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tinuous progression; so that when we at length did make an effort onwards, she had got the start of us by three-quarters of a century." (p. 158.)

The author affirms that, two hundred years since, France was, in every respect, in a better state than England, not even excepting what regarded agriculture. Sully, to be sure, formed, in his time, the very antithesis of our modern statesman. He would, we verily think, have hung up the "Bagman," if he had caught him jogging along the highway, instead of crowning him with civic garlands as we now do. On the other hand, Sully was a warm patron of the plough, promoting agricultural industry with all his power, and that with the happiest success.

"A writer of that period, Olivier de Serres, has bequeathed to us an admirable work, attesting the universal élan (or movement forward); the author, a Protestant nobleman, Seigneur of Pradel in the Vivarais, had lived retired on his country estates during the religious and political troubles of those times." His book was dedicated to Henri Quatre, and M. Lavergne pronounces it not only the most ancient, but the best treatise extant in modern language! (p. 159.)

"All recognised maxims of good farming were already known to the contemporaries of Olivier, and his precepts might well serve to guide our own cultivators of to-day." (p. 160.)

Why France did not persevere in the path of scientific cultivation, and what calamitous hindrances arose on that path, M. Lavergne briefly but impressively explains. We would advise our readers to study this portion of his work carefully. A whole book

could not more clearly trace the course of national decline, and its incontestable causes, than this truly mournful chapter of only a few pages.

About the period at which Olivier produced his valuable book on Agriculture, French gentlemen of rank and condition habitually spent their lives on their "Terres;" forming, with the labouring classes, a social whole, now remembered only by faint traditions, but the disappearance of which M. Lavergne regards as a national misfortune.* We happen to have also heard an eminent French writer (M. Alexis de Tocqueville) state this fact as incontestable, adding that the "débris" of hundreds of country "chateaux," as well as of lesser residences (termed in the provinces "Gentilhommeries"), still exist in all parts of France. So that the taste for country life was, at a period not farther removed from us than a hundred and fifty years, probably as widely diffused among our neighbours as amongst our own people. We have already said that agriculture, according to M. Lavergne's opinion, was decidedly better understood by the French than by the English during the seventeenth century, the former even supplying us with corn out of their abundance (p. 162). Subsequently, however, the picture becomes reversed. Having achieved our great change, from enslavement to constitutional government, in 1688, English productive industry "draws ahead," whilst the exhausting effect of Louis XIV.'s prodigality, with his reckless extortion of the means of expenditure from his too patient people, becomes painfully manifest. During

*Note on Madame de Sévigné.

the latter half of the eighteenth century it is England which supplies France, and that to a considerable

extent.

A contrast is thus drawn between the then condition of the two nations:-"The English people, happy, and proud of their government, confiding in its protection, and labouring with activity; our people, ruined, humiliated, oppressed; turning aside from industrial occupations of which they are not permitted to enjoy the fruits, and feeling towards their rulers nothing but hatred and contempt." (p. 162.)

It is pleasing to observe with what admiration this intelligent writer regards the course of our past domestic history; but we are sadly afraid that a closer acquaintance with the internal economy of England— still more that of Scotland and Ireland-during the eighteenth century, would dispel much of the envy with which our institutions are viewed. For the conduct of the Government during that century, especially during the whole reign of George II. and the earlier portion of the reign of George III., was in every way disentitled to the respect and affection of the English people. Indeed, the interesting contributions to our domestic history which have made their appearance, in the shape of personal memoirs, during the last twenty years, supply ample evidence of how little we owe to the paternal care of our monarchs, or the purity and wise administration of our ministers, until the period when the reins of power were grasped by the younger Pitt.

The distinguishing, and in fact the most valuable attribute of the English Government, is its non-interference with individual action: that is to say, it suffers

its subjects to produce at their discretion; protecting the results of such industry by law, taking for State purposes but a fraction of them, and this only through and with the consent of the Commons House of Parliament. The check thus exercised over the expenditure of the State absolutely regulates the amount of our military force; and it was to this vital element of security, more than to anything else, that we formerly owed the preservation of our political liberties. No one but a native Englishman comprehends how infinitely small is the direct action of the executive government in this kingdom. Four-fifths of the prodigious progress made in the arts of life, and in the scientific application of the capacities of nature to production, have been effected by private citizens. The incessant working of the British mind in a practical direction leads to a gigantic total of results, such as could never be reached by any but a free community, it is true; but it is the character of the people and not their government which has achieved the social greatness of England. Whether our mercurial neighbours would ever devote themselves, body and soul, to the work of enriching themselves, at the price of sacrificing the taste for present enjoyment, as well as of stifling the development of the imaginative faculty, it very difficult to conjecture. Our impression is that they would not, under any system of government, become the slaves of that passion for acquiring wealth by which most Englishmen are subjugated.

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For example, here is a man, himself lately a professor of agronomic science, who, although his studies lead him to feel the liveliest interest in the march of productive cultivation, nevertheless finds, in the

actual position of England, no small ground for healthy regret at beholding the changes which are creeping over her rural features.

Although a master of "Tabular demonstration," and a skilful hand at statistical computations, his French turn of thought revolts at the eternal apparition of "the shop." Poetical sentiment is never wholly smothered by the balance sheet, whilst the growing necessity of drugging mother earth, and of dosing her with nasty compounds, turns his heart chilly. M. Lavergne not being an Englishman, he can see that which no native sees, or rather that which no native chooses to see-i.e., the inconvenience resulting from a superabundant population. It is this ever-present fact which lies at the bottom of half the difficulties of our internal administration; including that of the countless larvæ of infant felonry with which no vigilance, no legislative apparatus ever can effectually cope, at least in free England. And it is not less the parent of those ingenious devices which science is now invoked to apply to the latent capacity of the earth. After adverting to the stupendous laboratory of Mr. Lawes, near St. Albans, for compounding medicaments wherewith to whip up nature, exhausted by the ordinary methods of production, M. Lavergne goes on to say:

"That which sufficed yesterday will not satisfy the wants of to-day. The produce of to-day will fall short of the morrow's demand. Fresh calls must be made upon the earth, our common parent, for additional treasures, and unless she can be forced to yield them, famine, depopulation, and death await us."

And a little further on he remarks that, "such is the growing conviction in England of the necessity of

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