ABSTRACT
Agriculture is the slowest of industries; some of its products take a century to mature; it is the grandson who will fell the oak whose acorn was planted by the grandfather. Patriarchal cultivation improves the mores and character of that most numerous part of the nation who must do all the work in the fields. Property inculcates habits of order and economy, daily abundance destroys the taste for feasting and drinking: privation leads to excess, and cares seek to drown themselves in the brutishness of drink. In countries where patriarchal cultivation has been maintained, the population increases steadily and rapidly till it has attained its natural limits, that is, inheritances continue to divide and subdivide among many sons, until, with an increase in labor, each family can draw an equal income from a lesser portion of land.
