cians; my hair-dresser this morning tells me that everybody is determined to pay no taxes, should the National Assembly so ordain. But the soldiers, I said, will have something to say. No, Sir, never be assured that French soldiers will never fire on the people. If they should, it is better to be shot than starved. He gave me a frightful account of the misery of the people: whole families in the utmost distress; those that work have pay insufficient to feed them, and many find it difficult to get work at all.

Walking up a long hill, to ease my horse, I was joined by a poor woman, who complained of the times and said that it was a sad country. Asking her reasons, she said her husband had but a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse, yet they had forty-two pounds of wheat and three chickens to pay as a quit-rent to one noble; and one hundred and sixtyeight pounds of oats to pay to another, besides very heavy taxes. She had seven children, and the cow's milk helped to make the soup. But why, instead of a horse, do not you keep another cow? Oh, her husband could not carry his produce so well without a horse; and asses are little used in the country. It was said, at present, that something was to be done by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who nor how, but God send us better times, "for the taxes and the duties crush us."

This woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy years of age, her figure was so bent and her face so furrowed and hardened by labor - but she said she was only twenty-eight. An Englishman, who has not traveled, cannot imagine the figure made by the greater part of the countrywomen in France; it indicates, at the first sight, hard and severe labor. I am inclined to think that they work harder than the men, and this, united with the more miserable labor of bringing a new race of slaves into the world, destroys absolutely all symmetry of person and every feminine appearance. To what are we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower people in the two kingdoms? To Government.

145. Poor Cultivation of the Land 1

Leaving Sauve, I was much struck with a large tract of land, seemingly nothing but huge rocks; yet most of it inclosed and planted with the most industrious attention. Every man has an olive, a mulberry, an almond, or a peach tree, and vines scattered among them; so that the whole ground is covered with the oddest mixture of these plants that can be conceived. The inhabitants of this village deserve encouragement for their industry; and if I was a French minister, they should have it. They would soon turn all the deserts around them into gardens. From Gange to the mountain of rough ground which I crossed, the ride has been the most interesting which I have taken in France; the efforts of industry the most vigorous; the animation the most lively. An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it, and has clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause: the enjoyment of property must have done it. Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden and he will convert it into a desert.

Take the road to Monein, and come presently to a scene which was so new to me in France that I could hardly believe my eyes. A succession of many well constructed, tight, and comfortable farming cottages, built of stone and covered with tiles; each having its little garden, inclosed by clipt thorn hedges, with plenty of peach and other fruit trees, some fine oaks scattered in the hedges, and young trees nursed up with so much care that nothing but the fostering attention of the owner could effect anything like it. To every house belongs a farm, perfectly well inclosed, with grass borders mown and neatly kept around the corn fields, and with gates to pass from one inclosure to another. . . . The land is all in the hands of little proprietors, without the farms being so small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. An air of neatness, warmth,

1 Young, Travels in France, pp. 53, 54, 61, 70–71, 72.

and comfort breathes over the whole. It is visible in their newly built houses and stables; in their little gardens; in their hedges; in the courts before their doors; even in the coops for their poultry and the sties for their hogs. A peasant does not think of rendering his pig comfortable, if his own happiness hangs by the thread of a nine years' lease. We are now in Béarn, within a few miles of the cradle of Henry IV.1 Do they inherit these blessings from that good prince? The benignant genius of that good monarch seems to reign still over the country; each peasant has "the fowl in the pot."

In this thirty-seven miles of country, lying between the great rivers Garonne, Dordogne, and Charente, and consequently in one of the best parts of France for markets, the quantity of waste land is surprising: it is the predominant feature the whole way. Much of these wastes belonged to the prince de Soubise, who would not sell any part of them. Thus it is whenever you stumble on a grand seigneur, even one that was worth millions, you are sure to find his property a desert. The duke of Bouillon's and this prince's are two of the greatest properties in France; and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are wastes and deserts. Go to their residences, wherever they may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boars, and wolves. Oh! if I was the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip again.

Poitou, from what I see of it, is an unimproved, poor, and ugly country. It seems to want communication, demand, and activity of all kinds; nor does it, on an average, yield the half of what it might.

146. Extravagant Expenditures 2

In this journey through Languedoc I have passed an incredible number of splendid bridges and many superb causeways. But this only proves the absurdity and oppression of govern1 Henry of Navarre, king of France, 1589-1610.

2 Young, Travels in France, pp. 58, 92, 132.

ment. Bridges that cost 70,000 or 80,000 pounds and immense causeways to connect towns, that have no better inns than such as I have described, appear to be gross absurdities. They cannot be made for the mere use of the inhabitants, because one-fourth of the expense would answer the purpose of real utility. They are therefore objects of public magnificence, and consequently for the eye of travelers. But what traveler, with his person surrounded by the beggarly filth of an inn, and with all his senses offended, will not condemn such inconsistencies as folly, and will not wish for more comfort and less appearance of splendor.

To the Benedictine abbey of St.-Germain, to see pillars of African marble. It is the richest abbey in France; the abbot has an income of over thirteen thousand pounds a year. I lose my patience at such revenues being thus bestowed; consistent with the spirit of the tenth century, but not with that of the eighteenth. What a noble farm would the fourth of this income establish! What turnips, what cabbages, what potatoes, what clover, what sheep, what wool! Are not these things better than a fat ecclesiastic? If an active English farmer was mounted behind this abbot, I think he would do more good to France with half the income than half the abbots of the kingdom with the whole of theirs.

Arrive at the great commercial city of Nantes. Go to the theater, newly built of fine white stone, with a magnificent portico front of eight elegant Corinthian pillars, and four others within, to part the portico from a grand vestibule. Within all is gold and painting. It is, I believe, twice as large as Drury Lane,1 and five times as magnificent. The day was Sunday, and the theater was therefore full. Mon Dieu! cried I to myself, do all the wastes, the deserts, the heath, furz, broom, and bog, that I have passed for three hundred miles, lead to this spectacle? What a miracle, that all this splendor and wealth of the cities in France should be so unconnected with the country! There are no gentle transitions: at once from beggary to pro

1 A famous London play-house.

...

fusion. . . . The country is deserted, or, if a gentleman is in it, you find him in some wretched hole, to save that money which is lavished with profusion in the luxuries of a capital.

147. Defective Administration of Justice 1

Take the road to Lourdes, where is a castle on a rock, garrisoned for the mere purpose of keeping state prisoners, sent hither by lettres de cachet. Seven or eight are known to be here at present; thirty have been here at a time; and many for life. They were torn by the hand of jealous tyranny from the bosom of domestic comfort; from wives, children, friends, and hurried for crimes unknown to themselves more probably for virtues to languish in this detested abode of misery and die of despair. Oh, liberty! liberty! - and yet this is the mildest government of any considerable country in Europe, our own excepted. The dispensations of Providence seem to have permitted the human race to exist only as the prey of tyrants, as it has made pigeons for the prey of hawks.

I was sorry to see, at the village, a pillory erected, to which a chain and heavy iron collar are fastened, as a mark of the lordly arrogance of the nobility and the slavery of the people. I asked why it was not burned, with the horror it merited? The question did not excite the surprise I expected, and which it would have done before the French Revolution.2 This led to a conversation, by which I learned that in the High Savoy there are no seigneurs, and the people are generally at their ease; possessing little properties, and the land in spite of nature almost as valuable as in the lower country, where the people are poor and ill at their ease. I demanded why? "Because there are seigneurs everywhere." What a vice is it, and even a curse, that the gentry, instead of being the cherishers and benefactors of their poor neighbors, should thus, by the abomination of feudal rights, prove mere tyrants. Will nothing but revolutions, which cause their châteaux to be burnt, induce 1 Young, Travels in France, pp. 60, 278-279.

2 This entry in Young's journal is under date December 24, 1789.