8 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



eration, and who lias not examined the agricultural productions 

 of France, both in variety and amount, can believe that the 38 

 million of her inhabitants, on a territory so small as to give only 

 three and a half acres to an inhabitant, could vie, in agricultural 

 productions — of all that goes to make up the necessaries of living 

 and national wealth, save cotton and tobacco — with a nation like 

 ours, of about the same number of inhabitants, whose territory 

 gives more than fifty acres to each inhabitant, or nearly seven- 

 teen times as much land for cultivation ; and from this estimate 

 we exclude Alaska, of which none know the extent save the 

 walrus and polar bears. Of course a very large portion of 

 our lands, say three-fourths, are substantially uninhabited ; but 

 these are always reckoned when we make up our national 

 resources. 



Nor is the common idea a true one, that the people of France 

 are poor, or that our people are drawn away from farming into 

 other and more profitable occupation, so that France does not 

 more than equal us in the value and amount of her industries — 

 all her industries as compared with ours ; for the year 1868 her 

 imports amounted to 079 million, and her exports to 581 million, 

 while in the same period the imports of the United States were 

 only 381 million and the exports were 441 million, of which 

 exportation 72 million were gold and silver and 1G3 million of 

 unmanufactured cotton, neither of which, to any extent, was 

 exported by France, leaving only 206 million as the product of 

 our agricultural and manufacturing industry for export, after 

 what is consumed by our people, against 581 million, which is 

 the surjilus of her agricultural and manufacturing industry ex- 

 ported after maintaining her own people. And although we 

 boast of our cotton and tobacco as sources of wealth, yet she 

 has her wines, brandies and sugars, of which latter France 

 exported in 18G8 six million dollars, and we imported sixty 

 millions. 



The common idea in this country, that wealth is not diffused 

 in France as with us, but is only in the hands of a few rich 

 nobles, is another mistake quite as illusory as any of the mis- 

 understandings of the agricultural and industrial condition of 

 our ancient ally. While the national debt of France at the begin- 

 ning of the present year was almost precisely the same as ours, 

 being 2,700 million, yet instead of being as ours is, — 1,500 



