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a humid climate to a dry one, but I made two blades of grass grow where 
none had grown before, and yet for this I was about to be mulcted in a 
penalty of some thousands of dollars for the liberty I had taken to man.- 
age the land hired according to my judgment; and to this sort of policy 
almost all the land owners of England are committed; the life estate or 
income being merely theirs, improvement or ultimate increase of value is 
not contemplated ; hence drainage, requiring present outlay, was above 
alf other improvements neglected or objected to by them, so far at least 
as the expense of doing so was incumbent upon them. Tenants there 
were who, upon long leases, such as twenty-one years, expended large 
sums in draining, and there were owners too, who co-operated with 
their tenants in the prosecution of so valuable a project ; and among 
many Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, (whose son is now Earl of Leicester,) is 
among the honorable exceptions who practised the old English jovial 
toast, at the dinners of agriculturists, of “Live and let live,” and this 
gentleman by his wise liberality converted, in connection with a spirited 
tenant, a barren waste into a fruitful field, and by so doing increased his 
income twenty fold. But I should weary your readers, as well as your¬ 
self, were I to recite the instances of good and bad management of the 
owners of land in England, our subject is drainage, though my remarks 
will not be found out of place when I state to you the trouble this 
drainage question has caused. The mere life interest of many a pinched 
land owner would not allow him to exercise his judgment, the adage 
“ ’tis mine to day and may be his to-morrow” operated to such an extent 
that no land owner under this system of primogeniture would lay out 
any money for his successors; and as draining did not pay the first or 
second year’s tenant and land owners, each felt himself insecure, and 
so draining was neglected altogether, although examples were abun¬ 
dant of its necessity as well as of its profit. The abolition of the corn 
laws, however, procured for the nobility of England and its land owners 
an act of parliament loaning money by the government of the country, 
at a low per centage, to land owners, for the purpose of draining their 
lands, and that this is and should appear and be chargeable upon the 
present as well as upon the future proprietors, and thus much of the land 
of England, hitherto lost and valueless, has been restored and made pro¬ 
ductive. The whole amount, four mills, granted by the government of 
the country, has been taken up and laid out in solid improvements and 
