payment are of no avail. Great encouragement is likewise held out to
them to purchase national property, which I am informed they do to an
extent that may for some time be injurious to agriculture; for in their
eagerness to acquire land, the deprive themselves of cultivating it.
They do not, like our crusading ancestors, "sell the pasture to buy the
horse," but the horse to buy the pasture; so that we may expect to see in
many places large farms in the hands of those who are obliged to neglect
them.

A great change has happened within the last year, with regard to landed
property--so much has been sold, that many farmers have had the
opportunity of becoming proprietors. The rage of emigration, which the
approach of war, pride, timidity, and vanity are daily increasing, has
occasioned many of the Noblesse to sell their estates, which, with those
of the Crown and the Clergy, form a large mass of property, thrown as it
were into general circulation. This may in future be beneficial to the
country, but the present generation will perhaps have to purchase (and
not cheaply) advantages they cannot enjoy. A philanthropist may not
think of this with regret; and yet I know not why one race is preferable
to another, or why an evil should be endured by those who exist now, in
order that those who succeed may be free from it.--I would willingly
plant a million of acorns, that another age might be supplied with oaks;
but I confess, I do not think it quite so pleasant for us to want bread,
in order that our descendants may have a superfluity.

I am half ashamed of these selfish arguments; but really I have been led
to them through mere apprehension of what I fear the people may have yet
to endure, in consequence of the revolution.

I have frequently observed how little taste the French have for the