many sheaves in the
barns, so many mouths to be filled, so many days to wait until
the August wheat comes in, and concluding on short supplies for two,
three and four months. Such a state of inter-communication and of
agriculture condemns a country to periodical famines, and I venture to
state that, alongside of the small-pox which out of eight deaths causes
one, another endemic disease exists, as prevalent and as destructive,
and this disease is starvation.

We can easily imagine that it is the common people, and especially the
peasants who suffers. An increase of the price of bread prevents him
from getting any, and even without that increase, he obtains it with
difficulty. Wheat bread cost, as today, three sous per pound,[5132] but
as the average day's work brought only nineteen sous instead of forty,
the day-laborer, working the same time, could buy only the half of a
loaf instead of a full loaf[5133]. Taking everything into account, and
wages being estimated according to the price of grain, we find that the
husbandman's manual labor then procured him 959 litres of wheat, while
nowadays it gives him 1,851 litres; his well-being, accordingly, has
advanced ninety-three per cent., which suffices to show to what extent
his predecessors suffered privations. And these privations are peculiar
to France. Through analogous observations and estimates Arthur
Young shows that in France those who lived on field labor, and
they constituted the great majority, are seventy-six per cent.
less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they are
seventy-six per cent. less well fed and well clothed, besides being
worse treated in sickness and in health. The result is that in
seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers, but simply metayers
(a kind of poor tenants)[5134]. The peasant is too poor to
undertake cultivation on his own account, possessing no agricultural
capital[5135]. "The proprietor, desirous of improving his land, finds
no one to cultivate it but miserable creatures possessing only a pair
of hands; he is obliged to advance everything for its cultivation at
his own expense, animals, implements and seed, and even to advance
the wherewithal to this tenant to feed him until the first crop comes
in."--"At Vatan, for example, in Berry, the tenants, almost every year,
borrow bread of the proprietor in order to await the harvesting."--"Very
rarely is one found who is not indebted to his master at least one
hundr