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long leases—lasting, perhaps, several generations—are altogether sufficient; it is not at all necessary that the property-right in the soil should be granted by the National Government. There are two dangers of a most serious kind connected with this right. It implies that the private land may be sold, mortgaged, and encumbered, and, as we have seen would thereby bring into existence the system of private capitalism. And when it is sold, where is the argument of our opponents? where the benefit to the human heart, and where the improvement of the soil? The second danger is that the soil may not be improved, even by many subsequent generations of one family, or at least not in a manner to benefit the community. The more dense a population grows, the more prevails a common need of fertilizing the soil to the utmost, of husbanding groves, forests, or large trees so as to secure a sufficient amount of rain, dew, and snow at the proper time, a wholesome climate, and as many rural homesteads as possible for the necessary and always increasing agricultural laborers—in short what is called rational husbandry, or Scientific farming. This requires combined wealth and Co-operation of laborers according to Scientific principles. All the Nation is deeply interested in this provision, and can not satisfy this indispensable demand without having herself the only right of property, and without insisting that her leased land should be husbanded in the most productive way, and for the benefit of all.
Europe furnishes a warning example in all the lands along the Mediterranean sea, no less than the opposite shores of Africa. These countries were, two thousand years ago, the most fruitful and beautiful of the world, and richly fed 150 or 200 millions of cultured people, while now they are, in great part, a barren, sparsely peopled, and uncultured waste. This was brought about by the private ownership of the soil, which was, in the course of centuries, divided among a diminishing number of lordly owners who did not care for a prosperous and numerous yeomanry. The consequence was that all these lands were tilled by slaves, and could not withstand the repeated attacks of foreign warlike nations, in the wars with which, forests and buildings were destroyed. Rains began to fail, or when they came, they poured down in torrents which washed all the good soil down the slopes, formed pestilential swamps in the plains, and ruined the pastures by the cover of gravel and boulders which were swept down. No animals but goats could live along the hilly regions, and they ate all the young sprouts of trees, so that the barrenness went on increasing. Navigable rivers turned into sluggish brooks, aqueducts and roads decayed—in short, where once ten men could live in plenty as freemen, and
