232 AMERICAN FARMS. 



The Belgian economist De Laveleye's opinion is, that 

 "in England, large farming and large properties have 

 killed this class of free and brave peasant proprietors, the 

 yeomen who won the battles of Poitiers, Crecy, and 

 Agincourt. . . . Never to be forgotten is Pliny's cry of 

 grief, which echoes like a warning note through economic 

 history. Overgrown estates ruined Italy and the prov- 

 inces. Large properties produce everywhere excessive 

 inequality, depopulation, class divisions, and decay. 

 Countries inhabited by peasant proprietors have with- 

 stood all these crises." If we compare country with 

 country, period with period, we will find that where the 

 land has been well divided among the people, other things 

 being equal, there prosperity will be the more generally 

 apparent. 



It is the Abbe St. Pierre's decision, that the infraction 

 of the Roman laws limiting the size of the Roman 

 citizen's estates to small dimensions, hastened rapidly 

 the ruin of the republic. 



All through the history of Greece we are impressed by 

 the idea, that, notwithstanding her growth towards per- 

 fection in literature, science, and politics, she carried 

 along with it the seeds of her own destruction. The 

 depravity of the masses resulted largely from, depriving 

 them of the reasonable use of the lands. The history 

 of the rise and progress, decay, and final downfall of 

 these old civilizations, showing that the general features 

 of each progressive stage were an index to the condition 

 and importance of the agricultural classes, and of the 

 manner in which the land was held by them, is of very 

 great practical interest to us. 



Dr. Bowen, an American authority of some note on 

 these matters, believes that " every farmer should own 



