domain. A wastefulness which tends to contract free acreage beyond the convenient demands of settlement and use, is to deprive the nation of strength and elasticity. When we have no longer anything to offer the coming generations, it will be a pity if they come. The power of the great land owner over the man who has inherited nothing, and is too poor to purchase at the landlords' prices, will be, to all intents and purposes, the same which the landlords of Europe exercise over the peasant classes there. The ladder by which our people have climbed to happy heights of prosperity will be withdrawn, and the poor man will have become the slave of the rich man. It is doubtful if the universal intelligence which we are at so much pains to cultivate will be, in such circumstances, an unmixed blessing, since the enlightened mind has requirements which are not felt by the ignorant, the absence of which inflicts pain, and frequently leads to crime.
