"This general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in political economy. If the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." In the view thus presented by Mr. Mill there is no exaggeration. The law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to the emancipation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must first satisfy ourselves that the theory of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures directly opposed to those that would be needed were that theory true. The great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a few minutes of the reader's attention in placing before him some facts tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality of the law now offered for his consideration. Let him inquire where he may, he will find that the early occupant _did not_ commence in the flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he _did_ commence on the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his house was dry. With increasing ability, he is found draining the swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a constant increase in the return to labour. Let him then trace the course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps and river bottoms. The earliest settlements of this country were on the poorest lands of the Union--those of New England. So was it in New York, where we find the railroads running through the lower and richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and left have long been cultivated. So is it now in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. In South Carolina it has been made the subject of remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did not select the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land in that State still remain untouched. The settler in the prairies commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and the _slough_--the richest soil--for his successors. The lands below the mouth of the Ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population shall have greatly increased. So is it now with the low and rich lands of Mexico. So was it in South America, the early cultivation of which was upon the poor lands of the western slope, Peru and Chili, while the rich lands of the Amazon and the La Plata remained, as most of them still remain, a wilderness. In the West Indies, the small dry islands were early occupied, while Porto Rico and Trinidad, abounding