20 INTRODUCTION. 



profit, will compare with the cultivation of the 

 vine. Commerce in France is an auxiliary, 

 rather than a principal of fiscal resource. Agri- 

 culture and manufactures are the leading objects 

 of national protection, and the cultivation of the 

 vine is the main artery through which the agri- 

 culture of France conveys her tribute to the na- 

 tional exchequer. 



The heavy imposts levied on the vine pro- 

 prietor by the late, as well as actual government 

 of France, as a direct assessment in the first in- 

 stance on the vine grounds, and subsequently in 

 the various ramifications of the trade, from the 

 wholesale purchaser at the wine press, to the 

 vendor of the single flask to the consumer, proves 

 how heavily the hand of power presses on this 

 branch of French agriculture, and the productive 

 returns of the crop that can sustaioayithout sink- 

 ing under the unrighteous exaction* 



Though France may justly claim to be among 

 the finest of the European States, much of her 

 soil is barren to the last degree, and it is in such 

 soil, so unfavourable to the cultivation of grain, 

 that the vine is .found a flourishing staple of the 

 country. Such, for example, is the case with 

 Burgundy, one of her celebrated wine making 

 districts, when we find the soil in the neighbour- 

 hood of Dijon, her capital, a loose gravel that 

 will scarcely produce a crop of grain, sufficient 

 even in that country, where labour does not ex- 

 ceed the half of our prices, and wheat is double 

 the value of that article in Pennsylvania, to de- 

 fray the cost of producing, without any calcula- 

 tion of interest on the capital invested in the land. 



