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Whether we have made corresponding progression in substantial agri¬ 
cultural improvements, rural economy, and good taste, will be the subject 
of our enquiry. Favored as we have been almost uniformly, with smooth 
inviting prairies, or with thinly timbered openings, presenting compara¬ 
tively no obstacles to rapid, as well as productive and profitable improve¬ 
ment, it is but reasonable after an occupation of ten, fifteen, and twenty 
years, by an industrious enterprising people, even though poor in worldly 
goods at the outset, to expect that they will have accomplished much in 
the line of substantial improvements, both useful and ornamental; that 
farms on every side, and especially in the older settlements, would wear 
the appearance of an early ripening maturity; presenting well cultivated 
and well arranged fields, evincing good tillage, and a systematic and 
proper rotation of crops; well planted and thrifty bearing orchards, neat 
and well arranged buildings surrounded by shade trees, and above all, 
good barns and graneries, completed even to the doors. Such is true, of 
now and then a farm, but alas what distances intervene between them ! 
It is a lamentable fact, but not the less true, that there is not, on an 
average, one real and true farmer, and one really well tilled farm to a 
township, taking the settled portions of the State throughout. 
If this assertion be true, and I think no well informed and observant 
person will doubt it, it becomes important to know from what cause or 
causes this condition of things has arisen. Just the opposite condition of 
things might have been expected, from a population as justly renowned 
for energy and enterprise as is ours ; and doubtless this opposite conditioa 
of things would have occurred had farming, in its legitimate and true 
sense, been made the real and sole business of the immigrant to the ex¬ 
clusion of other and foreign speculations ; unfortunately, however, the 
immigrant no sooner arrives in the country, than the low price of the 
land, the great beauty of the landscape, and the fertility of the soil, 
combined with the natural spirit of acquisition in man, prompts him to 
buy all, and often much more lands than he can pay for, thus depriving 
himself of all means of improvement, and practically reducing himself 
to poverty, at least for the time being. This, then, is too apt to be fol¬ 
lowed by a poverty of spirit, and an indolence and negligence of habit. 
But this inordinate desire for large landed possessions, often leads to other 
and kindred follies ; prominent among which is, a disposition to improve 
