cting the law
of succession to landed property in our own country. Not that any
English economist would go so far as to advocate the French system of
compulsory subdivision, which owes its existence in great measure to the
policy of the first Napoleon,--who took care, with the instinct of a
true despot, to secure the solitary power of the throne against the
growth of an independent class of wealthy proprietors. All that English
economists contemplate is the abolition of primogeniture and entail. I
must not found any conclusion on observations so partial and cursory as
those which I was able to make; but I suspect that the French peasant is
better off than the English laborer. He is not better housed, clothed,
or fed; perhaps not so well housed, clothed, or fed. He eats black
bread, which the English peasant would reject, and clumps about in
wooden shoes, which the English laborer would regard with horror; but
this, according to statements which I have heard, and am inclined to
trust, arises, generally speaking, not so much from indigence as from
self-denying frugality, pushed to an extreme. The French peasant is the
possessor of property, and has a passion, almost a mania, for
acquisition. He saves money and subscribes to government loans, which
are judiciously brought out in very small shares, so as to draw forth
his little hoard, and thus bind him as a creditor to the interest of the
Empire. The cottage of the peasant which I entered on my way to Ducie
was very mean and comfortless, and the food which his hospitality
offered me was of the coarsest kind. But he had a valuable mare and
foal; his yard was full of poultry; and his orchard showed, for a bad
season, a fair crop of apples. There are some large estates, the result
frequently of great fortunes made in trade. Not far from the place
where the high-born lords of the Chateau de Montgomeri once reigned, a
chocolate-merchant had bought broad lands, and built himself a princely
mansion. I should have thought that the great proprietors would have
crushed the small; but I was assured that the two systems went on very
well side by side. But this is a matter for exact inquiry, not for
casual remark. The population in France is stationary, or nearly so,
while that of England increases rapidly; and this is an important
element in the question, and itself raises questions of a difficult,
perhaps of a disagreeable kind.

The cares of proprietorship must necessarily interfere