from June 28. to August 16. 1840. 295 



The banks of the Seine differ from those of any river in 

 Britain in exhibiting no large or full-grown trees. There are 

 only two or three spots between Havre and Thomery where 



of landed property seem to be beyond any other. There is something healthful 

 to the human mind in the possession of a portion of the earth. Property of 

 other kinds is easily squandered or dissipated, and never can give rise to those 

 feelings of attachment which spring up in the minds even of the lowest of man- 

 kind with the acquisition of property in land. The incessant labour which it 

 requires ; the habits of solitude or of domestic society to which it gives rise ; 

 the permanence of the object itself; all tend to introduce habits of foresight 

 and attention, and to check that propensity to present indulgence from which 

 so much misery arises to the lower orders. And in so doing it promotes, 

 more than any other species of propert}', the growth of those dispositions and 

 habits which restrain the operation of the principle of population. 



" The great difference between the effects of property in land and in money 

 upon the human character, consists in the superior facility of dissipation which 

 the latter possesses. The proprietor of a field cannot convert it into money, 

 or render it the means of indulging individual gratification, without disposing 

 of it to a purchaser, or burdening it with debt. But either of these is a great 

 and decisive step, sometimes drawing after it a change of residence, an alter- 

 ation of employment, and probably the sacrifice of habits and feelings of attach- 

 ment. Men pause before they take so serious a step, or indulge in the habits 

 likely to render it necessary. But the case is totally different with the possessor 

 of a sum of money : it melts away insensibly with the indulgence of tastes for 

 dissipation, and can be entirely spent without involving a change of home, a 

 sacrifice of affection, or alteration of employment. Every person must have 

 felt himself, or witnessed in others, the great difference between the facility with 

 which an individual in the higher ranks draws on a bank or spends money in 

 his possession, and disposes of his estate, or sells out of the funds ; and hence 

 the importance which the friends of every man of improvident habits attach 

 to getting part of his professional earnings invested in land, or a house, or some 

 other permanent object. The same principles operate with still greater force 

 upon the poor, in whom habits of foresight are much slighter, and the desire 

 of momentary gratification much stronger, than in their superiors ; and hence 

 the value of encouraging these habits, and counterbalancing these desires,by the 

 strong ieeling of attachment to home and landed property which is equally 

 powerful in all mankind." 



On the latter paragraph we find the following judicious observations in the 

 Quarterly Journal of Agriculture : — " The great national evils, therefore, re- 

 sulting from a manufacturing state will be found to originate in the carelessness, 

 recklessness, and profligacy which it is invariably apt to engender, and which 

 naturally arises from an unnatural concourse of persons, and the contagious 

 nature of vice among the poor. Manufacturing labourers thus often grow up 

 without any settled habits or permanent objects, squandering their earnings in 

 prosperity, and suffering in periods of adversity all the miseries of improvi- 

 dence. The only cure for this malady of the mind is the creation of something 

 to make it luorth while to resist present indulgence; and none seems equal in 

 efficacy to the prospect or the power of obtaining property in land. It is con- 

 fessedly nearly impossible to prevent the bad effects resulting from the varied 

 intercourse and crowded population of commercial cities ; but much may be 

 done and has been done, as in Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Flanders, and Swit- 

 zerland, where manufactures are established in the country, by distributing 

 small portions of land, and exciting the desire of purchasing them among the 

 labouring poor, to a degree that may increase their activity and industry in 

 their several employments, and render them at the same time more virtuous, 

 orderly, and provident." (Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, December, 1840.) 



