What, for instance, can we expect from the beet?
Do you not see that 48,000 hectares of land, with capital and labor in proportion, will suffice to furnish sugar to all France?
It is then an object of _limited usefulness_; limited, be it understood, in the _work_ which it calls for; and this is the sole measure, according to our minister, of the usefulness of any pursuit.
This usefulness would be much more limited still, if, thanks to the fertility of the soil, or the richness of the beet, 24,000 hectares would serve instead of 48,000.

If there were only needed twenty times, a hundred times more soil, more capital, more labor, to _attain the same result_--Oh! then some hopes might be founded upon this article of industry; it would be worthy of the protection of the state, for it would open a vast field to national labor.

But to produce much with little is a bad example, and the laws ought to set things to rights.
What is true with regard to sugar, cannot be false with regard to bread.
If therefore the usefulness of an object of industry is to be calculated, not by the comforts which it can furnish with a certain quantum of labor, but, on the contrary, by the increase of labor which it requires in order to furnish a certain quantity of comforts, it is evident that we ought to desire, that each acre of land should produce little corn, and that each grain of corn should furnish little nutriment; in other words, that our territory should be sterile enough to require a considerably larger proportion of soil, capital, and labor to nourish its population.

The demand for human labor could not fail to be in direct proportion to this sterility, and then truly would the wishes of Messrs.

Bugeaud, Saint Cricq, Dupin, and d'Argout be satisfied; bread would be dear, work abundant, and France would be rich--rich according to the understanding of these gentlemen.
All that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists, it can but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end to the means; of the product to the labor_.