M. d'Avenel's Last Hyde Lecture

M. d'Avenel delivered the last Hyde lecture yesterday afternoon on "De quoi se composaient les fortunes des riches et des bourgeois d'autrefois." M. d'Avenel will leave Boston today for New Haven, where he will lecture at Yale. From there he will tour through the large cities of the East and finally through the West to San Francisco, returning East through Canada, and leaving for France about May 1.

M. d'Avenel said that land-wealth had greatly increased of late years, whereas formerly, when land was cheap, great tracts had been held by single individuals. Land rents in the Middle Ages were more indirect than direct, and were levied more on the people than on things produced on the land. A great element of recent fortunes is town and city property, whether built on or not, and this was almost unknown to the people of the Middle Ages. Land which has been built on in France, has increased in value from three to twelve million dollars in the last 50 years.

In the Middle Ages there was no great system of property owning, whereby a man could borrow money on security, but rather a universal pawn-system, in which money was obtained by pawning farm products, etc. It was an essential for each small householder to keep a hoard of money to meet expenses, whereas, today, wealth may be obtained solely on credit. It is an interesting fact that we have but three times as much money in circulation, nowadays, as at the time of Louis XVI, while we are seven or eight times as rich.

In the eighteenth century, the first evidence of stock-companies appeared, and these were developed rapidly. The wealthy middle-class in the time of Louis XVI were occupied mainly in obtaining judicial or financial employments in departments, the capital of which was valued at about 1600 millions of dollars, and all of which was lost in the Revolution. The dominating character of all large fortunes in France was the dependence on State institutions, which was politically and economically a fault. Idle money was increased, while money actively engaged in the building up of wealth was diminished. Today these conditions are reversed, the governmental employees receiving only fair salaries. Investments have become international and production has been stimulated, giving rise to large fortunes and greater wealth. M. d'Avenel thinks the best condition which can affect the world in the future is a still closer alliance, in financial and political lines, between the large countries of the world, than exists at present.