THE SECRET OF FRENCH PROSPERITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 219, 13 July 1877, Page 7

THE SECRET OF FRENCH PROSPERITY.

IT is a patent fact today that while Germany, the conqueror, which lately received an enormou* indemnity, ia in a state of financial prostration, France the victim, which paid the indemnity, is in a state of extraordinary prosperity. Independent of m ira l considerations there must be Hn immediate practical reason for this inconsequential di ffer®ucf- What is it ?It lies first, in the peculiar ownership of the soil by tne .trench people, and second, in the manner in which France raised the money to pay the German indemnity. The difference between the ownership of the soil in France, England and Ireland is an interesting political study. In France there are more than 5,000,000 peasant proprietors of the land, while in the «™ ™ Kingdom, with about the same population, there are only 200,000, or one British for every twenty-five French landowners. iUere is a difference between France and other nations with regard to national debt. Other nationsborro w almost whollj from outsiders, while France raises her money mainly from her own poople. When the Government, after the war, wanted money to pay the indemnity to Prussia, the farmers and traders of France, with* splendid confidence in their own nation, poured into Paris with their gold to bur the Government, bonds. More than 4,000,000 French men and women subscribed to the public debt. The interest paid by the Government, raised by taxes and imposts, instead of ?oing to the Jew bankers or to other countries, is paid to the French people and remains to enrich France.

This grand patriotism is due to the holding of land by the people In France one person in seven is a landowner. In England one person in ldO owns lands, as distinguished from mere house property, and outside of London one in 30 owns a house. In Scotlaud one in 400 is a landowner, and one in 28 has a house in his name. In Ireland one in 315 owns land, bu». only one in 120 has title to a bouse. Tlie state ol Ireland in this respect is deplorable indeed. In the latest returns we find that of the 20,00< 1 ,000 acn-s of land in Ireland, 17 individuals own 1 400,000 acres ; 108 persons own 4,000,000 acres ; two persons own 282,199 acres; an.) 292 persons own nearly one-third the surface of the whole country. There are 36 OUO persons entered as landowners who hold less than one acre. These are ruinous figures, and made still more calamitous by the fact th it almost every one of the large landowners live out of the island, and spend in England the revenues they draw from their I.ish lands. In the face of these figures, the Parliamentary tinkering at " Irish land laws" is a ghastly imposition.'— Pilot.