DIVISION OF PROPERTY.

CHAPTER X.

Difference between France under Napoleon and England under Cromwell-The most important question in France, the division of its property-Mr. Cobbett Junr's ride through that country.

WHEN Oliver Cromwell assumed the protectorship of England, one man succeeded to another. The sovereign changed, and not the country. When Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France, France was no longer the France of 1789. The revolutions that had mounted to the palace, had descended to the cottage. The revolutions that had ruled the capital, had traversed the provinces. As the ancient divisions of the country had been cut up into departments and arrondissements, so also the ancient properties of the country had

undergone similar transformations and divisions. It was impossible for the restoration to return to the old government and the old opinions. The moral condition of France could never be the same as it had been, for its material condition had effectually and permanently altered; the government of Louis XVI reposed on about two millions and a half of landed proprietors; the government of Louis-Philippe has the broader basis of at least five millions.

The most important question connected with France is undoubtedly this division of property.

Many are the things that have been said for and against it-most of them very exaggerated; some, very amusing.

A little book which I have once alluded to“Ride through France by Mr. Cobbett Junr." -bears artless testimony to the utter uselessness of personal observation.

A young gentleman of acute mind and much practical information sallies forth on a tour through France, in order to judge for himself of the state of that country.

Do not imagine that this young gentleman is one of your ordinary post-paying or diligencebe-darkened travellers, trusting to the breathbesmeared windows of a vehicle for the view

which is to furnish the memoranda necessary for his volume.

No more sagacious and more determined, he packs up his horse with himself, and starts, thus independently equipped, for Calais. Well; he arrives-he tells you at once the price of horsehoeing and oats; of supper, breakfast, and dinner; and, having thus appealed to your attention, sets out earnestly and heartily on his adventures.

His object, reader, is the same as yours, if you wish, as I presume, to inquire into the state of the peasantry in that land which he has undertaken to visit. Let us, then, follow him through his desultory journal; we shall be sure to pick up some useful and practical information.

For instance :

"These people-(the people at the Calais market) are well dressed: the labourers pretty much in the same fashion as the English, with smock frocks and trowsers made of linen stuff of a blue colour, and shoes and hats like the English. The women are strikingly uniform in their dress, and in wet weather all wear cloaks."

Come, this is pretty comfortable; where are we going to, and what shall we see next? Our traveller is in the neighbourhood of St. Omer:

"The dress of the women, that I see at work in the fields, is coarser than that generally worn by our labourers' wives and daughters-but it exhibits very little of that raggedness which now characterises the dress of so large a portion of those who earn their bread by hard work in England."

Let us on

"A labourer gets from one to two francs a day, according to his ability: - journeymen carpenters, bricklayers, and the like, about the same. The price of beef is eight sous (four-pence) the pound—u loaf of bread the size of an English quartern, five sous (twopence halfpenny), two fowls, two francs, (one shilling and eightpence)."

I do not think an English labourer would see much in this state of things that he would not be very kindly disposed to accept :—

But we are coming into a new country.

BRIARRE, PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS.

"The dress of the labouring people here is certainly better than that of the labourers in England."

And again, 106:

"The dress of the labourers in France is good. They wear, in all parts of the country that I have yet seen, a smock frock and trowsers of a blue colour, like the dress worn by most of the labourers in the county of Sussex. The garments of the Sussex men, however, are very frequently in a state of raggedness, which is seldom the case with those of the French.

And now for a good breakfast!

"I do not see," "" says our traveller, I why this cabbage, which had plenty of bread in it, and the wine, should not be a thousand times better for breakfast than the cold potatoes and tea which are now so fashionable among the common people of England."

CHATILLON SUR INDRE, PROVINCE OF BERRI.

§ 145." The labouring people or peasantry have usually cows of their own. Sometimes one cow, sometimes two or three cows belong to one labourer's family. They keep also pigs of their own.”

Upon my word !—

167. The bread made of rye near Tours, and which the peasantry eat, sells for one sous and a half-not quite a penny-a quartern; and is better than our finest baker's bread."

210. "Some people who have been travellers in this country exclaim, how many beggars there are in France! There are, to be sure, a great many beggars here; but I have not seen more of them in the country parts of France, than I should have seen in England had I been travelling in England along the same high road. I certainly did not see so many beggars in Paris as I have seen in London, and there is this important difference between the individual appearance of the beggars in France and England :—a very large portion of our beggars are neither aged nor infirm, while in France there is scarcely any object of this description that is not old or in some way incapable of earning a living.”

“The greater part of the English beggars beg because