If any one is of that opinion, let him consider the phenomena of French agriculture. A century ago France seemed unable to feed her inhabitants. Thousands of the population died of starvation, even the king's own servants. Misery among the peasants and the poorer classes in towns was universal. No one imagined that the country could afford to export food, or had any idea of its vast capacity of production. Her climate is not now superior to what it was; her area is somewhat enlarged by the sagacious plantings on dunes of sand; the soil is improved by a century's tillage; the produce is more valuable, because the peasants have been taught many secrets of fruit culture. Most important of all, millions of peasants are owners of small freeholds. The "magic of property" has made them industrious, saving and ever vigilant to increase and improve the crops. We in England censure and deplore the compulsion on a French parent to divide his petty freehold and his gains equally among his children. If this be a grave evil, yet so much the more remarkable are the marvellous results of the union in one man of landlord, farmer, and labourer: for we see that by the universal and untiring industry which this fact elicits, not only were the great extravagances of the Second Empire and its wars sustained, but, in spite of the scarcely calculable losses of the Franco-German war, the fine of two hundred and fifty millions sterling, which France had to pay, was paid within four or five years, while a larger army than ever was raised and maintained. No one can dispute that the unexampled buoyancy of French finance is due mainly to the sound conditions of French landed tenure. Ireland, Scotland, and England all await a similar development, and never can be satisfied without it: but we have postponed the day of necessary reform by buying our food of almost every kind, in dangerous amount, from foreign countries, while our own arable land goes back into grass and pasture.