in France and England. 541 



cannot understand why a nation may not be as great and as 

 happy when a large portion of its population consume the 

 produce under a clear atmosphere, instead of being cooped up 

 in large towns, factories, and garrets. Be this as it may, I beg 

 the attention of your readers to the extraordinary fact, that 

 the worthy senator who pronounced the French legislators to 

 be insane, and stated so dogmatically what portion of the food 

 ought to be consumed by the rural population, entirely over- 

 looked the important circumstance, that France is a wine 

 country, and employs some millions of the country people in 

 the cultivation of the grape; and that the total yearly value of 

 the wines in France exceeds twenty-five millions sterling, an 

 amount greater than that of any three manufactures of English 

 national produce, such as wool and iron. Vineyards require 

 twenty times more hands per acre than what are wanted in 

 pasturage and tillage farms ; besides this, a great number of 

 workmen are required for cooperage and making glass bottles. 

 Wine-making, though performed by the rural population, is 

 in every respect as much entitled to be regarded as a manu- 

 facture as that of wool, of flax, or of iron. 



If the vine cultivators consume a large portion of the agri- 

 cultural produce in their neighbourhood, do they not confer 

 as great a benefit on their country in return as the consumers 

 in Manchester and Sheffield do on England, a large amount 

 of French wines being sold for exportation ? 



The above is a proof of the facility with which Englishmen 

 too often decide on what foreign nations ought to do for their 

 own happiness, without possessing a knowledge of all the cir- 

 cumstances which alone could enable them to judge correctly. 



As closely connected with the subject it may be proper to 

 state, — the fact is fully ascertained, that the average duration 

 of human life in France has been greatly prolonged since the 

 revolution, which is mainly attributed to a large portion of the 

 people being enabled, by the more equal distribution of the 

 land, to live in a state of greater comfort than formerly. 



The quantity of agricultural produce consumed in the 

 country may be less in England than it was formerly ; yet no 

 one can deny that the state of the agricultural population has 

 greatly and alarmingly deteriorated, and that crimes and pau- 

 perism have increased to an enormous extent. The solid 

 strength and prosperity of a nation ought not to be measured 

 by the greatness of its capital in the hands of a few monopolists, 

 or by the quantity of manufactured or agricultural produce 

 which it can export, but by the general comfort enjoyed, and 

 by the physical and moral condition of its inhabitants. I 

 was informed by a clergyman, who has been forty years the 



