MANIA FOR LARGE FARMS. 9 



million owed to foreigners, to say nothing of State and county- 

 debts, which are things unheard of in the departments of 

 France, — it is divided among and held by more than eleven hun- 

 dred thousand Frenchmen., giving a share of about 2,500 dollars 

 to each. The actual diffusion of wealth among the middling 

 and industral classes is evident, because when a loan of 90 mil- 

 lion of dollars was offered by the Emperor to the people, an actual 

 subscription of 3,152 million, or more than 35 times the sum 

 asked for, was made by 781 thousand different persons (all 

 Frenchmen, and generally in small sums), because the provi- 

 dence of their government, differing from ours, gives to the man 

 who desires to invest ten dollars in the national fund the prefer- 

 ence over him who desires to invest ten million, the small sub- 

 scription being first received, and first filled. 



It may be interesting, although not exactly in consonance 

 with the purpose we have in this analysis, to compare the division 

 of the debt of France among the people, showing the diffusion of 

 wealth in the middling classes, with the national debt of Great 

 Britain. Her debt amounts to 3,800 million, which is held by 

 126 thousand persons only, giving an average share of 30 thou- 

 sand dollars to each individual as against less than one-tenth as 

 much to each holder of the French debt. 



Nor are the French people burdened with taxation more than 

 we are. They have nothing of the taxation known with us as 

 State taxes, but their entire taxation is a national one, and 

 amounted with the revenues, which are another form of taxation 

 in the aggregate, in the year 1868, to 403 million of dollars, 

 while our taxation and revenues for the same year, paid to the 

 national government alone, was 405 millions. But it will be 

 observed that this taxation, while nominally about the same as 

 ours, yet, being with us based on a much less product of trade 

 and industry than in France — almost 50 per cent, less in fact — 

 is really a taxation nearly 50 per cent, greater on the industry 

 of this country than is imposed upon the industries of the French 

 people. 



But another and more certain test of the distribution of wealth 

 in France is seen in this : the population being divided into 9 

 millions of families, allowing four to the family, which is nearly 

 the ratio, one million of those families, or four million of people, 

 are in easy circumstances, that is, able to live without work or 

 2* 



