TRANSACTIONS. 47 



In this, as in many other instances, we are in danger of 

 being misled by statistical tables, which generally notice 

 only marketable products, whereas these small French 

 fields are made to yield a variety of plants abundantly 

 useful in domestic economy, but either not employed by 

 the citizens of large towns, or, in each individual case, 

 reared in too small quantities to find their way to market, 

 or to attract the notice of the political economist. 



The most valuable results of this system, however, are 

 not economical, but moral and political. It is a matter of 

 immense consequence to the State, that they, who in the 

 first instance extract from the bosom of the soil that which 

 supplies the life-blood of the nation, and who in the last 

 resort are the defenders of that soil, should feel that they 

 are so.mething more than tenants at sufferance upon it, and 

 that they have a substantial proprietary interest in the 

 earth which nourishes them, and through their labors those 

 classes of their fellow citizens who " toil not, neither do 

 they spin." 



Since the Revolution which broke up the great feudal es- 

 tates, and divided them amongst the peasants, who before 

 had been but serfs upon them, there has been an immense 

 change in the character and condition of the French hus- 

 bandman. Formerly Paris ruled, and emphatically was 

 France. The rural laborers, in spite of the liberal and 

 philanthropic views of Henry IV, whose dearest wish it 

 was that every peasant might be able to have a fowl for 

 his Sunday's dinner, were degraded far lower than they 

 ever were in freer England. " We sec," said La Bruyere 

 two hundred years ago, " dispersed over the country cer- 

 " tain savage animals, male and female, with dark and livid 

 " skins, naked, scorched by the sun, bound to the soil which 

 "they dig and stir with obstinate perseverance. They 

 " have a sort of articulate voice, and when they raise thcm- 

 '' selves on their feet they show a human face ; and in fact 

 ''they are men. At night they retire to dens, where they 



