90 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



addition of maize, buckwheat, and even chestnuts, while 

 the bread of the English peasant is wheaten, with some- 

 times a slight addition of barley and oats ; he sometimes 

 drinks wine or cider, while the English peasant has only 

 beer ; but he has rarely meat, and the English peasant 

 has it often, or at least pork. 



Notwithstanding these advantages, the question of 

 wages, even in England, was a heart-burning subject 

 previously to 1848. There is no doubt that the race, the 

 climate, and the habits of the English farm-labourers, are 

 productive of more wants than with us. Wages in England 

 are lowest in the southern part of the island, comprising the 

 counties of Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall ; the rate there 

 was equivalent to 1.25 francs per day, and although on a 

 par mostly with our wages in France, this was generally 

 considered insufficient. In the parts of Ireland and Scot- 

 land where wages fell below the French average, the misery 

 produced was iu finitely greater than with us upon the 

 same rate. The equivalent of 20 sous (lOd.) a-day, with 

 which many of our peasants feel contented, caused a great 

 outcry ; at 70 centimes (7d.), as in the Hebrides and Con- 

 naught, existence appeared absolutely impossible. 



Alas ! I know parts of France where the people still live 

 upon that rate, and that without much complaint. Cer- 

 tainly this poverty, in itself sufficiently distressing, is not 

 aggravated by the harshness of a hyperborean climate, and, 

 what is still worse, by the feeling of excessive inequality. 

 Seventy centimes a-day is anywhere a scanty wage ; but 

 it must be especially intolerable in a country where the 

 current rate of labourers' wages is in some places 2.50 

 francs, and that of mechanics on an average still more. 



According to what has been above stated, the gross 

 production of France and that of England proper may be 

 divided nearly as follows : 



