“That is exactly what I wished to make you say. The State gives the land gratis: it is inalienable. Besides, in its present condition it is valueless. Then what security has the capitalist? In our country, land is not given gratuitously; but there are people who take, or who have taken, the trouble to drain it, to make fences, to build outhouses, and who then, not having the necessary aptitude for cultivating it, put the whole property into the hands of a professional farmer, on condition of receiving a very moderate rent in proportion to the amount of capital tied up in it. Mr. George pretends that it is the land that the landlord lets to his farmer. This is absolutely false. Suppose an earthquake or some other cataclysm destroyed one of our old French farms, demolished the buildings, effaced every trace of fence, plantation, farm roads, and drainage--forced the land, in fact, to return again to the state it was in two thousand years ago, in the time of the Druids, or to the condition of the land given gratuitously by your State to the emigrants in this country--I assert that to efface all the results of this disaster, such large sums must be spent that whatever rent might be asked for, even under the most favourable circumstances, that rent would only produce a nominal interest on the capital. It is then not the soil that I let, but the result of the work and the capital that I and my predecessors have expended. I am in exactly the same position as the capitalist in Minnesota. I advance money to a professional farmer to enable him to earn his living by cultivating the land; only since I am owner of the land the farmer cannot carry off my security; I have, therefore, a good guarantee, I can be satisfied with a very small interest, which I could not be if I lived in Minnesota. “One thing is certain, that owing to this association between capitalist and cultivator, which is called tenant farming, a farmer amongst us can retain as floating capital all his available money, on which he can make eight or ten per cent., whilst he only pays three or four per cent., and often less, for the sum, usually much greater, that the landlord places at his disposal in the form of buildings and fittings up of every kind. With our system, a labourer therefore obtains money at three per cent. per annum, with yours, they must pay three per cent. per month. And you think that we are the backward nation! Allow me, dear sir, to return the compliment.” I never saw faces more astonished than those of fifteen or twenty Yankees who listened to me, seated in arm-chairs, their feet in the air. Then happened one of those incidents that appear so odd, and which, however, are so common now that every one travels. A young man, whom I had not noticed, approached me from the end of the compartment. “Sir,” he said, “for the last few minutes I seem to recognise you. Did you not speak in public last year at Tergnier upon the subject you have just been explaining?” “Yes.”