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merce, arts, manufactures, affording no resources. Now, if we allow our land-holders, to own no more than five hundred acres of land, and suppose them to possess that quantity, each; then, sixty thousand land-holders would possess the whole surface of the State, consisting of about thirty million of acres; whereas, taking five for a family, there are now, nearly four hundred thousand families, three hundred and forty thousand of whom, would not have a spade full of earth, or a thimble full of water, that they could call their own; nor any other resources for subsistence!
It will be said, indeed, that the fact is not so; and that their resources would consist in their labor on the soil, whatever might be the number of those who should possess it. I answer, that if the owners of the soil are owners at all, they are absolute and unconditional owners; they have the right, as the term is now understood, and the power, if they please, to say, they will employ no one. It would therefore, be an abuse of terms, it would be the veriest nonsense, to say, of a mass of people, that they have resources, which are wholly in the possession of others. If resources they deserve to be called, they are those, only, of the beggar, or the slave. They come in the shape, only, of charity or bondage; and either of these, are wholly incompatible with the high minded feelings of freemen. It may then, truly be said, as far as government, or social institution is concerned, that
