Little by little, by following the new methods of agriculture, I became one of the wealthiest landowners in the neighbourhood.

" Then Mathieu very carefully scrutinized a wash drawing of a very simple but powerful steam thresher, an invention of his own, on which he had been working for some time past, and which a big landowner of Beauce, M. Firon-Badinier, was to examine during the afternoon.

There must have been numbers of such cases with every possible complexity of title; and even if the class that would be actually affected was not large, it was powerful, and every landowner with a defective title would, however small his holding (provided it was over 30 jugera, the proposed allotment), take the alarm and help to swell the cry against the Tribune as a demagogue and a robber.

That these outrages had little directly to say to religion is, however, clear, from the fact that the tithe system was nearly as much detested by the Protestant landowners as by their tenants.

As to our former aristocracy, a class influential by its connections, and by its large landed property: you remember that, when we succeeded to abolish the feudal charges, and converted millions of our countrymen, of different religion and different language, out of leaseholders into free landed proprietors, we guaranteed an indemnification to the landowners for what they lost.

To Richard Lee, the great landowner on Northern Neck, the Virginia Colony was much indebted for royal recognition.