applied--as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be applied--might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total of the production to the stated amount of 30_s._ Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests of the community in which they exist? The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on either side of the question: Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious population. A man always works hardest for himself. Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance. On the other hand-- Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of consumers; and-- Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging individual properties--and the result is the production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors. At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they see no hope before them--save one--Socialism. French Socialism is simply the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a scramble. There is property--there is food--and it will go hard but he shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old song-- "Moll in the wad and I fell out, And this is what it was all about, She had money, and I had none, And that was the way the row begun." Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage might not check the evil, I am not, of course, going to inquire; but the present state of rural France--all political considerations left aside--appears to me to point to the possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing a greater and bloodier _Jacquerie_ yet than it ever saw before. THE END.