Some wise man might have spoken thus, but how strange the utterance would have sounded! There was so much land, and all history seemed to guarantee the beneficial results that are derived from individual land ownership. The democracies of Greece and Rome were built upon such a foundation. The yeomanry of England had proved her pride and stay. In Europe the free workers in the towns had been the guardians of the rights of the people. Throughout historic times, liberty has taken root where there is an economic foundation for the freedom which each man feels he has a right to demand. 2. _Security of "Acquisitions"_ Feudal Europe depended for its living upon agriculture. The Feudal System had concentrated the ownership of practically all of the valuable agricultural land in the hands of the small group of persons which ruled because it controlled economic opportunity. The power of this class rested on its ownership of the resource upon which the majority of the people depended for a livelihood. The Feudal System was transplanted to England, but it never took deep root there. When in 1215 A. D. (only a century and a half after the Great William had made his effort to feudalize England) King John signed the Magna Carta, Feudalism proper gave way to landlordism--the basis of English economic life from that time to this. The system of English landlordism (which showed itself at its worst in the absentee landlordism of Ireland) differed from Feudalism in this essential respect,--Feudalism was based upon the idea of the divine right of kings. English landlordism was based on the idea of divine right of property. English landlordism is the immediate ancestor of the property concept that is universally accepted in the business world of to-day. The evils of Feudalism and of landlordism were well known to the American colonists who were under the impression that they arose not from the fact of ownership, but from the concentration of ownership. The resources of the new world seemed limitless, and the possibility that landlordism might show its ugly head on this side of the Atlantic was too remote for serious consideration. With the independence of the United States assured after the War of 1812; with the growth of industry, and the coming of tens of thousands of new settlers, the future of democracy seemed bright. Daniel Webster characterized the outlook in 1821 by saying, "A country of such vast extent, with such varieties of soil and climate, with so much public spirit and private enterprise, with a population increasing so much beyond former examples, ... so free in its institutions, so mild in its laws, so secure in the title it confers on every man to his own acquisitions,--needs nothing but time and peace to carry it forward to almost any point of advancement."[43]