13 



outnumber ours. With a thrifty population, among whom 

 wealth is quite generally dififused, her resources in war and in 

 peace are unbounded ; and her national vitality is the admira- 

 tion of the civilized world. 



That much of this agricultural prosperity is due to the fact 

 that the people devote their energies to the cultivation of small 

 farms there can be no doubt. But it should be remembered 

 that the state of society which goes with this system in France 

 differs so entirely from our own that she furnishes no such 

 example of popular inlelligenee and personal independence as 

 is found in the United States. There the home known to the 

 American farmer is not found. The American farm-house is 

 almost unknown. The peasantry gather for the night into 

 crowded towns away from their lands, and go forth by day to 

 till their few outlying acres. The demands of the state upon 

 them are not large. They are seldom overtaxed except in time 

 of war. They are tempted by none of the honors and emolu- 

 ments of public service. They aspire to no civil distinction, 

 and even while organized as a republic, they are warmed into 

 no personal ambition, and as a social organization furnish no 

 example which their own philosopher and publicist could com- 

 mend as a guide to the civilized world. It is true they are 

 citizens of a republic and are owners of the soil on which they 

 live ; but it is a republic without the tradition of freedom, a 

 soil divided among them by violence before they had reached 

 the point of citizenship. And I think the most that can be 

 said of their civil organization is, that their approach to repub- 

 lican government has been largely through their system of 

 land-holding — more largely than through any lesson taught 

 them by their social and political reformers. 



But it is in England that this question of land-holding is 



