as a
councillor-general to his constituents in a series of 'conferences.' One
of these conferences he was good enough to invite me to attend.

It was held in a commune, distant some ten or twelve miles from
St.-Quentin-par-Aire, and, as the custom of France is, it was held on a
Sunday afternoon. M. Labitte's son-in-law drove out from Aire with his
wife to dine and spend the evening with us. And about three o'clock M.
Labitte, his son-in-law, and myself set out for the conference. Our road
lay through a level but richly cultivated and, in its way, very
beautiful region. In the last century, Artois seems to have been a kind
of Ireland. The climate was excessively damp, the lack of forests and
the undeveloped coal-mines left the peasantry dependent upon turf and
peat for fuel; the roads were few and bad. There were good crops of
grain; but the Intendant Bignon, drawing up a report on the province at
the close of the seventeenth century, for the Duke of Burgundy, tells us
the wars had made an end of all the manufactures, including the
long-famous tapestry-works of Arras. 'There were few fruit-trees, little
hay, and little manure.' Here and there some linen was made; but the
trade of the province was carried on almost exclusively in grain, hops,
flax, and wool. Iron and copper utensils, and coal and slates came to
Artois from Flanders, cod-fish and cheese from the Low Countries, butter
and all kinds of manufactured goods from England. Yet the population
steadily increased all through the eighteenth century, while it was
falling off in the neighbouring provinces of France. The worthy
intendant thought the people sadly wanting in 'intelligence, activity,
and practical sense,' and seems indeed, like a Malthusian before
Malthus, half-inclined to attribute the phenomena of increase and
multiplication in Artois to these defects. It would surprise him, I
fancy, to look on the people and the land of Artois to-day. The land has
become one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of France; the
people, unaffected to any appreciable extent by immigration, and
unchanged alike in race and in religion, increase and multiply as of
old. The well-tilled fields, the well-kept and beautiful roads, the
neat, green hedgerows, the orchards bear witness on every side to the
intelligence, the activity, the practical sense of the inhabitants.

M. Baudrillart in one of his invaluable treatises on the condition of
France before the Revolution of 17