“You enjoyed French society, then?”

“Very much, indeed.  The art of conversing these French people carry to great perfection.  It is not frivolous, though it is light and sparkling; it is still less argumentative, but it has the knack of bringing out different opinions and different views of them.  We pity the French for their want of political liberty, but the social. freedom they enjoy is some compensation.-----But what interested me still more than these brilliant salons, was the tour that I took through the country, and the careful observation of the condition and prospect of the small proprietors so numerous in France and Flanders.  The contrast between the French small landowner and the English agricultural labourer is very great.  Nothing has struck me as so pathetic as the condition of the English farm labourer—­so hopeless, so cheerless.  Our Scottish peasants have more education, more energy, and are more disposed to emigrate.  Their wages are fixed more by custom than by competition, and their independence has not been sapped by centuries of a most pernicious poor law system; yet, though I think their condition very much better than those of the same class south of the Tweed, it is nothing like that of the peasant proprietor.”

“They say that small holdings are incompatible with high farming,” said Jane, “and that such a crowded country as Britain must be cultivated with every advantage of capital, machinery, and intelligence.”

“So they say here; but the small proprietors of France and Flanders will tell another story, for they will give a higher price for land than the capitalist, and make it pay.  The astonishing industry of the Flemish farmers in reclaiming the worst soil of Europe, and making it produce the most abundant crops, shows me the fallacy of our insular notions on that head.  I cannot but regret the decrease of the yeomanry class in Great Britain, and the accumulation of large estates in few hands.  Scotland, for instance, is held by 8000 proprietors or thereabouts, of whom I am one.  I should like to try an experiment.  You know that sand flat, that is worth very little but for scanty pasture, at the back of the Black Hill, as it is called.  I would divide it into allotments among the most industrious and energetic of my farm-labourers, and show them the method pursued by the Flemish farmers, and see if in the course of ten years they are not growing as good crops as in the most favoured spots on the estate.  ’Give a man a seven years’ lease of a garden, he will convert it into a desert; give him a perpetuity of a rock, he will change it into a garden.’  Your uncle did not think it would pay to reclaim that piece of land; I will try if our peasants have not the stuff in them to make the most of the land.”

“What an excellent idea!” said Jane.