Amongst the various causes which concur to render France more populous than England, notwithstanding the disadvantage of a less gentle government, and a religion so very unfavorable to the increase of mankind, the cultivation of vineyards may be reckoned a principal one; as it employs a much greater number of hands than even agriculture itself, which has however infinite advantages in this respect above pasturage, the certain cause of a want of people wherever it prevails above its due proportion.

Our climate denies us the advantages arising from the culture of vines, as well as many others which nature has accorded to France; a consideration which should awaken us from the lethargy into which the avarice of individuals has plunged us, and set us in earnest on improving every advantage we enjoy, in order to secure us by our native strength from so formidable a rival.

The want of bread to eat, from the late false and cruel policy of laying small farms into great ones, and the general discouragement of tillage which is its consequence, is in my opinion much less to be apprehended than the want of people to eat it.

In every country where the inhabitants are at once numerous and industrious, there will always be a proportionable cultivation.

This evil is so very destructive and alarming, that, if the great have not virtue enough to remedy it, it is to be hoped it will in time, like most great evils, cure itself.

Your Lordship enquires into the nature of this climate in respect to health.  The air being uncommonly pure and serene, it is favorable to life beyond any I ever knew:  the people live generally to a very advanced age; and are remarkably free from diseases of every kind, except consumptions, to which the younger part of the inhabitants are a good deal subject.

It is however a circumstance one cannot help observing, that they begin to look old much sooner than the people in Europe; on which my daughter observes, that it is not very pleasant for women to come to reside in a country where people have a short youth, and a long old age.

The diseases of cold countries are in general owing to want of perspiration; for which reason exercise, and even dissipation, are here the best medicines.

The Indians therefore shewed their good sense in advising the French, on their first arrival, to use dancing, mirth, chearfulness, and content, as the best remedies against the inconveniences of the climate.

I have already swelled this letter to such a length, that I must postpone to another time my account of the peculiar natural productions of Canada; only observing, that one would imagine heaven intended a social intercourse between the most distant nations, by giving them productions of the earth so very different each from the other, and each more than sufficient for itself, that the exchange might be the means of spreading the bond of society and brotherhood over the whole globe.