MARKETS. 155 



there are two cultivators of the land for every hundred 

 of the population ; in Lancashire, six ; in the West Riding, 

 ten ; in Warwick and Staffordshire, fourteen. 



In no part of France, not even in the department of 

 the Seine, do we find such a disproportion. For an urban 

 population, what is Paris with its million of souls, com- 

 pared to the gigantic metropolis of the British empire, 

 which reckons not less than two and a half millions of 

 inhabitants 1 What is Lyons, even with its appendage 

 St Etienne, compared to that- mass of manufacturing 

 towns grouped around Liverpool and Manchester, and 

 which form in the aggregate a population of three mil- 

 lions of souls'? One-third of the English nation is con- 

 gregated on these two points London in the south, and 

 the manufacturing towns of Lancashire and the West 

 Riding in the north. 



These human ant-hills are as rich as they are numerous. 

 Many workmen in England receive from 4s. to 8s. a-day ; 

 the average wage may be reckoned at 2s. 6d. What be- 

 comes of the immense amount of wages paid to this mass 

 of workmen every year? It goes, in the first place, to 

 pay for bread, meat, beer, milk, butter, cheese, which are 

 directly supplied by agriculture, and woollen and linen 

 clothing, which it indirectly furnishes. There exists, 

 consequently, a constant demand for productions which 

 agriculture can hardly satisfy, and which is for her, in 

 some measure, an unlimited source of profit. The power 

 of these outlets is felt over the whole country ; if the 

 farmer has not a manufacturing town beside him to take 

 off his produce, he has a port ; and should he be distant 

 from both, he brings himself into connection with them 

 by canal, or by one or more lines of railway. 



These improved modes of transit not only serve to 

 carry off, rapidly and at a moderate expense, what the 



