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And then continuing, "being much on a level among themselves, and possessing enough to supply their temperate wants, they feel no degradation. We spend our lives in painful endeavours to advance ourselves and our children; having no means of improving their condition, they submit to necessity, and spend their lives contentedly."

I do not accept Mr. Birkbeck's opinion as a decisive one-his pamphlet, though able, contains many contradictions; but I say, "Ought any one, quoting one sentence, in proof of the French people being miserable, to leave out the next sentence, which says that they are happy?" If a people are morally happier by being materially poorer, (the case as stated by Mr. Birkbeck), it is as interesting to the statesman and the legislator to know that this people is happy, as it is to know that this people is poor.

But I just wish persons to see what kind of authority Mr. Birkbeck is, for " the prominent evils in the social condition of the people of France."

At the very entrance of this gentleman into France, he exclaims at once, p. 5, "There is more appearance of enjoyment and less of posi

tive suffering than I ever beheld before, or had any conception of.

P. 11.-"Every object denotes prosperity and comfort. Since I entered the country, I have been looking in all directions for the ruins of France; for the horrible effects of the revolution, of which so much is said on our side of the water; but instead of a ruined country, I see fields highly cultivated and towns full of inhabitants.

"No houses tumbling down or empty-no ragged, wretched looking people!

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"I have inquired, and every body assures me, that agriculture has been improving rapidly for the last twenty-five years; that the riches and comforts of the cultivators of the soil have been doubled since that period; and that vast improvement has taken place in the condition and character of the common people. On my first landing, I was struck with the respectable appearance of the working class; I see the same marks of comfort and plenty wherever I proceed. I ask for the wretched peasantry, of whom I have heard and read so much; but I am always referred to the revolution; it seems they vanished then."

Again-p. 22.

"The labouring class, here, is certainly much higher on the social scale than with us. Every opportunity of collecting information, on this subject, confirms my first impression that there are very few really poor people in France. In England, a poor man and a labourer are synonymous terms; we speak familiarly of the poor, meaning the labouring class; not so here."

But you will say, "Mr. Birkbeck's evidence may still be against the division of property, and he may attribute this prosperity to some other evident cause." Just hearken to the sentence following that I have just quoted!

"I have now learnt enough to explain this difference; and having received the same information from EVERY quarter, there is no reason to doubt its correctness."

"The national domains, consisting of the confiscated estates of the church, and the emigrant nobility, were exposed to sale during the pecuniary distresses of the revolutionary government, in small portions, for the accommodation of the lowest orders of purchasers, and five years allowed for completing the payment. indulgence, joined to the depreciation of assignats, enabled the poorest description of persons, to become proprietors, and such they are almost

This

universally; possessing from one to ten acres.*

"And as the education of the poor was sedulously promoted during the early years of the revolution, their great advance in character, as well as condition, is no mystery."

P. 30.-From St. Pierre to Moulins-the lower classes appear less comfortable; an old enclosed country, which probably furnished no small allotments for the poor, on the sale of the national domains.

"I find, as I suspected from their appearance, that few of the peasantry here are proprietors." P. 51. Montpellier.

"From Dieppe to this place, we have seen scarcely a working animal whose condition was not excellent. Oxen, horses, and now mules and asses, fat and well-looking, but not pampered. This looks like prosperity. And when I add that we have not seen, among the labouring people, one such famished, worn-out, wretched object, as may be met with in every parish of England, I had almost said in every farm; this, in a country so populous, so en

It will be seen that here there is another contradiction in Mr. Macculloch's authorities:

Mr. Birkbeck gives the very state of things which followed the revolution of 89, (which the Duc de la Rochefoucault spoke of as an evil,) as an advantage.

tirely agricultural, denotes real prosperity. Again, from Dieppe to this place, I could not easily point out an acre of waste, a spot of land that is not industriously cultivated, though not always well, according to our notions."*

Will any one believe that this is the writer whom Mr. Macculloch cites in an isolated passage as an authority for "the prominent evils in the social condition of France?” †

* "France, so peopled, so cultivated, moderately taxed, without paper money, without tithes, without poor-rates, almost without poor; with excellent roads in every direction, and overflowing with corn, and wine, and oil, must be and really is a rich country. Yet there are few rich individually."

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There is, however, in the Appendix to the Second Edition of Mr. Birkbeck's work, a violent attack upon the abominable regulation of descents, on account of the manner in which it will effect the next generation; but not a word in proof of this; nor does it once strike him, in his practical observations previously; it comes as an after suggestion from a correspondent -perhaps Mr. Macculloch himself. But Mr. Birkbeck has here gone upon the vulgar idea, that property will go on, under the French law, indefinitely dividing. I shall shew that such is not the case presently. But what Mr. Macculloch maintains is, that at the time Mr. Birkbeck wrote, the Division of Property had been baleful. He quotes Mr. Birkbeck to prove this, and the whole of Mr. Birkbeck's book, with the exception of one passage, is notoriously against it.

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