Already, however, the properties are so small, that they do not admit of that profitable culture enjoined by principles of improved husbandry and correct social policy.  In the proper cultivation of the soil, other parties besides agriculturists are concerned; for whatever limits production, affects the national wealth.  The meagre husbandry of the small properties in France is thus a serious loss to the country, and tends to general impoverishment.  But there is another and equally calamitous consequence of excessive subdivision.  The small proprietors in France are for the greater part owners only in name:  practically, they are tenants.  Desperate in their circumstances, they have borrowed money on their wretched holdings; and so poor is the security, and so limited is the capital at disposal on loan, that the interest paid on mortgage runs from 8 to 10 per cent.—­often is as high as 20 per cent.  After paying taxes, interest on loans, and other necessary expenses, such is the exhaustion of resources, that thousands of these French peasant proprietors may be said to live in a continual battle with famine.  According to official returns, there are in France upwards of 348,000 dwellings with no other aperture than the door; and nearly 2,000,000 with only one window.  And to this the ‘pattern nation’ has brought itself by its headlong haste to upset, not simply improve, a bad institution.  The living in these windowless and single-windowed abodes is not living, in the proper sense of the word:  it is existence without comfort, without hope.  The next step is to burrow in holes like rabbits.

It will thus be observed, that the subdivision of real estate has brought France pretty much back to the point where it started—­a small wealthy class, and a very numerous poor class.  The computation is, that in a population of 36,000,000, only 800,000 are in easy circumstances.  A considerable proportion of this moneyed class are usurers, living in Paris and other large towns.  They are the lenders of cash on bonds, which squeeze out the very vitals of the nation—­the gay flutterers and loungers of the streets, theatres, and cafes, drawing the means of luxurious indulgence from the myriads who toil out their lives in the fields.

Obtaining a glimpse of these facts, we can no longer wonder at the submission of the French peasantry to a thinning of their families by military conscription; at the eager thirst for office which afflicts the whole nation; or at the morbid desire to overturn society, and strike out a better organisation.  As matters grow worse, this passion for wholesale change becomes more fervidly manifested.  The jacqueries of the middle ages are renewed.  Various districts of country, in which poverty has reached its climax, break into universal insurrection.  It is a war levied by those who have nothing against those who have something.  To have coin in the pocket, is to be the enemy.  The cry is:  Down with the rich; take all they have got, and divide the plunder