11 



parison to find by analogy what shall be the remedy. 

 In this search we must turn aside from England, for 

 there, cheap capital and tenant-farming on long leases 

 and non-proprietorship of the land, make a state of things 

 which gives no room for comparison with America. 

 Tenant-farming hero is almost wholly unknown, and 

 wherever the farmer is a tenant, it has become proverbi- 

 ally unprofitable. 



Let us direct our attention, therefore, for the purpose 

 of this comparison, to a land where all eyes are now 

 turned for a wholly other and different reason. Let us 

 examine the agriculture of France, and compare its pro- 

 ductions with our own, and compare the habits of its 

 people, as farmers, with ours, and see, if we can, what is 

 it that tends to show differences in their favor. Here 

 we may find facts which will teach the statesman and 

 farmer, both, lessons in agriculture, and quite possibly, 

 facts which will arouse the attention, as surprising in 

 themselves and containing not a little of rebuke to our 

 general self-gratulation. One of our vices as Americans 

 is self-gratulation, a little vain-gloriousness, a little boast. 

 We speak of our teeming West. We speak flippantly 

 of our capability of supplying all the world with bread- 

 stuffs. True, \\e have the capability so to do ; but it is 

 equally lamentably true that we do not do it. The 

 boastful western man upon his prairies, or the Califor- 

 nian upon his ranche will, not a little astonished, learn 

 the fact that the Empire of France, with not so much 

 area as the State of Texas, raises more wheat, in quan- 

 tity, than the United States of America all told, reckon- 

 ing from Alaska to Florida and from Texas to Maine ; 

 the area of France being only 207,480 square miles, or 



