104 



ACCUMULATIONS OF LAND. 



be able to give it a scientific solution with the means of 

 information at present within my reach, I think I can in- 

 dicate the direction in which such a solution is to be- 

 found, by those who may choose to go in quest of it. 



I have already stated that nine-tenths of the land m 

 owned by non-resident proprietors. That involves the ne- 

 cessity of trusting its culture to agents. The agency for an 

 estate of two hundred acres, costs on an average, not less 

 than for one of a thousand acres, and the larger the estate, 

 therefore, the less the relative expense of its agencies. 



Again, it would not be worth while for a non-resident to 

 keep up the supervision of a moderate sized farm, three 

 thousand miles from home. Nothing less than the profits 

 of a very large estate, could compensate him for the trouble 

 and pexense of keeping up a force of attornies, agents and 

 book-keepers, and for the absence of that personal devotion 

 to its management, which none but a proprietor ever feels. 



To these and other circumstances, which it is not mate- 

 ial now to enumerate, may be attributed the tendency 

 which has been active here since the settlement of the is- 

 land by the English, to accumulate real estate in the hands 

 of large proprietors, and to exterminate from the soil, all 

 men of small capital. Till recently, such a thing was never 

 known as a small farm of fifty or a hundred acres to be 

 put under culture for profit. A place of this description 

 would be called a pen here, which is the name by which they 



