A very intelligent and shrewd friend, who has sojourned for
several months past in the neighbourhood of Avranches in Normandy, favours us with some information on the economics of that part of France, and suggestions of a national policy: we ask our friend's leave to lay a few of his remarks be- fore the readers of the Spectator.
"Do you know anything of the new President? If he really is an able man, earnest, and desirous to govern France for the benefit of the French, he has a great career open to him. The most popular act he can do is the one he mast do if national bankruptcy is to be avoided—viz. reduce the army one half. The ser- vice is mueh disliked by the peasantry; so much so that our gardener, getting 140 francs per annum, or less than 61. wages, refused 2,000 francs to go as a sub- stitute; and the butcher we deal with has just paid 1,800 francs to get a substi- tute for his foreman who had the ill luck to be drawn for the conscription; and this only for a service of seven years. The objectors to the reduction would be a small proportion of the officers ; which Cavaignac proposed to remedy by in- creasing the numbers attached to each regiment. The next popular move, changing the present prohibitive duties to revenue ones, will be opposed by the great monopolists who under Louis Philippe have so long governed France; but it will have the warm support of the great masses; and the product of such a revised tariff is the only chance the rentiers have of preserving their dividends —for no more direct taxation will be borne. The vote on the salt-duties shows what will be the fate of the iron and other monopolies when fairly brought before the Chambers. Think of common salt selling here within sight of the sea at 251. per ton I.—the price at Liverpool is, free on board, 14s. to 16s. per ton: iron, for the commonest agricul- tural purposes, 351. per ton. No wonder that their ploughs are two hun- dred years behind the Scotch ; the only iron used in them being the tip of the share. The new President has nothing to do but reduce the establishments, grant revenue-duties on all necessaries, abolish passports, reduce the bureaucracy one half, eschew Thiers and Co., and he will be more popular than ever his uncle was, with the real people of France. * * * We have thirty-six millions of people to deal with here; thirty-three of whom, I will be bound, are a century be- hind the English peasantry in agricultural, mechanical, and domestic knowledge. France is, and mast be for many years, a purely agricultural country; it would bear its population doubling before the earth crys ' Hold, enough.' It should be governed ; and the only way to govern it safely, is as one. The only dangerous class of workmen are the Parisian; and they don't want protection, working as they do in articles of luxury and taste."
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