VIII 



ADDRESS. 



again, as affected by its division into small or large 

 estates. Whether the greatest amount of natural 

 products and of national prosperity can be obtained by 

 having few owners and large estates, or by having many 

 proprietors and small farms, is a question about which 

 writers on political and social science are not agreed. 

 Where the owners are few, and the estates large, the 

 accamulation of capital gives greater facilities for intro- 

 ducing all improvements in the mode of cultivation, 

 and so favors the highest degree of productiveness. But, 

 on the other hand, where the landholders are many and 

 the farms small, more land will be brought under culti- 

 vation, and so the aggregate production may be greater 

 than where a smaller portion of the soil is tilled in the 

 most approved methods, and brought to the highest 

 degree of fruitfulness. The question will be likely to 

 be decided by each one according to his preference of 

 an aristocratic or a democratic condition of society. 

 Large estates tend to great social inequality. Landed 

 proprietors are regarded as the superior class, the only 

 true citizens ;■ and the condition of the actual laborers 

 on the soil, if not that of slavery or serfdom, tends 

 strongly in that direction. Multiply the number of 

 proprietors of the soil, and you secure more intelligence 

 ancl independence in those who cultivate it, — a hardy, 

 virtuous, freedom-loving yeomanry, such as constitute 

 the best citizens of a free state. In England the 

 number of proprietors is less, compared with the extent 

 of land, than in any other country of Europe; and 

 England is the most aristocratic country in the world. 

 With an accumulation of wealth never equalled in the 

 history of the world, about one-tenth of its entire popu- 



