CONCLUSION. 237 



stance and position of those whose interests it was his 

 duty to study and understand, shall be stated, with 

 such reflection as most suggests itself to one who, 

 while his spare shelves were filling with ( Agricultural 

 journals,' and the works of Tull, Mills, Liebig, Johns- 

 ton, and others ' of that ilk,' still kept an eye upon 

 his Law-books. 



The evil of retarded and discouraged investment in 

 the soil lies deep, and dates far back. It is not the 

 fault of the Farmer : he is the subject, the time-grown 

 and created result of the Legislation, and Custom with 

 the force of legislation, that have made him what he 

 is, and invested him with a stepmother relation to 

 the soil. By the Law of primogeniture applied to 

 Land alone of all other kinds of property and capital, 

 you have set on foot in this country a system which 

 has nearly reached its climax in the amassing and ag- 

 gregation of land into the hands of few and large own- 

 ers. The ancient yeoman, the owner of his own farm, 

 is becoming or become an extinct genus animalium. 

 By the enormous and factitious costliness, delay, and 

 difficulty attending the Transfer of land, increasing in 

 an inverse ratio with the acreage (for the relative cost 

 of * title ' to an acre is beyond all comparison greater 

 than that of a hundred, and of a hundred in like man- 



