LAW OF POPULATION ILLUSTRATED 195 



the balances, proved an egregious failure. The 

 peasant whose patrimony joined to his wife's dowry 

 forms an estate of a few acres, is heir to the drudgery 

 of a galley slave, toiling from earliest morn to the 

 last beams of the sun, to earn an average daily 

 pittance which, were it proposed to him as a daily 

 wage, would move the scorn of an English ploughman. 

 The wife who by her dot has doubled his estate, 

 is very early in her married life a faded, jaded 

 creature, prematurely aged by toil and carking care, 

 while their children, born and bred in a joyless home, 

 are misers in embryo before they enter their teens. 

 Their cottage is brightened by no flowers and by no 

 amusements. The vintage song and dance have long 

 passed away from the pleasant land of France. 



John Stuart Mill, who disliked luxury and hated 

 the independent classes in England, glorified the lot 

 of the French peasant proprietor, drawing fancy 

 sketches of his abiding happiness in the feeling that 

 the land which he cultivates is his own, of his joyous 

 industry, of his great intelligence. He warned his 

 readers against judging of him from the filthy hut in 

 which ; he lives and from the foul rags which cover 

 his nakedness ; for the man, outwardly seemingly so 

 miserable, may possess thousands of francs stuffed into 

 stockings or hidden away in the thatch of his hovel. 



To earn a living at all the French peasant pro- 

 prietor must be very penurious ; but in spite of the 

 utmost penuriousness many fail in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, and are compelled to part with their properties. 



