522 
Rural Economy of France since 1789. 
description of tlie various modes of farminj^^, the laws of tenure, 
tlie customs of metayage, &c., (Sec, which are prevalent in that 
country. But M. de Lavergne reminds us that the object of his 
new book is not so much merely to describe French agriculture, 
but rather to trace the influence exercised upon that great in- 
terest by the period of violence and bloodshed, known by the 
name of the Great French Revolution, to which the date of 1789 
is, with questionable propriety, applied. There are people who 
look back to that period as the spring of a new era of civiliza- 
tion and material prosperity : it was, then, an enterprise of no slight 
importance to examine whether that awful period was, in itself, 
attended with benefit to French society in respect to any of its 
interests, and particularly that with which we are more es- 
pecially concerned, namel}^ — -Agriculture. 
M. de Lavergne tells us that the selection of this subject was 
not due to his own initiative ; it was the choice of that learned 
body the Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences, of 
which he is a member, and every one who is acquainted with 
this distinguished economist will readily acknowledge that a 
better pen could not have been selected for this important task ; 
nor will his warning voice be otherwise than opportune if there 
is a danger of the same errors and excesses being repeated under 
the same strangely misapplied watchwords of glory and liberty ! 
It is then Ijy no means irrelevant to the objects of agricultural 
progress, to review past history and point out the adverse or 
felicitous influences which great political changes have exerted 
upon it, carefully restricting ourselves in these pages to that one 
aspect of such events. That great epoch which abolished the 
feudal system, and wrought so many changes on the face of 
French society, naturally divides itself into two periods — the 
first comprising the enlightened administration of Maleslierbes 
and Turgot under Louis XVL ; the other (and M. de Lavergne 
very forcibly draAvs the distinction), that period which was in- 
augurated in 1793 in the Reign of Terror, and prolonged with 
but little direct benefit to agriculture up to 1814. 
The great and beneficial reforms made in the former period 
are hardly known and appreciated, merged and confounded as 
they generally are with the events of the revolutionary period. 
M. de Lavergne truly says, " Under the stigma of Ancien Reyime 
two very different epochs are often confounded. The memory of 
Louis XIV. and Louis XV. deserves the severest judgment ; 
but it is not the case with that of Louis XVI. That reign 
which so disastrously ended is, on the contrary, one of the 
most happy periods of French history, and the thirty-two years 
during which the Restoration and the Constitutional Monarchy 
of Louis Philippe lasted can alone bear a comparison with 
