ABSTRACT
Artificial experiments were enthusiastically propagated by those who prided themselves on the knowledge of economic phenomena. The French Revolution often presents a vile mixture of the tragic and bucolic. In 1833 Frederic Le Play was told that at the time of the Treaty of Vienna an English diplomat had said that France would never be able to improve itself because of the ill-effects of the system of inheritance established by the civil code. Agricultural labor was performed under social conditions replete with feudal memories, at least in most of France. The illusion of the literati of the eighteenth century was strongly held by members of Le Play's school. Le Play had made some good observations on working-class families and especially on those concerned with agriculture; he observed the great importance that family traditions exerted in the countries in which it appeared to him that the peasantry enjoyed the greatest well-being.
