soil. As Montesquieu remarks, in his Esprit des Lois, "It is not fertility, but liberty, which cultivates a country."

Liberty has been all the more influential in England, owing to its not having been accompanied by those disorders which have too often tarnished and disgraced it elsewhere. Notwithstanding those apparent agitations which, with the most sober-minded people, the exercise of political rights always involves, the basis of English society remained tranquil. Changes which time brings about, and which constitute the life of nations, have been effected imperceptibly, and without any of those violent shocks which are always destructive to capital: even the event of 1688 had the least possible of a revolutionary character. This national moderation is usually ascribed to aristocratic influence. No doubt aristocracy had its weight in the matter, but so far only as its influence in society extends. For a long time past the British Government has seemed to be more aristocratic than it really was, but now even the appearance diminishes daily.

The true ballast of the body politic-the salt of society, that which holds it together-is the country feeling. This feeling, no doubt, is of an aristocratic kind, but it is not aristocracy itself; both may exist independently. British aristocracy has made common cause with the country feeling, and this is what constitutes its strength; French aristocracy holds itself aloof from it, and herein lies its weakness. In England, the country life of the upper classes has, in the first place, produced energetic and high-minded habits, out of which the constitution has taken its rise; and then, owing to these very habits, liberty has been prevented from running into

excesses. This liberal and conservative element has been wanting to us in France. In our own day, as formerly, absenteeism has effected, even in a political point of view, nearly all the mischief; and this is the reason why these two apparently distinct causes of prosperity-liberty without revolutions, and the country feeling-are really but one.

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CHAPTER XI.

MARKETS.

I COME now to the more immediate, the most effective of the causes which have contributed to the advancement of British agriculture; namely, the simultaneous development of the greatest industrial power, and the richest commerce in the world. These are really only part and parcel of those just mentioned, for industry and commerce, like agriculture itself, are the offspring of liberty, order, and peace; and these prime conditions originating for the most part with the rural portion of the nation, the whole may be said to proceed from this common source. But just as the consequences of liberty and peace are to be distinguished in their effects from those belonging to rural life, properly so called, so may those which proceed from industrial and commercial development be considered apart; and the latter are the most active. If it were possible for a nation to be largely engaged in manufactures and commerce without possessing either security or liberty, this of itself would be sufficient to cause great agricultural prosperity; and if it were possible for a nation to possess liberty and peace without becoming, from that sole fact alone, large manufacturers and traders, liberty and peace would not be sufficient, even with the aid of rural habits, to produce an equal amount of prosperity. Some minds, judging more from appearances than

reality, have looked upon commerce and manufactures as enemies and rivals to agriculture. This fatal error is remarkably current in France; it cannot be too much combated, as nothing is more hurtful to agricultural interests. In reality, the distinction between agriculture and manufactures is false: to bring the land into cultivation is also a manufacture, and the transport, the sale, and the purchase of agricultural produce is also a trade. Only this kind of manufacture and commerce, being altogether of prime necessity, can dispense a little more with skill and capital than the others; but then they remain in a state of infancy; and when these two powerful aids are supplied, they become a hundred times more fruitful. Even admitting the distinction which usage puts between the terms, there can be no profitable agriculture without profitable manufactures. This is in some measure a mathematical axiom, for commerce and manufactures can alone abundantly provide agriculture with the two most powerful agents of production which exist-namely, markets and capital.

From the reign of Queen Anne, England visibly takes the lead of France in manufactures and commerce-that is to say, in everything; for this advance supposes and includes all others. After the American War, when the nation, afflicted at the loss of its principal colony, sought compensation for the loss by falling back on its own resources, the start it took was unrivalled; it was then that Adam Smith appeared, and immortalised himself in a work which showed the causes of the wealth and greatness of nations. Then appeared the great inventors, Arkwright and Watt, who seem, as it were, the instruments for practically carrying out Adam Smith's theories; then William Pitt arose, to bring the same spirit into the administration of public affairs; finally, Arthur Young

and Bakewell made their appearance, only to apply the new ideas to agriculture.

The system of Arthur Young is very simple; it is comprehended in one word, the meaning of which was fixed by Adam Smith-Markets. Up to that time the English farmers had, like all those of the Continent, worked with little view to a market. Most agricultural productions were consumed on the spot by the producers themselves, and although in England more was sold for consumption beyond the farm than anywhere else, it was not export which regulated production. Arthur Young was the first who made the English agriculturists understand the increasing importance of a market; that is to say, the sale of agricultural produce to a population not contributing to produce it. This non-agricultural population, which up to that time was inconsiderable, began to develop, and since then its increase has been immense, owing to the expansion of manufactures and commerce.

Everybody knows what enormous progress the employment of steam, as a motive power, has effected in British manufactures and commerce during the last fifty years. The principal seat of this amazing activity is in the north-west of England, the county of Lancaster, and its neighbour, the West Riding of Yorkshire. There Manchester works cotton, Leeds wool, Sheffield iron, and the port of Liverpool, with its constant current of exports and imports, feeds an indefatigable production; there an incessant excavation goes on of that subterranean world, appropriately called by the English their Black Indiesan immense reservoir of coal which covers several counties with its ramifications, and throws up in all directions its inexhaustible treasures. The quantity of coal annually raised is estimated at forty millions of tons; this, at 10s. per ton, is equal to twenty millions ster