FERDINAND LASSALLE. 
6l 
thus lead to the solution of the problem. Observed facts in 
France would lead to this conclusion. 
In fact, France, along with Switzerland and Norway, is the 
country in which property is distributed amongst the greatest 
number of holders, and well-being is most equally divided, and 
It is also the country in which population increases most slowly. 
During the last twenty years, notwithstanding the most terrible 
convulsions, wealth has increased there more than anywhere 
else, while the population has remained almost stationary. In 
Germany there is much less comfort among the people; the 
labourer, especially in the rural parts, is far worse paid. Not 
withstanding the great progress of industry and of agriculture, 
which have had to struggle against a naturally sterile soil, the 
country is still poor ; and yet the population is doubled every 
fifty-four years. It increases at the same rate in England, 
where the number of landowners is small and that of the 
labourers very large. 
When Arthur Young travelled in France, and saw the soil 
divided amongst a vast number of holders, he predicted the 
country would be transformed into a rabbit-warren. The very 
reverse has occurred. The population increases so slowly that 
now and again there come cries of alarm. M. Léonce de 
Lavergne was himself startled at it. Nevertheless, he who had 
so well analyzed the writings of the eighteenth century econo 
mists, should not have forgotten Quesnay’s profound maxim, 
which sums up the whole question in two words : “ Be less 
anxious for the increase of population than for the increase of 
incomes.” That Napoleon should reply to Madame de Staël, 
when she asked what woman he most admired, “ The one who 
has most children,” is perfectly comprehensible ; for what a 
conqueror needs is plenty of food for powder; but what an 
Economist should have in view is the happiness of men, and 
not their number. Far better there should be a few families, 
thinly peopling a district, and living in abundance, than com 
pact masses swarming in squalor. France fulfils in a wonderful 
way the hopes of Malthus, of Mill, and of Joseph Gamier, and 
she offers the most striking refutation of the “iron law” of 
Lassalle.