extent Under this combined attraction of 

 its cheapness and fertility, a great tide of population, a tide tliat 

 knows no reflux, but that is constantly swelling higher and higher 

 by the inpouring of the streams oT foreign immigration, is 

 constantly rolling forward and over the unoccupied portions of 

 the country. At first the crests of its foaming waves are seen 

 in the solitary clearing, with its log-cabin, and the trunks of the 

 trees blackened by the fires, scattered at long intervals through 

 what is yet a wilderness. Presently these plearings increase in 

 number, the forests disappear before them, and soon smiling 

 towns and villages attest its presence with overwhelming 

 powder ; the solitude and silence of the prairie becomes broken 

 by the presence of man, by the sounds of human labor and the 

 lowing of herds and flocks ; and the vast savannas, where but 

 now the horizon alone bounded the view of waving wild-grass, 

 becomes covered with the rich crops of a varied agriculture, and 

 the abode of man and the home of civilization is found where but 

 before the prairie wolf roamed, and the wild deer made its lair ; 

 towns and cities appear — forests and wilderness are gone. 



In a country of a hmited extent in comparison with its 

 population, lands, whatever may be the tenure by which they are 

 held, necessarily in time become much subdivided, and by this 

 subdivision, the character of its agriculture will be sensibly 

 aflected. Small fields will be made by thorough tillage, to yield 



