Throughout Europe a passion to become the owner of land is universal, while the difficulty of gratifying it is infinitely greater than with us. It is there enormously dear; here it is absurdly cheap. It is from this universal passion that the vast annual immigration to this country derives its mighty impulse. As it reaches our shores it spreads itself over the country in search of cheap land. Many of the most flourishing Western States have been built up by the astonishing influx of immigrants. In England, every landowner is prompt to secure every freehold near him, be it large or small, as it comes into market. Hence the number of freeholders in that country is annually diminishing by this process of absorption. This European passion for acquiring land is strangely contrasted with the American passion for parting with it.
RESOLVED TO GO--ESCAPE FROM BUSINESS--CHOOSING A LOCATION.
The last thirty years have been prolific of great pecuniary convulsions. I need not recapitulate them here, as too many of them are yet dark spots on the memory of some who will read this. Their frequency, as well as their recurrence at shorter intervals than at the beginning of the century, are among their most remarkable features, baffling the calculations of older heads, and confounding those of younger ones. As the century advanced, these convulsions increased in number and violence. The whole business horizon seemed full of coming storms, which burst successively with desolating severity, not only on merchants and manufacturers, but on others who had long before retired from business. No one could foresee this state of things. I will not stop to argue causes, but confine myself to facts which none will care to contradict.
These disasters made beggars of thousands in every branch of business, and spread discouragement over every community. I passed through several of them, striving and struggling, and oppressed beyond all power of description. How many more the community was to encounter I did not know; but I conceived it the part of prudence to place myself beyond the circle of their influence before I also had been prostrated.
In spite of the losses thus encountered, I had been saving something annually for several years, when the stricture of 1854 came on, premonitory of the tremendous crash of 1857. Most unfortunately for my comfort, that stricture seemed to fall with peculiar severity on a class of dealers largely indebted to me. Many of them became embarrassed, and failed to pay me at the time, while to this day some of them are still my debtors. My old experiences of raising money revived, and to some extent I was compelled to go through the humiliations of similar periods. But the stricture was of brief duration, and I closed the year in far better condition than I had anticipated.