A few public works, more ostentatious than useful, had been undertaken with great parade by Napoleon. Others were commenced or projected, but without results, as the war devoured all the resources of the country. These exceptional creations of an arbitrary power, glorifying itself in its works, contributed much more, like those of Louis XIV., to the splendour of the sovereign than to the greatness of the nation. France was still, to say the truth, without roads, except some royal highways, without bridges over her rivers, without flourishing ports on her coasts, almost without capital and without men. The frenzy of the Revolution and the ambition of a ruler had successively consumed the greater part of that which the labour of a great people had produced." (P. 48.) In spite of the disasters of a double invasion, peace was no sooner concluded, than an immense impulse was given to the resources of France. Since 1815, her foreign trade has quintupled, her manufactures have quadrupled, her agriculture has doubled its produce, under the influence of those three great principles of peace, justice, and freedom, which are the eternal counterpoise to the hateful effects of war, violence, and despotism. Eighty thousand miles of roads have been opened in the country; ten thousand miles of railway have been completed or are now in progress; canals have been made, rivers rendered navigable, ports and docks constructed. The progress of rural economy, especially from 1815 to 1847, kept pace with this great movement, and has not been sensibly thrown back by the unfavourable and extraordinary courses of the last few years, in spite of bad seasons, the potatoe disease, the vine disease, the mortality of the silkworm, and the disturbed state of the political world. The tenure of land has of course been modified to a considerable extent by the laws of succession established in France, but this change is less rapid and complete than is commonly imagined in England. Taking the area of France at 45,000,000 of hectares, M. de Lavergne computes that one third of the soil is still held by 50,000 large proprietors, possessing an average of 750 acres; another third by 500,000 middling proprietors possessing an average of 75 acres; and the last third by 5,000,000 of small proprietors possessing an average of 7 acres. This calculation is obviously merely approximative; but it is certain that there are in France 16,000 landowners paying 401. a-year and upwards in land tax to the state, and about 37,000 landowners paying from 201. to 40%. In the allotment of the soil it seems that since 1789 about 5,000,000 of acres have been added to the productive area of the country; vineyards and orchards and meadows have considerably increased; woods have diminished. In tillage culti vation the fallows have decreased by one half; the growth of wheat, barley, and oats has increased a third; that of rye and the inferior kinds of grain has diminished. Water-meadows have tripled in extent, and the cultivation of roots, which was hardly known in 1789, now covers 5,000,000 of acres. But the quality of the crops has risen even more than their extent. The quantity of wheat actually grown has nearly doubled; live stock has also doubled in number and value; the silk crop and the rape oil crop have quintupled. The production of home-grown sugar has come into existence, and the growth of wine has also doubled. From these facts M. de Lavergne concludes that the total value of the agricultural produce of the empire must now exceed 200,000,000l. sterling, or at the rate of about 61. per head of the population. He also infers that rents have risen since 1789 in the proportion of 12 to 30; farmers' profits in the proportion of 5 to 10; outlay in that of 1 to 5; taxes on land and dues have diminished in the proportion of 7 to 5; and labourers' wages have doubled. The subdivision of the French territory into eighty-six Departments, which was preceded by the establishment under the old French monarchy of thirty-one 'generalities,' each governed by an Intendant named by the Crown, and even the prodigious political changes of which that country has been for eighty years the theatre, have not obliterated the ancient provincial landmarks of the realm. The old names of Normandy, Britanny, Burgundy, Flanders and Provence, insensibly recur when we have to speak of the rural life and national character of these regions, for these divisions are indelibly rooted in the soil; and even the lesser provincial districts of Artois, Maine, Berri, la Sologne, Perigord, &c. may still be traced in the language or manners of the inhabitants and in the produce of the land. For the purposes of his work, M. de Lavergne, not unmindful of these ancient and natural internal boundaries of the provinces, has grouped them in six large divisions, through which he successively conducts the reader. Our limits forbid us to accompany him in this tour of France, but we shall extract some pages, beginning with the north-eastern district, in which he includes the provinces of Flanders, Artois, Picardy, Normandy, and the Isle of France, now forming fifteen departments, less favoured by climate than many other parts of the empire, but by far the most prosperous, wealthy, and civilised part of the country. For these fifteen departments, being one sixth of the realm in extent, contain 9,000,000 of inhabitants, or a quarter of the population, and these 9,000,000 inhabitants pay nearly 28,000,000l. sterling in taxes to the public treasury, exclusive of local dues and rates. It is true that the Department of the Seine and Paris itself are included in this calculation. 'The Department of the Nord, which opens the ball, is the best cultivated country in France, and one of the best cultivated in the world. I only know the counties of Leicester and Warwick in England, and Hainault in Belgium, which can be compared to it. The average produce of the land over the whole area of the department is 300 fr. an hectare (about 57. an acre), which, deducting the woods and other less profitable parts, gives 450 fr. the hectare of tillage, which is three times the average production of France. The population is at the rate of 213 inhabitants per 100 hectares. If the whole of France were as densely peopled it would contain thrice its present population. In the sort of microcosm of Europe which is to be found in France, the department of the North represents the Low Countries. The drained marshes near Dunkirk resemble those of Holland; the rest of the country is a continuation of Belgium. The country is generally flat; the climate damp and foggy. The stratum of arable land, a mixture of clay and sand with a calcareous subsoil, is deep and rich; in some places too sandy, in others marshy; but these drawbacks have been corrected by active industry. It would seem that these dark and dreary regions, where water is for ever permeating the air and the soil, are the best adapted to the growth of the human race, since it is always in them that population reaches its maximum. Such as it is, the agriculture of Flanders has no rival, or at least no superior. Notwithstanding the wealth continually raised by it, the fertility of the land still increases. The reason is that the domestic animals take a large share in this splendid development of life. The Flemish cart-horses are well known. The Flemish cows are some of the best milkers known; this department contains 200,000 of them. Sheep are not numerous, but enormous. Pigs, poultry, and the domestic animals, all in the same proportion. This multitude of animals produce immense quantities of manure. But the Flemish farmers are not satisfied with this class of manure only: they use the sweepings of the streets, the residue of the oil mills, bones, sea sand, and especially one peculiar sort of application, which no other people prepare and use with equal skill, I mean night-soil. This manure, which is rejected with disgust by many countries, and especially by the English (who are beginning to think better of it), is a most powerful fertilising element, and to waste it is to throw away a vast amount of wealth. This manure has enabled the Flemish farmers to extend their exhausting crops, without impairing the fertility of their land, and to exceed even the English in productive power. Whilst England devotes three-quarters of her area to the grazing of cattle, Flanders employs only one quarter: yet she has in proportion a larger head of stock; the difference is made up by the application of night-soil.' (Pp. 73-5.) This magnificent cultivation is probably the oldest of the kind in Europe, for it was in full activity in 1776, and it was described with enthusiasm by Arthur Young in 1789. Flanders had in fact nothing in common with France, to which it had been comparatively recently annexed, and Arthur Young remarked that the old boundary of the province and the kingdom might still be traced in his time by the good and bad farming. One highly important element of agricultural prosperity has, however, been added to the province since 1789, which is less familiar to our English readers: 'In the first class of these productions must be ranked one created in the present century, and which takes rank as the finest agricultural conquest of our age, beet-root sugar. The invention was made in Prussia, and in 1799 a chemist at Berlin had produced some native-grown loaves of sugar. In 1809, during the war, it was introduced into France; the peace of 1815, by reopening the colonial trade, gave it a check, but it has ever since gone on to improve. Of 350 manufactories of home-grown sugar in France, 150 are in the department of the North. It might be apprehended, at first, that the production of beetroot sugar would be injurious to the production of meat and corn, by employing and exhausting the best lands. But this apprehension turns out to be unfounded, at least in well-cultivated districts. It is now demonstrated that the manufacture of sugar not only creates a new source of profit, but also augments the other produce of the soil. The extraction of saccharine matter from the root only takes away a portion of its substance; the pulp and the leaves are excellent fodder for cattle, and the profits of the sugar houses cover the expense of abundant artificial manures. In 1853 the city of Valenciennes, which is the chief seat of this trade, inscribed on a triumphal arch these words: ""Growth of corn in the district before the introduction of sugar works, 353,000 hectolitres; head of cattle, 700. Since the introduction of sugar-works, corn, 421,000 hectolitres; cattle, 11,500 head." This piece of statistics may admit of a reply, inasmuch as it is not certain that the increase of corn and cattle would not have been still greater in forty years, if the Flemish farmers had applied themselves to those objects exclusively. The English do not grow sugar, but the happy alternation of beef and bread, by the commixture of pasturage and tillage, has also made immense progress in England. In any case, however, this department succeeds, by the extent of its manures, in cultivating 20,000 hectares of beetroot, each hectare bringing in 40l., 807., or 120l. of gross return. No other crop produces so much in the same area. It is the highest exploit of our rural industry. By dint of a careful choice of seeds, artificial varieties of the beetroot have been created, which produce far more sugar than the old kinds. The famous principle of selection may thus be applied to plants as well as to animals, and extend to unknown limits. the victories of man over nature. 'Oleaginous seeds, rape and others, cover about 20,000 hectares, flax 10,000, giving on an average 401. the hectare; some flax lands have returned as much as 2001., and even 2407. a hectare. The growth of corn per acre is equal to that of England. In the districts of Lille and Valenciennes the average rent of land is at least 150 fr. the hectare (27. 10s. an acre); in those of Dunkirk, Hagebrouck, Cambrai, and Douai, 100 fr. Besides sugar, the country has other lucrative rural manufactures, such as the preparation of potato starch, breweries, oil mills, and distilleries. During the late scarcity the government prohibited distilling from grain, a measure to be regretted, since the more numerous are the purposes to which corn crops can be applied, the more profitable it is to grow them, and the more will be grown. per Unhappily the highly profitable (small) culture has a radical defect which restores the balance in favour of the English system of husbandry, the excess of the rural population. In spite of these resources of manufactures and trade, those who live by husbandry alone form about half the population, at a ratio of 100 100 hectares, which is more than in any other country except perhaps in China. This superabundance of hands is not a necessary consequence of small farming, but it is the natural tendency of it. If Flanders produces more than England in proportion to its extent, it produces only half as much in proportion to its population. There are nowhere so many paupers as in this rich and fertile country. The city of Lille is deplorably distinguished by the fact that one third of its inhabitants are assisted by public charity; and in many of the rural townships the proportion is equally great. This curse of pauperism materially diminishes the splendour of these finely cultivated districts.' (Pp. 79-83.) M. de Lavergne's testimony on this last point is the more valuable as he is, upon the whole, a strong advocate for small farms, and the subdivision of land, when not carried (as it is in Alsatia) to excess. But the truth is that the relative merits of small and large occupations depend very much on the nature of the soil and produce. In the mountainous regions of the Jura, of the Doubs, and the Vosges, results have been attained by the cottier system which would probably have been impossible on a large estate. In the Vosges especially, the intelligent reforms introduced fifty years ago by the good Pastor Oberlin in the Ban de la Roche, and imitated by an equally virtuous Catholic priest at Gérardmer, have proved in the highest degree beneficial to the pastoral and industrious population. But in the great plains and valleys under tillage, M. de Lavergne himself quotes numerous examples of farms of from 300 to 600 acres, as the best examples of rural economy in France. The best test of the success of the cultivation and manufac- B B |