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is generally admitted. The soil, the climate, and the productions are 

 superior to those of England, and the husbandry as good, except in one 

 point; that of manure. In England, long leases for twenty-one years, 

 or three lives, to wit, that of the farmer, his wife, and son, renewed 

 by the son as soon as he comes to the possession, for his own life, 

 his wife's and eldest child's, and so on, render the farms there almost 

 hereditary, make it worth the farmer's while to manure the lands 

 highly, and give the landlord an opportunity of occasionally making 

 his rent keep pace with the improved state of the lands. Here the 

 leases are either during pleasure, or for three, six, or nine years, 

 which does not give the farmer time to repay himself for the expensive 

 operation of well manuring, and, therefore, he manures ill, or not at 

 all. I suppose, that could the practice of leasing for three lives 

 be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would, within the term of your 

 life, increase agricultural productions fifty per cent.; or were any 

 one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it would increase his 

 rents fifty per cent, in the course of twenty-five years. But I am 

 told the laws do not permit it. The laws then, in this particular, 

 are unwise and unjust, and ought to give that permission. In the 

 southern provinces, where the soil is poor, the climate hot and dry, 

 and there are few animals, they would learn the art, found so precious 

 in England, of making vegetable manure, and thus improving these 

 provinces in the article in which nature has been least kind to them. 

 Indeed, these provinces afford a singular spectacle. Calculating on 

 the poverty of their soil, and their climate by its latitude only, 

 they should have been the poorest in France. On the contrary, they 

 are the richest, from one fortuitous circumstance. Spurs or ramifica- 

 tions of high mountains, making down from the Alps, and, as it were, 

 reticulating these provinces, give to the valleys the protection of a 

 particular inclosure to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation 

 of the northern winds produced by the whole of them, and thus counter- 

 vail the advantage of several degrees of latitude. From the first 

 olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of Hieres, has been 

 continued rapture to me. . . . 



You will not wonder at the subjects of my letters; they are the 

 only ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past; 

 and the waters must always be what are the fountains from which they 

 flow .... - H. A. Washington, ed.. The W ritings of Thomas Jefferson, 

 2:134-137 (Washington, D. C, Taylor & Maury, 1853). 



