2 Travels in France 



may have arisen, reflected back upon the people the prosperity 

 they impHed ? Very curious inquiries ; yet resolved insufficiently 

 by those whose political reveries are spun by their firesides, or 

 caught flying as they are whirled through Europe in post- 

 chaises. A man who is not practically acquainted with agri- 

 culture knows not how to make those inquiries; he scarcely 

 knows how to discriminate the circumstances productive of 

 misery from those which generate the fehcity of a people; 

 an assertion that will not appear paradoxical to those who have 

 attended closely to these subjects. At the same time, the mere 

 agriculturist, who makes such journe)'-s, sees little or nothing of 

 the connection between the practice in the fields and the re- 

 sources of the empire ; of combinations that take place between 

 operations apparently unimportant and the general interest of 

 the state ; combinations so curious, as to convert, in some cases, 

 well-cultivated fields into scenes of misery, and accuracy of 

 husbandry into the parent of national weakness. These are 

 subjects that never will be understood from the speculations of 

 the mere farmer or the mere politician; they demand a mixture 

 of both; and the investigation of a mind free from prejudice, 

 particularly national prejudice; from the love of system, and 

 of the vain theories that are to be found in the closets of specu- 

 lators alone. God forbid that I should be guilty of the vanity 

 of supposing myself thus endowed ! I know too well the con- 

 trary; and have no other pretension to undertake so arduous a 

 work than that of having reported the agriculture of England 

 with some little success. Twenty years' experience, since that 

 attempt, may make me hope to be not less qualified for similar 

 exertions at present. 



The clouds that, for four or five years past, have indicated a 

 change in the political sky of the French hemisphere, and 

 which have since gathered to so singular a storm, have rendered 

 it yet more interesting to know what France was previously 

 to any change. It would indeed have been matter of astonish- 

 ment if monarchy had risen and had set in that region 

 without the kingdom having had any examination professedly 

 agricultural. 



The candid reader will not expect, from the registers of a 

 traveller, that minute analysis of common practice which a 

 man is enabled to give who resides some months, or years, 

 confined to one spot; twenty men, employed during twenty 

 years, would not effect it; and supposing it done, not one 

 thousandth part of their labours would be worth a perusal. 



