X 



ADDRKh.- 



intelligent, prosperous and Protestant country. Eng- 

 land, with all her high advance in agricultural industry, 

 does not raise grain enough to feed her own people ; or 

 at least, does not feed her own people with the grain 

 which she raises. France, with a soil less fertile, with 

 a much less perfect system of agriculture, and with a 

 population only 25 per cent less to the square mile, 

 exports, when crops are good, from $15,000,000 to 

 $20,000,000 worth of grain more than she imports. 

 She raises on an average 225,000,000 bushels of wheat 

 annually, or nearly seven bushels to every inhabitant. 

 This is accounted for, in great part, by the fact, that 

 in France there are 11,000,000 proprietors of land, or 

 nearly one-third of the whole population, giving to each 

 owner an average of five acres of arable land, while in 

 England the proportion of land owners is probably not 

 more than one in ten, at the most, and the greater 

 portion of the whole cultivable land in the country is 

 owned by only a few thousand nobles. Switzerland, 

 mountainous and snow-clad Switzerland, with a popu- 

 lation only one-eighth less dense than that of France, 

 and if the space that admits of cultivation be alone 

 taken into account, quite as dense as that of England, 

 raises a greater proportion of the food which its inhabi- 

 tants consume than England does. For in Switzerland, 

 as in France, the land is divided among many small 

 owners. The application of this principle to the dif- 

 ferent sections of our own country is obvious. Our 

 Southern lands have been tilled by large and wealthy 

 proprietors, and the result has been a lordly aristocracy, 

 incompatible with republican ideas and republican instir 

 tutions. Another result has been, the ignorance and 



