OCCUPANCY OF LAND IN AMERICA.

Southland Times, Issue 1262, 7 June 1870, Page 3

OCCUPANCY OF LAND IN AMERICA.

(From the Examiner and London Beviem.) In tlie timely volume of " Essays on the Systems of Land Tenure in various Countries," just published by the Cobden Club, the briefest and least original is, perhaps, the most practically suggestive. We allude to that by Mr C. M. Fisher, of the American Bar, which professes to be little more than a collection and comparison of the land lawa of the variouß United States. Fundamentally, their scope and tenor are the same. Great facility exists for purchase and sale at a small cost, and with the security by registration against impeachment of title. The deed of transfer is usually a very simple instrument, conveying as absolutely all right and interest of the seller to the new possessor as if the subject-matter were so many tons of iron or so many Five-twenty Bonds. Mr Fisher does not explain how it comes to pass that land, even in the older States, has not become subject to complicated settlements and incumbrancea as in this country ; but he states the cardinal fact which in reality accounts for all, namely, that there are three acres of arable land still unoccupied for every two that have been enclosed within the confines of the Union. Every man is therefore able, by moving westward, to become the possessor of a fee farm as large as that whereon he was born. .Republican practice tends strongly towards equal distribution by will among children who have not forfeited the parental favor; and in case of intestacy this partition is made by law. But, for the reason already Btated, American Gravelkind does not, as in France, lead to the breaking up of farms or estatei. One of the sons, generally the eldest, retains possession of the family residence, and of the fields and woods in the centre of which it stands, undertaking to pay one-third of the value to his father's widow during her life, and making the land chargeable with the portions falling to the share of younger children. They hie off to the prairie, or take to professional and commercial pursuits. In Virginia and other Southern States, properties used to be larger, partly because of the aristocratic size of the original grants, and the traditional pride of the class from whom the first planters of the Stuart times were taken ; partly, also, because the cultivation of tobacco and cotton, by slave labor, was not found to be profitable except when conducted on an extensive scale. This, like bo many other things modified by the civil war, is already beginning to change. Many of the large estates are breaking up; and the tendency to do so will be greater every year, as the use of free and white labor for money wages becomes prevalent. Throughout the North and West the occupiers of the soil are generally their own landlords. There is a fascination in the very phrase to those who have escaped from tenancy-at-will and agricultural insolvency in Europe, which may be imagined rather than described. Not only the overtaxed and overtasked Saxon, but the desponding, disaffected, and at home, often thriftless Celt, when he is told on his arrival among his kinsfolk of America that if he will only work up to^ it and at it, he may in a short time become a landed proprietor, have a house of his own, and laugh on for the rest of his days at the fear o£ eviction wherein he was

bred, rubs his eyes, ask himself is he awake, and sober, or if the Fairies have anything to do with it. He has always been told that to get to heaven one must die first ; but here is something like his notion of the real thing, upon the sole condition of being more alive than he has ever been before. He goes to work, and seldom is his labor in vain. Mr Fisher says : — " Of the emigrant settlers, those from Ireland, in many instances, make good and, thrifty farmers, and acquire considerable property ; and though a large proportion of the Irish are always to be found among the laboring population, their qualifications for making good settlers are not so rare as might be generally supposed by an eye-witness of the agricultural performances of many small Irish tenant farmers m their native land. I could point to many instances in the JState of Vermont, and in others, where a comparatively ignorant and penniless Irish emigrant had, almost immediately after arrival, arranged for the purchase, on time, of a lot of land ; then, worked as a laborer until he had got together a few dollars to purchase implements, seed, and a little food — the latter in the shape of a barrel of flour, some salt pork, tea, &c, forming sufficient for one season — and who had, without -any other aid, managed to struggle on until a succession of harvests found him a rich man in comparison with his former condition. The feeling of ' becoming one's own landlord,' of * owning the fee simple of land,' is one that has been spoken of in my hearing by this class of persons, and must act as a strong incentive to exertion in the right direction, I believe it to be the first great ambition of every Irish emigrant to become the owner of real estate." If such be the state of things in on© of the oldest settled States of the Union, far greater are the facilities and openings into pradial paradise in the territories further west. The Free Homestead Act, passed a short time ago. by which any industrious man whosehonesty can be vouchedfor may obtain a grant of 160 acres of new land subject only to punctual payment of the general and local taxes, is calculated to give a further stimulus to the progress of transatlantic colonisation. The rulers of Canada are beginning to feel its effects, and they are now bidding for immigrants in competition with their Republican neighbors. In the province of Ontario, every emigrant of suitable age may now obtain a grant in fee of 100 acres, as much for his wife, and as much more for each of his sons. What joy and hope would not the dissemination of the all-important fact bring to many a humble household in the "United Kingdom. How is it that Government in overcrowded England and Ireland fails to do as much at the other end of the line of easy and rapid communication, which the progress of physical science has thrown betweeii the two hemispheres, and which is capable of rendering such incalculable benefit to both. :