PRODUCTIVENESS OF THE EARTH. 37 



eight and one-fourth millions to five and three-fourth millions,) 

 showing an advance of above four hundred per cent., (four 

 hundred seven,) in the popular appreciation of the value of 

 education. This is but one index of that great social revolution 

 which is transforming Ireland into an industrious, intelligent 

 prosperous and Protestant country. 



England, with all her high advance in agricultural industry, 

 does not raise grain enough to feed her own people ; or at least, 

 does not feed her own people with the grain which she raises. 

 France, with a soil less fertile, with a much less perfect system 

 of agriculture, and with a population only twenty-five per cent, 

 less to the square mile, exports, when crops are good, from 

 fifteen to twenty million dollars' worth of grain more than she 

 imports. She raises on an average two hundred twenty-five 

 million bushels of wheat annually, or nearly seven bushels to 

 every inhabitant. This is accounted for in great part, by the 

 fact that in France there are eleven million proprietors of 

 land, or nearly one-third of the whole population, giving to each 

 owner an average of five acres of arable land, while in England 

 the proportion of land owners is probably not more than one in 

 ten, at the most, and the greater portion of the whole cultivable 

 land in the country is owned only by a few thousand nobles. 



Switzerland — mountainous and snow-clad Switzerland — with 

 a population only one-eighth less dense than that of France, 

 and if the space that admits of cultivation be alone taken into 

 account, quite as dense as that of England, raises a greater 

 proportion of the food which its inhabitants consume, than 

 England does. For in Switzerland, as in France, the land is 

 divided among many small owners. The application of this 

 principle to the different sections of our own country, is 

 obvious. Our southern lands ha\e been tilled by large and 

 wealthy proprietors, and the result has been a lordly aristocracy, 

 incompatible with republican ideas and republican institutions. 

 Another result has been, the ignorance and degradation of the 

 great body of the population, whether white or black, whether 

 free or enslaved. 



Slavery has no doubt been the chief cause and the worst 

 aggravation of this state of society ; but even apart from slavery, 

 the ruin of these overgrown planters, and the division of their 

 estates among a tenfold or hundredfold number of owners, would 



