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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: know none more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million
acres, which, subtracting highways, roads, dunes, canals, and barren,
uncultivated regions deserted by capital, may be reduced to eighty
millions. Now out of eighty millions of acres to thirty-two millions
of inhabitants we find one hundred and twenty-five millions of small
lots registered on the tax-list (I don't give fractions). Thus, you
will observe, we have gone to the utmost limit of agrarian law, and
yet we have not seen the last of poverty or dissatisfaction. Those who
divide territory into fragments and lessen production have, of course,
plenty of organs to cry out that true social justice consists in
giving every man a life interest, and no more, in a parcel of land;
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