Ch. ii. in Sweden. 291 



be observed however, in general, that there is no 

 check more fatal to improving cultivation than any 

 difficulty in the vent of its produce, which pre- 

 vents the farmer from being able to obtain in good 

 years a price for his corn not much below the 

 general average. 



But what perhaps has contributed more than 

 any other cause to the increasing population of 

 Sweden is the abolition of a law in 1748, which 

 limited the number of persons to each henman or 

 farm.* The object of this law appears to have 

 been, to force the children of the proprietors to 

 undertake the clearing and cultivation of fresh 

 lands, by which it was thought that the whole 

 country would be sooner improved. But it ap- 

 pears from experience that these children, being 

 without sufficient funds for such undertakings, 

 were obliged to seek their fortune in some other 

 way ; and great numbers, in consequence, are 

 said to have emigrated. A father may now, how- 

 ever, not only divide his landed property into as 

 many shares as he thinks proper, but these divi- 

 sions are particularly recommended by the govern- 

 ment; and considering the immense size of the 

 Swedish henmans, and the impossibility of their 

 being cultivated completely by one family, such 

 divisions must in every point of view be highly 

 useful. 



The population of Sweden in 1751 was 



* Memoiree tin Royaume de Sufedej ch. vi. p> 177. 

 u 2 



