NICE, April 11, 1787.
Your head, my dear friend, is full of notable things; and being better
employed, therefore, I do not expect letters from you. I am constantly
roving about, to see what I have never seen before, and shall never see
again. In the great cities, I go to see what travellers think alone
worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it, and generally gulp it all
down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling
through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators,
with a degree of curiosity which makes some take me to be a fool, and
others to be much wiser than I am. I have been pleased to find among
the people a less degree of physical misery than I had expected. They
are generally well clothed, and have a plenty of food, not animal
indeed, but vegetable, which is as wholesome. Perhaps they are
over-worked, the excess of the rent required by the landlord obliging
them to too many hours of labor in order to produce that, and wherewith
to feed and clothe themselves. The soil of Champagne and Burgundy I
have found more universally good than I had expected, and as I could
not help making a comparison with England, I found that comparison more
unfavorable to the latter than is generally admitted. The soil, the
climate, and the productions are superior to those of England, and the
husbandry as good, except in one point; that of manure. In England,
long leases for twenty-one years, or three lives, to wit, that of the
farmer, his wife, and son, renewed by the son as soon as he comes to
the possession, for his own life, his wife's and eldest child's, and so
on, render the farms there almost hereditary, make it worth the
farmer's while to manure the lands highly, and give the landlord an
opportunity of occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved
state of the lands. Here the leases are either during pleasure, or for
three, six, or nine years, which does not give the farmer time to repay
himself for the expensive operation of well manuring, and, therefore,
he manures ill, or not at all. I suppose, that could the practice of
leasing for three lives be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would,
within the term of your life, increase agricultural productions fifty
per cent.; or were any one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it
would increase his rents fifty per cent., in the course of twenty-five
years. But I am told the laws do not permit it. The laws then, in this
particular, are unwise and unjust, and ought to give that permission.
In the southern provinces, where the soil is poor, the climate hot and
dry, and there are few animals, they would learn the art, found so
precious in England, of making vegetable manure, and thus improving
these provinces in the article in which nature has been least kind to
them. Indeed, these provinces afford a singular spectacle. Calculating
on the poverty of their soil, and their climate by its latitude only,
they should have been the poorest in France. On the contrary, they are
the richest, from one fortuitous circumstance. Spurs or ramifications
of high mountains, making down from the Alps, and, as it were,
reticulating these provinces, give to the valleys the protection of a
particular inclosure to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation
of the northern winds produced by the whole of them, and thus
countervail the advantage of several degrees of latitude. From the
first olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of Hieres, has
been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you
have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come, and an
improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a
great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection, the condition
of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to
them at some future day, to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only
moment of your life in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do
it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret
the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles,
eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself,
but in fact, to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure
in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when
you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their
beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.
You will not wonder at the subjects of my letters; they are the only
ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past; and the
waters must always be what are the fountains from which they flow.
According to this, indeed, I should have intermixed, from beginning to
end, warm expressions of friendship to you. But according to the ideas
of our country, we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when
they may have the air of flattery. I content myself, therefore, with
saying once for all, that I love you, your wife and children. Tell them
so, and adieu. Yours affectionately.