POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 141 



leaves it none. We have sufficiently authentic evidence to 

 prove into what a state French agriculture had fallen, a 

 century ago, under the deleterious influence of a detested 

 regime, in the articles Grains and Fermiers (Corn and 

 Farmers) of the Encyclopedic, written about 1750, by the 

 founder of political economy, Dr Quesnay. Our whole 

 territory (Corsica and a part of Lorraine did not then 

 belong to France) was estimated by Quesnay at a hun- 

 dred millions of arpents of fifty-one ares* which is con- 

 firmed by our present land registry. Out of these one 

 hundred millions of arpents, he estimated the arable land 

 at only thirty-six millions, or forty-five millions of acres, 

 of which eight million acres were under what he calls 

 large farming, and thirty-seven in small. By large farm- 

 ing he means that of farmers who used horses for tillage, 

 and who followed the triennial rotation wheat, oats, and 

 fallow ; and by small that of the metayers, who employed 

 cattle, and followed the biennial rotation, wheat and fal- 

 low. This division ought to be quite correct, for it still 

 corresponds with the existing state of things. France 

 continues still divided into two distinct regions ; the one 

 in the north, where the lease system prevails, tillage by 

 horses, and triennial rotation more or less modified ; the 

 other in the south, where small holdings predominate, 

 labour by cattle, and biennial rotation. Only, since 

 1750 the first has gained ground, and the latter has 

 declined. 



Quesnay estimates the average produce in corn of an 

 arpent, under large farming, at five setiers of 156 litres, 

 deducting seed, and at two and a-half setiers that of the 

 small say seventeen bushels per acre for the one, and 

 eight and a half for the other, or altogether, for the 



* 40.466 ares = 4840 square yards, or 1 English acre ; 51 ares = about lj acres 

 English. 



