Adam Smith attributed the success of the British colonies to policies of   
distributing land in small parcels; he blamed the backwardness of Spanish,   
Portuguese and French colonies on the "engrossment" of land.  
  
A favorite target is the "great proprietor." For example,  
  
"To improve land with profit, like all other commercial projects, requires   
an exact attention to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to   
great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very seldom capable... He   
embellishes perhaps four or five hundred acres in the neighborhood of his   
house, at ten times the expense which the land is worth after all his   
improvements; and finds that if he was to improve his whole estate in the   
same manner, and he has little taste for any other, he would be a bankrupt   
before he has finished the tenth part of it..." (III.2.7)  
  
"A small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory,   
who views it with all the affection which property, especially small   
property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not   
only in cultivating but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the   
most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful." (III.4.19)  
  
Polly Cleveland