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 the 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.
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