[64] The same results appeared in those parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden, in which the subdivision of the land has been carried to the greatest extent. The following extract from a letter received in January last from Brest, contains a correct description of the manner in which that part of France was affected by the dearth: “All the petty farmers are in the greatest distress, having been obliged to sell their wheat and most of their other grain in October, to pay their rents due on Michaelmas-day. The overplus in the crop of buckwheat is not sufficient to compensate for the deficiency in their stock of potatoes, and they are now living on cabbages, carrots, and a very small proportion of buckwheat. Unless some stringent measures be adopted to prevent the progressive subdivision of land in France, the country must eventually be reduced to the present state of Ireland.” It has been justly observed, that “in agriculture, as in every other industrial process, prosperity must depend upon the application of capital to production; and equal injury is done when such application of capital is prevented, either by landlords refusing to give tenants a beneficial interest in their improvements, or by a combination of pauper occupants to prevent capitalists from obtaining possession of land.” Those who take an interest in this important subject will do well to read Mr. M‘Culloch’s excellent chapter on compulsory partition, in his recently-published work “On the Succession to Property vacant by Death.” [65] The inferior condition of the peasantry in the West of England is in a great degree owing to the increased use of the potato, the cultivation of which by the poor was much encouraged by the gentry and clergy as a cheap means of subsistence during the high prices of corn in the last war. Somersetshire and Devonshire were, in fact, fast becoming potato countries; and if the blight of that vegetable had occurred twenty years later, their sufferings might have approached to those of Ireland.