eight secondary bureaux, where the
people must go and pay amounts of less than one franc. There are, and I
am told have long been, loud complaints as to the inconvenient location
of the bureaux; but nothing comes of these outcries as yet, and I
presume nothing ever will come of them until something like an
independent local administrative life exists in the provinces of France.

The elements of such a life ought surely to be found, if anywhere, in
this ancient province of Picardy. You cannot traverse it in any
direction without being struck by the evident prosperity of the people.
Arthur Young, a hundred years ago, travelling from Boulogne to Amiens,
found only 'misery and miserable harvests.' He would find now only
comfort and excellent crops. Possibly he would think of the country what
he then thought of the region about Clermont and Liancourt, where, under
the fostering care of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, the farmers had
developed a highly-diversified cultivation; 'here a field of wheat;
there one of luzerne; clover in one direction, vetches in another;
vines, cherry and other fruit trees making up a charming picture, which
must, however, yield poor results.'

But he would be wrong. This diversified culture of modern Picardy has
been highly remunerative, and the extensive kitchen-gardening of the
province is so still. The 'agricultural crisis' has doubtless hit the
large farmers rather hard, but I am told they are standing up well under
it--thanks to their past savings, and to French protection--better,
indeed, than the large farmers in England; while the peasants proper are
actually profiting by it. They not only get as much for their labour as
when the large farmers were making money, but they are buying up land at
lower rates. This may very possibly help the Republicans in the coming
elections, for the peasants always give the credit of a state of things
which is satisfactory to them to the Government of the day--be that
Government what it may--so that while the larger farmers tend to
Conservatism, the peasants will probably lean the other way. It is next
to impossible to get a political opinion out of a Picard peasant, but I
have more than once heard a peasant speak of the farmers in his
neighbourhood as 'aristocrats,' which I took to be as precise a formula
of political opinion as one was likely to get from him. It seemed to me
to represent, among the peasants of to-day, the enlightened 'principles
of 1889,' v