But his general distrust of colonisation by conquest in Egypt, China, Madagascar, and elsewhere had been based upon France's need for using all her strength and all her resources to build up the power of the French Republic within the limits of France. This is true of all nations at a period when the power of man over nature is increasing so rapidly in every department: perhaps, properly understood, in agriculture most of all, when science is capably applied to production on the land. That is to say, that even in countries such as England, where the cry of over-population is so frequently raised, and where the cult of colonisation and emigration has been exalted to the position of a fetish, it would be far better to devote attention to the creation of wealth at home than to the development of waste lands, however fertile, abroad. Concentration of population, given adequate regulation of employment in the interests of the whole people, and attention to the requirements of space, air and health, is not only devoid of danger but is an element in national prosperity--"nothing being more plain than that men in proper labour and employment are capable of earning more than a living," as John Bellers wrote more than two hundred years ago; and "a nation wherein are eight millions of people is more than twice as rich as the same scope of land wherein are but four," as Petty wisely stated, about the same date. If this was so obviously true at the end of the seventeenth century, it is tenfold, not to say a hundredfold, more certain in the twentieth, having regard to the marvellous discoveries and inventions since made and still but partially applied in every direction. But France is the land where such considerations are most decisive in dealing with the basis of national polity. France has enormous advantages in regard to soil, climate, the industrious habits and skill of her people, and the consequent monopoly on the world market of whole branches of commerce, where taste and luxury have to be gratified. Moreover, she possesses a source of income unparalleled in Europe and scarcely worth noting elsewhere, except in the case of Italy. I calculate that France receives, one year with another, from visitors who come thither, merely to see and to spend, an amount, by way of profit, of not less than seventy millions sterling. This large sum alone, if used for enhancing the productiveness of the French soil and French industry generally, would immensely benefit the people in every respect. French thrift, again, had piled up out of the products of industry immense pecuniary accumulations. There could have been no better investment of these funds possible than the improvement of the defences of France against invasion, the completion of her railway and canal system, the development of her mines, so greatly coveted by her aggressive neighbour, the concentration of her military and naval forces at home,