A village ofthe last named quantity, was generally considered capable of supporting at its establishment, from two, to three thousand revision souls, or twice that number of persons, or about forty acres per male; or, at three revision souls per family, one hundred and twenty acres per house. This proportion, if we consider the unvaried fertility of the soil, is unquestionably very great ; and the more especially, when it is further considered, that the whole of it was a vast plain of pasture, to convert which into fields of corn, required no extraordinary exertion or expence.
The great misfortune which has appeared to operate in counteracting the beneficial effects, which might otherwise naturally have been expected to result from so munificent a distribution of the richest soil in a fine climate, contiguous to navigation, the sea, and great markets, has flowed from the mode of fixing these colonies.
The feudal system being adopted, every house in a large village was consequently huddled and jammed together, with no other separation between house and house, than space just sufficient to enable the colonists to build their outhouses around a small yard. The evils resulting from this system, are in every point of view, greatbeyond calculation. To mention only two or three immediately affecting the colonist himself, wemay observe, in seed, hay, and harvesttime, each family (leaving the old, and the very young at home), quit the village, with their teams, seed, provisions, fuel, &c., and take up their quarters from five, to ten, or fifteen miles distant, until the work which carried them there, be finished, when they remove back to it again.
During this interval, the shepherd, the herdsman, the hogherd, each collect the live stock of the community, drive them to pasture, and back, and tend them in the field. Thus the murrain, and other distempers, have no chance of being confined to the spot where they first broke cut, but ravage the herds and flocks of an entire village, in which it not unusually happens that three-fourths of the whole number are swept away. Fires (which frequently take place), destroy whole villages in a single night, and often, with immense quantities of corn in the straw.
At every revision or census of the inhabitants, the total quantity of land is regularly subdivided in such a manner amongst the whole number of revision males, that each hasa part proportionate to the quantity to be distributed; but all of it is intermixed. No family has the right ofsecuring to itselfthe allotted share for any greater length of time than the space of one revision, that is, three years ; or for a fallow and two crops of corn. The population is then counted over again, and a fresh distribution takes place. Notwithstanding this apparently equal arrangement, it always happens that some boors in every village, by superior industry and fortuitous circumstances, continue to be richer than the rest, and that others, by laziness, drunkenness, small families, and sundry accidents, remain in a state of comparative poverty : so that one boor frequently serves another, letting out his own labour and land to his more fortunate neighbours.