POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 143 



tionately better. The number of pigs might have been 

 proportioned to the population. As to horses, we know 

 that Turgot, when he wished in 1776 to reorganise the 

 Posts, could not procure the six thousand draught-horses 

 he required. Quesnay makes only a passing remark about 

 the vine ; Beausobre estimates the annual production of 

 wine in 1 764 at thirteen million hectolitres''" (343,000,000 

 gallons), or a third of our present production. Upon the 

 whole, reckoning the production then at the price of the 

 present day, we find the total amount to be 1,250,000,000 

 francs (50,000,000) at most, as the value of French agri- 

 culture in 1750. 



The population also, although it was not more than 

 sixteen to eighteen million souls, had reached a degree 

 of wretchedness beyond all belief. The condition of 

 the masses was frightful ; and the upper classes suffered 

 scarcely less amidst the general poverty. Vauban, in 

 his Dime royale, gives a picture of French society which 

 makes one shudder. According to the calculation of 

 Quesnay, the net revenue of the landed proprietors 

 amounted to 76,000,000 of Hvres for the corn-lands, 

 and, including the vineyards and other productions, the 

 amount may be doubled : the livre then was about the 

 value of a franc now. The farms were let for large 

 cultivation at 5 livres per arpent, and for small at 20 

 and 30 sous say, for the first, 3s. 6d., and the latter 9d. 

 to Is. per acre. Dupre de Saint-Maur, who was a con- 

 temporary of Quesnay, even says that in Berry, part of 

 Champagne, Maine, and Poitou, the farms let at only 15 

 sous per arpent, or 6d. per acre, and at this rent the 

 farmers had great difficulty in making a livelihood. 



A frightful testimony, among many others, to this 

 general destitution is found in the Memoirs of the Mar- 



* Hectolitre = 26 wine gallons. 



