and generally gulp it
all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling
through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators with
a degree of curiosity, which makes some take me to be a fool, and others
to be much wiser than I am. I have been pleased to find among the people
a less degree of physical misery than I had expected. They are generally
well clothed, and have a plenty of food, not animal indeed, but
vegetable, which is as wholesome. Perhaps they are over-worked, the
excess of the rent required by the landlord obliging them to too many
hours of labor in order to produce that, and wherewith to feed and
clothe themselves. The soil of Champagne and Burgundy I have found more
universally good than I had expected, and as I could not help making a
comparison with England, I found that comparison more unfavorable to
the latter than is generally admitted. The soil, the climate, and the
productions are superior to those of England, and the husbandry as
good, except in one point; that of manure. In England, long leases for
twenty-one years, or three lives, to wit, that of the farmer, his wife,
and son, renewed by the son as soon as he comes to the possession, for
his own life, his wife's, and eldest child's, and so on, render the
farms there almost hereditary, make it worth the farmer's while to
manure the lands highly, and give the landlord an opportunity of
occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved state of the
lands. Here the leases are either during pleasure, or for three, six, or
nine years, which does not give the farmer time to repay himself for the
expensive operation of well manuring, and therefore, he manures ill,
or not at all. I suppose, that could the practice of leasing for three
lives be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would, within the term of
your life, increase agricultural productions fifty per cent.; or were
any one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it would increase his
rents fifty per cent, in the course of twenty-five years. But I am told
the laws do not permit it. The laws then, in this particular, are
unwise and unjust, and ought to give that permission. In the southern
provinces, where the soil is poor, the climate hot and dry, and there
are few animals, they would learn the art, found so precious in England,
of making vegetable manure, and thus improving the provinces in the
article in which nature has been least kind to them. Indeed,