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borers who earn from twelve to fourteen shillings a week, and a 

 little more at harvest time. The public sentiment of England en- 

 courages this aggregation of landed property, and the law allows 

 it. In France, on the other liand, the law enacts, and public sen- 

 timent sanctions, a minute subdivision of land ; and the result is, 

 that full two thirds of the Avhole French people are land owners ; 

 the average amount to each person not exceeding thirteen acres. 

 The comparative advantages of these two sj'stems form a frequent 

 subject of discussion between the political economists of France 

 and England. These discussions are limited to a consideration of 

 the productiveness of the land merely, regarded as a source, or 

 instrument, of wealth. But 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 draAV from the land is one thing ; then comes the proportion 

 in which it is distributed ; and, lastly, and not the least important, 

 is tlie 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 defect- 

 ive, whatever may be its material results in the production of 

 food, which degrades the farmer himself. A large English es- 

 tate, in the hands of its proprietor, 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 Avill see at what cost these splen- 

 did results are purchased. 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 my visit to England, last summer, I visited a pauper in- 

 sane 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 re- 

 flecting a few moments, he replied he did not think there was any one 

 more common than mere want. There was something to me very 



