uys up great estates,
which the peasantry could not otherwise acquire. It cuts them up and
then sells, either at auction or in small lots at private sale, to the
peasants. Everything is judged by figures in these days, and I know none
more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million acres, which,
subtracting highways, roads, dunes, canals, and barren, uncultivated
regions deserted by capital, may be reduced to eighty millions. Now out
of eighty millions of acres to thirty-two millions of inhabitants we
find one hundred and twenty-five millions of small lots registered on
the tax-list (I don't give fractions). Thus, you will observe, we have
gone to the utmost limit of agrarian law, and yet we have not seen the
last of poverty or dissatisfaction. Those who divide territory into
fragments and lessen production have, of course, plenty of organs to
cry out that true social justice consists in giving every man a life
interest, and no more, in a parcel of land; perpetual ownership, they
say, is robbery. The Saint-Simonians are already proclaiming that
doctrine."

"The magistrate has spoken," said Grossetete, "and here's what the
banker adds to those bold considerations. The fact that the peasantry
and the lesser bourgeoisie can now acquire land does France an injury
which the government seems not even to suspect. We may estimate the
number of peasant families, omitting paupers, at three millions. These
families subsist on wages. Wages are paid in money, and not in kind--"

"Yes, that's another blunder of our laws!" cried Clousier, interrupting
the banker. "The right to pay in kind might have been granted in 1790;
now, if we attempted to carry such a law, we should risk a revolution."

"Therefore, as I was about to say, the proletary draws to himself the
money of the country," resumed Grossetete. "Now the peasant has no other
passion, desire, or will, than to die a land-owner. This desire, as
Monsieur Clousier has well shown, was born of the Revolution, and is the
direct result of the sale of the National domain. A man must be ignorant
indeed of what is going on all over France in the country regions if he
is not aware that these three million families are yearly hoarding at
least fifty francs, thus subtracting a hundred and fifty millions from
current use. The science of political economy has made it an axiom
that a five-franc piece, passing through a hundred hands in one day, is
equivalent to five hundred francs. N