time existed in all the continental states, and in France restricted within the narrowest limits, Adam Smith wrote: “By interfering to so extreme an extent in the disposal of a man’s property, it lessens the motives to accumulation; while, by rendering the children in a great measure independent, it weakens the parental authority, and has the same mischievous operation over an entire family that the law of entail has over a single child. This, however, is not its worst effect. This and every similar system inevitably tends to occasion too great an increase of agricultural population, and to reduce landed property into portions so minute that they neither afford sufficient employment to the families occupying them nor allow of their being cultivated and improved in the best and most efficient manner.” A few Cantons have become alarmed at this infinitesimal subdivision of their soil, as prejudicial to agricultural enterprise and causing emigration to take place from the pastoral districts. The Cantons of Aargau, Thurgau, and Solothurn have passed laws fixing the limit to the subdivision of land at a minimum ranging from five thousand to twenty thousand square feet. The excess to which subdivision may run is illustrated in the Canton of Bern, where a case is reported of a cherry-tree in the Oberland found to belong to seven different proprietors; and it is also related that the people of that section are distinguished for being so stiff-necked in sticking for their rights that an article of furniture has been known to be sawed into so many parts that each member of a family might have his share. Notwithstanding the opinion of political economists, the Swiss know that this subdivision has worked as an efficient auxiliary in making their soil a source of national comfort and well-being, and a barrier against land accumulation to prop up a ruling class, so common in many of her neighbors. No sort of social distinction or political privilege is associated with land-ownership in Switzerland. The cultivator, who, as a rule, is the proprietor,--for it is rare to find a farm which is not worked by the owner,--is shorn by neither rent nor taxes. The land fulfils its duty and guarantees the tiller a fair enjoyment of the produce, a fair share in the sheaves he reaps. Poets, historians, and philosophers, who love to dwell on the simple virtues of the children of nature, find their Utopia in Switzerland, where the households, each with its little tract of land, represent a larger proportion of the population than can be found in any other country. This distribution of small properties among the peasantry forms a kind of rampart and safeguard for accumulated property in other forms. It may be called the lightning conductor that averts from society dangers which might otherwise lead to violent catastrophes. The concentration of land in large estates among a small number of families, is a sort of provocation of levelling legislative measures.