In the French rural districts the aristocracy are very well known individually, and esteemed or not according to their personal qualities. When they are just to their tenants and kind to the poor, these merits are fully acknowledged, and the great folks are regarded with respect and even affection. “_C’est un bon Monsieur_” the peasants will say of the squire, or, if they include his family, “_Ce sont de braves gens, c’est du bon monde_.” I know an honest French gentleman and his wife who are always ready with kindness and money when there is any case of real distress, and I do not believe that there is any country in the world where they would be more esteemed than they are in their own neighbourhood. [Sidenote: Absence of Familiarity in France.] I have never known, in France, anything like the Lancashire familiarity in speaking of the rich. The greatest landowner is always either called by his title or at least gets the usual “Monsieur.” He is “Monsieur le Marquis” or “Monsieur de ----,” and often, with a mixture of local feeling and respect, he is “Notre Monsieur,” to distinguish him from other people’s Messieurs. I never in my life heard a French peasant call a country gentleman by his bare name, or by his Christian name only. I know all the tenants on an estate where the rents were raised in a manner that created the greatest dissatisfaction, but, whilst expressing this dissatisfaction in just and straightforward language, the tenants never infused any hatred into their talk, nor did they abandon the usual respectful form in speaking of the landlord. They said that he was hard with them, and that he was acting against his own interest, which he did not seem to understand, as it was impossible for a tenant to work the farms permanently on the new terms. This is the whole substance of what they said, the complete expression of their “savage enmity.” [Sidenote: Wealth not an Objection in Parliamentary Candidates.] At election times I never found that it was a ground of objection to a republican candidate that he was a rich man. There has been a sort of understanding amongst many reactionary rich people in France, of late years, to give as little employment as possible to the wage-earning classes, in order to punish them for voting in favour of republican candidates. The poor resent this attempt to starve them into political subservience, a feeling which is entirely distinct from hatred to the rich as a class. Rich men who continue to give employment are, from contrast, better liked than ever. [Sidenote: Wealth and National Defence.] [Sidenote: Unorganised Wealth Valueless in War.]