CULTIVATION OF HEART'S-EASE. 61 



land ; and the result is, that full two-thirds of tlic whole French 

 people are hmd owners ; the average amount to each person 

 not exceeding thirteen acres. 



The comparative advantages of these two systems form a 

 frequent sulyect of discussion between the political economists 

 of France and England. These discussions are limited to 

 a consideration of the productiveness of the land merely, re- 

 garded as a source, or instrument, of wealth. Bi^this does 

 not meet all the elements of the case. Political economy 

 does not and cannot settle all the questions of social and 

 political life. The amount of wealth you can draw from 

 the land is one thing ; then comes the proportion in which 

 it is distributed ; and, lastly, and not the least ini{)ortant, 

 is the effect of the mode of holding, and the mode of 

 cultivation, upon the cultivator himself. Man is a more 

 important product than cattle, or corn, or turnips. That 

 system of tillage is defective, whatever may he its material 

 results in the production of food, which degrades the farmer 

 himseiP A large English estate, in the hands of its propri- 

 etor, or let on a long lease to a wealthy tenant, — to which all 

 the resources of capital and all the discoveries of science are 

 applied, — produces wonderful crops and splendid stock ; but 

 when you look at the laborer, by whose hands all the work is 

 done, you will see at what cost these splendid results are pur- 

 chased. You see the thews and sinews of a man, but little of 

 that which makes man " the beauty of the world, the paragon 

 of animals." His form is bent by wasting and crushing toil ; 

 neither the gleam of intelligence nor the light of hope 

 illumines his countenance ; his life is a constant and often a 

 losing struggle for mere subsistence ; for him there is no 

 future. During ray visit to England, last summer, I visited a 

 pauper insane asylum in the county of Sussex, an agricultural 

 county in the south of England. I asked the superintendent 

 what was the most prevalent cause of insanity among his 

 patients. After reflecting a few moments, he replied ho did 

 not think there was any one more common than mere want. 

 There Was something to me very touching in this simple state- 

 ment. Nothing can be less sensitive and less impressible than 

 the mind of an English laborer ; and yet, under the pressure 

 of hopeless poverty that mind sometimes gives way. The cure 



