| Saturday Review 21 October 1865: Stephen>
| <The French Census>
| Some interesting statistics have lately been published with 
| regard to France and other European countries. The mere 
| dry bones of statistical tables are not indeed specially 
| attractive. Many people naturally regard all figures as the 
| raw material from which the ingenious snares known as 
| budgets and balance-sheets are manufactured to trap the 
| unwary. These engines of devilish cunning require, 
| however, a certain amount of dexterous manipulation. The 
| simple figures of a census can hardly be injurious any 
| more than a piece of plain beef; the poison must be, in 
| both cases, introduced in the cooking. Thus, by combining 
| the census with certain bills of mortality, Mr. Buckle almost 
| persuaded us that we were compelled to provide a yearly 
| tale of murders; but so long s we stick to the simple fact 
| that there are so many butchers and so many bakers in a 
| nation, we can hardly find ourselves landed in any very 
| dangerous conclusions. And the facts are interesting even 
| to ordinary mortals, as well as to those who have a morbid 
| appetite for the consumption of figures. A census is useful 
| as a check and a stimulus to the imagination. It is a 
| common delusion in savage countries that England is a 
| part of London, and many civilized Englishmen hold that 
| France and Paris are identical; or, at any rate, they multiply 
| Paris by some twenty or thirty, and think that the product 
| will give them the French people. Indeed, it is scarcely 
| possible to avoid the illusion which represents a nation as 
| made up of repetitions of its most prominent type. Even 
| with figures before us, it is difficult to realize the proportion 
| which the rank and file of a nation bear to its superior 
| officers. Our attention is fixed upon the stirring and active 
| units, instead of the inert millions. And it is difficult to 
| correct our impression, even with the help of the census, 
| for the reason that <reg orig=“no one”> no-one </reg> has 
| a very distinct idea of millions. We know that it is a very big 
| number, but as we have never seen a million men, or a 
| million units of any kind in actual life, it is very difficult to 
| realize how big a number it is. A census, however, does 
| something towards impressing upon us the proportions of 
| different ingredients in a nation, and thus explains many 
| things that we attribute vaguely to national character; it 
| shows what a vast mass of inertia has to be overcome 
| before any considerable change of character can be 
| propagated to its furthest limits. Constitution-mongers may 
| be taught to realize the over-sanguine nature of their 
| speculations by observing what a mere superficial film of 
| society they are able to affect directly, and what dense, 
| solid, and impenetrable masses lie below the surface. The 
| rate at which certain marked changes are actually 
| advancing is as instructive as the impassive stability which 
| prevails in other directions. It shows how soon we may 
| expect the advent of the millennium in the course of nature; 
| and by the different degrees in which they coincide or differ, 
| in various nations, we can judge how deep-seated are the 
| causes which produce them.
| The most prominent difference between ourselves and our 
| next neighbours is the rate at which population increases. 
| At the present rate of progress, the French would only 
| double themselves in two centuries, whereas we should do 
| so in a little over fifty, and that although our population is 
| far denser than the French. This stationary position of the 
| French population is evidently connected with a national 
| characteristic very frequently pointed out. In pre-Malthusian 
| days it used to be a cause of wonder that the provinces 
| from which Spain had sent out the largest number of 
| emigrants to America still remained the most populous. 
| The puzzle disappears very rapidly when it is put in a 
| slightly different form, that the most rapidly increasing 
| districts sent out the most numerous swarms. It is evident 
| that the Frenchman is subject to a pressure far less than 
| that which affects an Englishman. The total agricultural 
| population of France has actually diminished since 1846, 
| and in twenty-one rural departments there has been a 
| steady diminution in each period of five years. The English 
| population has been pressing against its bounds like an 
| elastic vapour in a vessel, while the French has been 
| resting like a liquid in a state of equilibrium. As there are 
| fewer mouths to be filled in France, and more in England, 
| on the same acres, it is not surprising that more English 
| than French mouths should have been sent to be filled 
| elsewhere. We are in the habit of putting this down with 
| somewhat unnecessary complacency to the superior 
| self-reliance of an Englishman. It is probably true that 
| Englishmen are more self-reliant colonists than Frenchmen, 
| as indeed seems to be proved by the fate of the colonies of 
| the two nations in America; for the restless pushing 
| Yankee of the New England States was developed, with 
| little aid from emigration, out of the first English settlers. 
| Whilst his equally unaided Canadian neighbours were 
| sleepily keeping up mediaeval customs. But this is 
| evidently an insufficient explanation of the facts; as indeed 
| all explanations which assume inherent national 
| tendencies are apt to be insufficient, and are merely a 
| roundabout was of saying that there is a difference 
| between the nations, and that we cannot account for it. If 
| the supposed difference will account for the particular case 
| mentioned, it will hardly account for other similar cases. 
| We no longer supply the greatest stream of emigration, 
| although we do supply that part which gives its laws and 
| language to the rest. The Irish contribution to the stream, 
| great as it is, has of late been surpassed by the German. 
| Therefore, if Englishmen boast of their superior 
| self-reliance as the quality in right of which they are 
| replenishing the earth, they must be content to share it with 
| Germans and Irishmen. But it seems difficult to say that an 
| Irish cottier who has been tottering for years on the 
| extreme edge of absolute poverty, or a German peasant 
| who forms the base for the pedantic hierarchy of paternal 
| government, can be more self-reliant than the 
| corresponding Frenchman. And, in fact, the independence 
| of character required by a settler amongst Red Indians and 
| virgin forests is scarcely necessary for landing at the 
| Battery in New York. The plain fact seems to be that in 
| these days people generally emigrate because they do not 
| get enough to eat and drink, or do not get so much at 
| home as they hope to get abroad. Now a prudent 
| population, which remains stationary whilst wealth is 
| increasing, is not likely to find such a motive very pressing. 
| A man has no wish to leave his home when he is receiving 
| every year a larger share of a larger amount of wealth. The 
| further question, why the French rate of increase is so slow, 
| may be harder to answer. An obstinate reasoner might 
| maintain perhaps that the want of self-reliance here took 
| the form of an extreme objection to imprudent marriages, 
| instead of attributing the prudence to abundance of 
| self-command. But this would lead us into too profound an 
| inquiry.
| The same disposition to stay at home applies not merely to 
| the whole country, but to isolated districts. The whole 
| number of French abroad is stated at 316,000; whereas, 
| merely in the last ten years 575,000 English and 
| Scotchmen have emigrated, and 736,000 Irishmen. The 
| internal movement is equally small. More than 33,500,000 
| or 88 per cent of all the inhabitants, live in the place where 
| they were born. And this is a natural consequence of the 
| agricultural character of the population. No human being is 
| so immovable as a small landed proprietor. This class of 
| people may in some respects deserve the affection with 
| which they are regarded by a certain class of political 
| economists, but they are the nearest approach to the 
| condition suggested by the vivid imagination of the 
| American young lady who was asked to dance, and 
| consented on the ground that she had sat and sat and sat 
| till she had <p> “nigh took root.” </p> A very large part of 
| the French people seem to be so far approximating to the 
| vegetable order. Thus more than 53 per cent of the whole 
| population, or nearly 20,000,000 men and women, are 
| dependent upon agriculture. That is, nearly as many as the 
| whole population of England and Wales. More than half of 
| the agricultural population, again, consists of people 
| cultivating their own estates. There are over 9,000,000 
| persons thus employed, of whom about half are men; 
| whereas the whole number of men and women actually 
| employed in agriculture in England and Wales is only just 
| over 2,000,ooo, out of a total population of 20,000,000. 
| While the occupations classed as <p> “industrial” </p> 
| occupy in England twice as many men as agriculture, in 
| France they do not occupy much more than half as many. 
| In fact, France is one of the most agricultural countries in 
| Europe. The proverbial immobility of the agricultural mind 
| is of course intensified where every man has land of his 
| own, and where his affection for his land is the strongest 
| passion of which he is capable. Politically, this forcibly 
| illustrates the hold which a certain kind of conservatism 
| must have upon the country. The predominant element of 
| the population is that which in all countries cherishes a 
| hatred for change as change, and only requires to be 
| allowed, like Candide, to cultivate its cabbages. The 
| country districts apparently permitted Paris to indulge in 
| barricades and revolutions simply because they did not 
| know, and could not bring to bear upon one point, their 
| own unwieldy strength. The Empire involved a revelation 
| and a practical application of this truth; it implies the 
| subordination of the revolutionary energy of the towns to 
| the dogged determination of the country to be quiet.
| It is the more curious to see that, at the same time, the 
| towns are rapidly growing at the expense of the rural 
| population. The town population has, in fact, increased at a 
| rate equal to the average English rate of increase, whilst 
| the rural population actually diminished from 1846 to 1856; 
| and, although it has lately again increased, has not yet 
| recovered the level reached in 1846. If history were still 
| written after the old style, it would be said that the Emperor 
| had built great towns and gathered up people from every 
| side to fill them. Indeed, that method of writing cannot be 
| said to be quite extinct. The cause, however, whatever it 
| may be, which attracts men to live in towns instead of the 
| country acts, with equal intensity in England, where it 
| certainly cannot be attributed to the wisdom or to the folly 
| of Government. In England some of the purely agricultural 
| counties showed an actual decrease, and in none of them 
| was the increase equal to the average. Thus it seems that 
| we are gradually gravitating towards common centres of 
| population; and, indeed, if machinery could reach its 
| ultimate ideal perfection, it would become unnecessary to 
| go into the country at all except for purposes of occasional 
| relaxation. A few men to superintend steam-engines would 
| be all that would be required, and they might run down to 
| their work by railway. It will doubtless be some time before 
| this happy consummation is arrived at, and the whole of 
| England gathered under a few canopies of smoke at 
| London, Manchester, and elsewhere. But a rapid increase 
| of national wealth, such as has taken place in the last few 
| years, almost necessarily implies a process tending in that 
| direction. The development of manufacturing power and of 
| commercial enterprise is rapid out of all proportion to the 
| increased effectiveness of agriculture. It is the difference 
| between arithmetical and geometrical ratio. Agricultural art 
| improves at a steady pace; but the commerce of both 
| England and France has lately doubled and trebled within 
| a space which in former ages would have scarcely shown 
| a perceptible increase. It is inevitable that, so long as the 
| process lasts, more men must be attracted to the great 
| centres from which all commercial transactions radiate. 
| The fresh impetus given by the Emperor to improvement in 
| Paris and other towns has, of course, done something to 
| attract additional population; but, as compared to the 
| influence of Free-trade and the general stimulus to 
| commerce of late years, their effect in this way can be a 
| mere trifle. Such a difference must exist between the 
| influence of an individual, however powerful, and the 
| energy of a whole people on the road to riches. There is, 
| therefore, nothing surprising in the process which is going 
| on either here or in France; and in France it will probably 
| be a clear gain to increase the mobility of a people where 
| the stationary element is at present in such preponderance.