47. POSTERITY OF CHARLEMAGNE. Charlemagne was born in 742, proclaimed King of France in 768, crowned Emperor at Rome in 800, and died at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 28th of January 814. He left, at his death, only one legitimate son, Louis the Debonnair (who succeeded him), two daughters, abbesses, and seven natural children. He had two sons who died before him: Pepin le Bossu, who was banished to the Abbey of Pruyon, for having conspired against the life of his father (he died in 810); and Charles, who was Viceroy of Eastern France, or part of Germany, and who died in 811 without issue.

The last King of France of the race of Charlemagne, was Louis V., called the Idler; who died in 987, without children, at the age of twenty-five, after a reign of two years.

After his death, the kingdom belonged of right to Charles of Outremer, uncle of Louis V., and son of Louis IV.: but that prince having rendered himself odious to the French, by his conduct and his alliance.

with Otho, King of Germany, the nobles considered him as a deserter, excluded him from the succession, and conferred the crown upon Hugh Capet, Duke of France, the chief of the third race.

This same Charles (the son of Louis of Outremer), received the duchy of Lower Lorraine, comprehending Brabant, with a part of Upper Lorraine, from his cousin, Otho II. He wished to assert his rights to the crown of France against Hugh Capet; which occasioned a civil war that continued some years, and was at last terminated by the capture of Charles, in the city of Rheims, on the 2d of April 991. He was conducted as a prisoner to Orleans, where he died in the year 992.

Otho, the son of this Duke Charles, succeeded his father in the duchy of Lower Lorraine and Brabant. He died in 1007, without issue, and was the last male of the race of Charlemagne.

Gerard III., Count of Alsace, was created Duke of Lorraine when he was ten years old, in 1048; at the same Diet of Worms at which Brunon, Bishop of Toul, his cou

sin, was made Pope, and took the name of Leo IX. He was of the House of Hapsbourg, and great-grand-nephew of Gontran, the stock of the House of Austria. G. Patin, vol. i. p. 479, speaks of a suit of the Prince of Condé against the Duke of Lorraine, in which the Advocate-general, Talon, proved that the latter was not descended from Charlemagne, nor from Godfrey de Bouillon, but from Gerard of Alsace.

48. QUANTITY OF CORN NECESSARY TO SUP~ PORT A MAN.

It requires twenty-four bushels of corn, weighing twenty pounds each, to support a man for one year: that is, a pound, of sixteen ounces, of the finest bread daily. An acre produces in France seventy-two bushels. A million of bushels of corn will support 50,000 men a year.

49. CORN-TRADE.

The author of the "Examination of Colbert's Ministry," (Bruni, formerly Director of the India Company), thinks that corn, in a state where the arts flourish,

should be an object of internal regulation, but never, from its nature, an object of

commerce.

The same author says: "A state ought not to encourage cultivation with the immediate view of selling to another, but to do every thing in its power to encourage cultivation for home consumption.-In the sytem of interior consumption, the state reckons two subjects (the one the seller, the other the purchaser), and clearly two benefits; since it is in the same state that the value of that property which is sold is formed, and becomes a first benefit; and also that labour has produced the value of industry, which has bought the value of subsistence, which is a second benefit of the

same sort.

"A country which sells its provisions, when it might support labourers, its subjects, with them, gives to another its own population."

M. Necker, on the same principles, adds: "It is Poland, degraded by a feudal government, that sells its grain to the industrious Dutch; it is Africa, ignorant and

barbarous, that sells hers to Marseilles; it is infant America that sells her corn to full-grown Europe; it is France, enlightened by Colbert, that consumes hers herself. It has been objected, that manufactories divert men from the cultivation of the earth, by offering them occupations more attractive. The reply is, that artizans are supported only by those superfluous provisions, which could not exist without cultivation; thus the arts are not the rivals of agriculture, but its encouragement and its reward. The colonies of a state, in order properly to answer the views of their possessor, should cultivate productions heterogeneous to those of the mothercountry, but necessary or useful to its consumption; and should depend upon it for its subsistence, and for other objects of the first necessity. It is upon the exact obşervance of this conduct that their utility depends."

50. FAMILY OF D'ARGENSON.

The three d'Argensons, all of whom were Ministers of State, are frequently con