y of her legislation, in aid of such operations, affords a lesson
of progress even to fast Young America. Powers have been granted, by
which encumbered estates may be charged with the expenses of drainage,
so that remainder-men and reversioners, without their consent, shall be
compelled to contribute to present improvements; so that careless or
obstinate adjacent proprietors shall be compelled to keep open their
ditches for outfalls to their neighbor's drains; so that mill-dams, and
other obstructions to the natural flow of the water, may be removed for
the benefit of agriculture; and, finally, the Government has itself
furnished funds, by way of loans, of millions of pounds, in aid of
improvements of this character.

In America, where private individual right is usually compelled to yield
to the good of the whole, and where selfishness and obstinacy do not
long stand in the pathway of progress, obstructing manifest improvement
in the condition of the people; we are yet far behind England in legal
facilities for promoting the improvement of land culture. This is
because the attention of the public has not been particularly called to
the subject.

Manufacturing corporations are created by special acts of legislation.
In many States, rights to flow, and ruin, by inundation, most valuable
lands along the course of rivers, and by the banks of ponds and lakes,
to aid the water-power of mills, are granted to companies, and the
land-owner is compelled to part with his meadows for such compensation
as a committee or jury shall assess.

In almost every town in New England there are hundreds, and often
thousands, of acres of lands, that might be most productive to the
farmer; overflowed half the year with water, to drive some old saw-mill,
or grist-mill, or cotton-mill, which has not made a dividend, or paid
expenses, for a quarter of a century. The whole water-power, which,
perhaps, ruins for cultivation a thousand acres of fertile land, and
divides and breaks up farms, by creating little creeks and swamps
throughout all the neighboring valleys, is not worth, and would not be
assessed, by impartial men, at one thousand dollars. Yet, though there
is power to take the farmer's land for the benefit of manufacturers,
there is no power to take down the company's dam for the benefit of
agriculture. An old saw-mill, which can only run a few days in a Spring
freshet, often swamps a half-township of land, because somebody's
great-gran