r 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 excellen