First, Production on the large scale is cheaper than on the small; this is as true of agriculture as of other industries. The large farmer has one fixed and one movable steam-engine of his own; he has his own drills, threshing and winnowing machines, reaping and mowing machines. The petty proprietor may hire these, but at a dear rate, and few of them can work to any advantage on his small patches of corn. The large farmer has large fields; he saves area as against the petty proprietors; he has fewer headlands and fences, harbouring weeds and stopping the sun and air. The large farmer can work corn and sheep together; one shepherd and his boy will look after 500 ewes. You may travel 200 miles by rail in France and not see two flocks of sheep. Sheep-farming is seen all the world over to be an industry that pays on the large scale; and the want of it injures the corn produce of the French petty proprietor. Louis Napoleon sent Lavergne to make a report on English farming; the substance of his report is, that were France farmed on the English system by English farmers, the corn produce would be four or five times what it is now; leaving sheep out of the question. The advocates of peasant-proprietorship, at least the better informed ones, do not now suppose that a peasant receiving a few acres out of a large English average farm (and capital to make a start) could make a subsistence out of it. They believe that peasant-proprietors could maintain themselves on small plots of rich land in and close to towns, working as market-gardeners or cowkeepers rather than as farmers.