To the Editors of "Land and People."

     Dear Sirs,--The following article is translated from a small French Sunday paper, La Terre aux Paysans, established for the discussion of the land question in the interest of the cultivators. It is sent to me regularly, on account of my known interest in the subject; and I am sure it will astonish many of our writers who hold up France as the model of a land of peasant-proprietors to find that only one-seventh part of the cultivated land is owned by those who cultivate it with their own hands--true peasant proprietors. The figures, given from official agricultural statistics, are as follows:--

    Land cultivated on the Metayer system . . . 10 million acres.
    Land cultivated by tenant farmers . . . 30 million acres.
    Properties of over 250 acres cultivated by hired labourers . . . 30 million acres.
    Properties of less than 250 acres cultivated by the owners (peasant proprietors) . . . 10 million acres.

     In France, too, as in England, the rural districts are becoming depopulated, while more than thirty million acres of land are waste or uncultivated. These facts will enable us better to understand the point of view of the writer of the following article.

Alfred R. Wallace.

     Our great Minister, Sully, once remarked that no one ought to say they were without work so long as there remained a corner of the earth uncultivated. Here is an axiom altogether forgotten to-day, but which it would be well to remember. Is it not really pitiable to see everywhere these demonstrations, peaceful or violent, of workmen out of work, suffering the pangs of hunger, and by the depression of trade left to face the most terrible and merciless realities of existence!

     It would be so easy, if not to live in happiness, at least to live in peace. For three-fourths of the human race, the search for the day's bread is the chief occupation of life. But with a small plot of land a family may easily secure their daily bread with this additional advantage, that no unforeseen occurrence such as sickness, or failure to obtain work, would at once abolish all the means of existence.

     However inferior we consider the Chinese, it is certain that they have solved this grave problem of subsistence better than we have. Less speculative, but more practical, they have quickly understood this simple thing, that to live we must eat, and that to eat we must cultivate the earth. They have accordingly so organised society as to assure to each one the possession of the land necessary for his existence. We, on the contrary, hold the land in such contempt that we often abandon it. Strange contradiction! No more than the Chinese can we live without the fruits of the earth. But with us the owners of land get rid of it to save themselves from cultivating it. Instead of taking from it directly, by means of a little labour, the food that is indispensable, we seek our food by another kind of work, that of the factory and of the city. Can any action be more insensate, more fantastic, than that of the peasant who leaves the country to seek in the town, at the cost of a cruel toil, the scanty food which he could obtain far less painfully from his native fields?

     Happily, good often springs from excess of evil! The reaction against the absorption of labour by the towns; against the depopulation of the country; against the acquisition of estates by the few; the reaction against so great a social evil is steadily advancing. Let labourers be idle a little longer; let hunger become more general; let poverty crush the workers in the towns;--and public opinion will soon change its ideas as to what are the most healthy conditions of existence. No more will they abandon the land, but will eagerly seek it again. They will no longer curse agriculture; they will bless it.

Pere le Gall.