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internal improvements, an excessive accumulation of warlike armament, 
an undue tendency of capital and labor to great cities, luxurious habits 
of the citizens, and neglect of the means of influencing the action of 
government. These clear indications were adroitly evaded by the 
imperial commissioners, who admitted the justice of the complaints made 
by the agricultural interest, but criticised the proposed methods of relief. 
The foreign policy of the country could not be disturbed; great military 
and naval armaments, and a large expenditure in internal improvements 
were imperatively demanded to maintain the prestige of the empire. 
Hence the taxes must be kept up and the farmers must ‘ grin and bear 
it.” Yet, in spite of the restrictions and oppressions of misgovernment, 
French agriculture has during the past decade made very encouraging 
progress. 
The industrial system of the north is pivoted upon the sugar-beet. 
Here high culture has ever led in the march of*improvement. ‘The 
splendid productive power of this region has attracted the attention of 
this government as a large tax-paying region. In fact, the policy of some 
administrations has emulated the wisdom of the man in the fable who 
killed the goose that laid the goldeneggs. It had passed into an official 
parable that each hectare of this region would bear an average tax as- 
sessment of about 2,000 franes, or at the rate of $160 per acre. Some 
sapient political economists in official circles insisted that the government 
ment should attack the best resources and get money wherever they could 
get it most easily, but a strong protest was heard in quarters more enti- 
tled to respect, urging the impolicy of crippling resources in process of 
development. It was urged that the most profitable element in the 
sugar-beet industry to the country at large is not the manufacture of 
sugar and alcohol, which yield so large a basis of taxation, but in the 
immense amount of fertilizing matter which the beet yields as stock- 
feed, enabling the farmers of this region, with their heavy taxes, high 
values of real. estate, and high wages of labor, to compete with the cheap 
products of vast unfertilized regions abroad, in which what is called eul- 
ture is but a spoliation of surface fertility. The policy of the state in 
the treatment of this region has been one of craft. While ostentatiously 
distributing a few millions of francs with one hand, in agricultural 
prizes, with the other it has been stealthily and noiselessly depleting 
the system of its strength by taxes bearing directly upon its most vital 
points. French farmers are so accustomed to routine and so unused to 
look beyond their own immediate horizon, that these abuses have passed 
unchallenged, and the grievances uttered by a few of the more intelli- 
gent, not being supported by the general voice, have failed to awaken 
official attention to these oppressions. Meanwhile intelligent farmers 
appealed to science, and sought those methods of culture which would 
enrich the product and give a wider margin of profit with which to meet 
the grasping power of taxation. By persistent energy, and in spite of 
adverse circumstances, the sugar interest has made great advancement 
within the past ten years. 
Southward is a region of far different character, in which the inten- 
sive culture of the north, after ample experiment, has been abandoned 
and what is called extensive culture has been adopted. The maize-plant 
is the key of this system, as the sugar-beet is in the north. Fossil super- 
phosphate of lime furnishes a stimulating fertilizer, and immense masses 
of forage-plants give rise to extensive stock-feeding and large avcumu- 
lations of barn-yard manure. 
Still further southward is the region of the vine, the olive, and the 
mulberry. Here rocky, dry, thin soils, unsusceptible of high culture, have 
