the cheapness so essential to enable us to carry on victoriously the
industrial warfare with foreign countries,--a struggle as deadly as
that of arms.

But the destruction of an abuse of this kind would not return to
modern philanthropists the glory and the advantages of a crusade
against the empty nutshells of the penitentiary and negrophobia;
consequently, the interloping profits of these _bankers of
merchandise_ will continue to weigh heavily both on producers and
consumers. In France--keen-witted land!--it is thought that to
simplify is to destroy. The Revolution of 1789 is still a terror.

We see, by the industrial energy displayed in a land where Nature is a
godmother, what progress agriculture might make if capital would go
into partnership with the soil, which is not so thankless in Champagne
as it is in Scotland, where capital has done wonders. The day when
agriculture will have conquered the unfertile portion of those
departments, and industry has seconded capital on the Champagne chalk,
the prosperity of that region will triple itself. Into that land, now
without luxury, where homes are barren, English comfort will
penetrate, money will obtain that rapid circulation which is the half
of wealth, and is already beginning in several of the inert portions
of our country. Writers, administrators, the Church from its pulpit,
the Press in its columns, all to whom chance has given power to
influence the masses, should say and resay this truth,--to hoard is a
social crime. The deliberate hoarding of a province arrests industrial
life, and injures the health of a nation.

Thus the little town of Arcis, without much means of transition,
doomed apparently to the most complete immobility, is, relatively, a