respective periods towards, supplying the prime necessities of life. He reckons that thirteen and a half hectolitres (the hectolitre is 2,83 bushels) of wheat, has been about the quantity of grain needed for the consumption of a family-needed more during the earlier than the latter periods, because its want is now, in a great degree, obviated by a variety of garden vegetables, formerly unknown or very little cultivated. He constructs a table giving the mean price of wheat, deduced from an average of the market for long series of years, under each reign, as follows: "The result of a comparison of the annual earnings of a family of agricultural laborers, with the cost of thirteen and a half hectolitres of wheat required for their annual consumption, is given in the following table : "During the reign of the Grand Monarque, the rural population of France wanted bread half of the time. Under the sway of Louis XV., it had bread two days out of three. Sufficient progress had been made under Louis XVI, to give it bread three-fourths of the year; while, under the Empire and the rule of the Citizen King, wages were sufficient to supply the laborer with bread through the year, and leave a surplus towards procuring other food and clothing. Doubtless, the laboring classes at the earliest period obtained food enough, such as it was, to support animal life, and made shift to get some clothing also. But their bread was made of the inferior grains, chestnuts, and even worse materials. De Jonnès quotes the Marquis d'Argenson, one of the ministers of Louis XV., as saying, in 1739, 'At the moment when I write, in the month of February, in the midst of peace, with appearances promising a harvest, if not abundant at least passable, men die around us like flies, and are reduced by poverty to eat grass.' He ascribes their condition to excessive taxation, declaring that the kingdom was treated like an enemy's country laid under military contribution. The Duke of Orleans, to bring the condition of his people to the knowledge of the sovereign, finally carried a loaf of fern bread to the meeting of the king's council, and at the opening of the session laid it before his Majesty, saying, 'See, Sire, what your subjects live upon.' This may be regarded as an exceptional case; but a very small portion even of well-read men, at the present day, have any adequate impression of the wretchedness of the food upon which the mass of the people of Europe fed a century and a half ago, and which even now makes the subsistence of a large portion of them.* De Jonnès says of his countrymen, in the year of grace 1850, ‘A large part of the population of our rural districts continue, from habit and from necessity, to feed upon a detestable bread, an indigestible mixture of rye, barley, bran, beans, and potatoes, which is neither leavened nor cooked sufficiently;' and Blanqui, who, under a commission of the Institute, has for two years past been journeying through the provinces to examine into and report upon their condition, declares that they alone who have seen it, can conceive the degree in which the clothing, furniture, and food of the rural population are slender and sorry. An official report for 1845, of the number of houses in France subject to the doorand-window tax, shows that there are, in all, 7,519,310 housesof which 500,000 have only one aperture, 2,000,000 with only two, and 1,500,000 with from four to five. Two-sevenths only of the whole have six or more openings. Thus are the French people lodged. "We can obtain, however, a more complete idea of the general destitution of France, from the estimate of Michel Chevalier, that the sum total of value annually produced in that country, if equally divided among its inhabitants, would give an average of "* According to a Report of the Central Agricultural Congress, at Paris, published in the Journal des Debats, March 30, 1847, it appears that in 1760 only 7,000,000 of the French people lived on wheat and corn; while, in 1843, 20,000,000 lived on wheat and corn, and the remainder were much better nourished than in the former period." less than 63 centimes (about 12 cents) to each. Such is the fruit of tyrannous misgovernment: that it was greatly worse than this previous to the Revolution of 1793, may serve to show how much that revolution was needed, and how cheap a price it was, with all its crimes and horrors, for the improvement that has followed. "We were led to this digression, because the thought would naturally rise, in the mind of an American reader, that the agricultural laborers must have had bread every day at a period when, according to the statistics of De Jonnès, their wages would only furnish it for half the time. The objection is obviated when we see that they fed on something far different from wheaten bread, which is taken as the measure of the capacity of their wages to supply food. "Recurring now to the tables for the purpose for which they were adduced, we see that they prove a great advance, both in the absolute amount of wages, and in the proportion which they bear to the entire product, and to the share of the capitalist. The proportion to the entire product has almost doubled in one hundred and fifty years, having risen from 35 per cent. to 60. As between the laborers and the capitalists, it was, in 1700, 35 per cent. to the former, and 65 to the latter. It is now 60 per cent. to the former, and 40 to the latter, who, instead of getting two-thirds of the product-twice as much as the laborers-now get but twofifths, leaving the laborers three-fifths, or 50 per cent. more than the capitalists. But, although the latter get a diminished proportion, the increased efficiency of labor and capital has made the crop so much greater, that this diminished proportion yields an amount not only absolutely greater, but greater relatively to the increased population. This is readily shown by a few figures, deduced from the tables of M. Jonnès. Taking for comparison the two extremes, we find the following results : "From this it appears that, notwithstanding the laborers are so much better paid three and two-third times more than in 1700 (or, rather, because they are so much better paid,) the remainder, left to be divided among the capitalists and non-agricultural classes, is larger than before, and they fare better also. The entire population of France lacks three millions of having doubled, while the crop has nearly quadrupled; so that, on an equal distribution, there is now twice as much for each mouth as in 1700. But, looking to the actual distribution, now and then, we see that while the non-agricultural population has increased 100 per cent., the surplus left, after paying the agricultual laborers their increased wages and enlarged proportion, has increased 127 per cent. This is the state of the case, the comparison being made in money. If it is desired to estimate it in food, we have the necessary elements of calculation, when we know that the mean price of wheat at the first epoch was 18 francs 85 centimes per hectolitre, while at the latter it was 19 francs 3 centimes — a difference of less than two cents a bushel. If it should be objected that these figures do not show how much goes to the landlord in his quality of owner of the soil, and how much to the man who advances capital in the shape of seed, tools, &c. for its cultivation, the answer is, that the proportion of the crop which pays both is less than formerly: if the landlord took the whole, it would be a less share than both obtained in 1700; and if he now gets nothing in his quality of proprietor of land, leaving the whole to remunerate himself or third persons for the use of capital other than land, it is less in ratio than he originally received for the use of the land and all the other capital employed in tilling it. "The operation of the law is indicated by a comparison of different portions of France. It is,' says Passy, a country of contrasts. There are departments which seem to have made no agricultural progress for a century; there are others whose agriculture is not behind that of the most advanced countries of Europe. In the departments most backward, the expenses of cultivation do not exceed an average of 30 francs to the hectare, (2,7 acres,) and the gross revenue is about 70 francs. In the advanced departments, on the contrary, the expenditure amounts to 200 francs and over to the hectare; and at this cost a gross product is realized of at least 320 francs, leaving the farmers, as well to pay the rent as for their own profits, about 120 francs. In the latter, the excess of the produce above the cost of produc tion is three times that of the former; but it requires nearly seven times the amount of advances of capital.'* The capitalists, who obtain for rent and profits four-sevenths of the value of the crop, have but one-third the amount received by those whose proportion is but three-eighths. The remaining five-eighths, which the latter expend in the wages of laborers and the improvement of the soil, is five times as much in amount as is furnished for those objects in the poorer departments. Decreasing proportion for the capitalists, with increasing quantity, is thus exhibited, as well by the comparison between different districts of the same country, as by that of the country at large in different stages of its progress. The converse of the proposition must clearly hold in respect to the wages of labor; and, after better wages have been provided for the existing laborers, there is still three times the amount to be added to the capital of the advanced departments, and to furnish wages for new laborers in the advanced departments, that the more backward could supply. Instead of population encroaching upon the limits of subsistence, those limits recede before the advance of population." France is "a country of contrasts"— resulting from excessive political centralization. The proportion of the proceeds of labor required for governmental purposes, is prodigiously great, and nearly all of it has to seek the capital before it is again distributed. Paris grows, therefore, with unnatural rapidity — the population of the department of the Seine having increased in the last half century from six hundred thousand to more than a million and a half- and all the measures of government tending to produce, and to extend, the same effect. The question, however, is not so much one of existing condition, as of progress; and the facts above given show conclusively that the agricultural population of France is steadily and rapidly improving in its condition thus proving that societary decentralization is gradually correcting the errors of an unsound political system. † *Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, vol. i. p. 38; article, Agriculture. "France has two great armies of nearly equal force the one holding the pen, and the other the sword. Of sixteen men, there is one paid public functionary: if we count the soldiers and the sailors, one man out of nine derives his support from the budget of the state, the departments, or the communes." This state of things has a doubly disas trous effect: not only that agricultural France exhausts itself in paying so many people, but that the elite of the population, instead of giving its means, * * * |