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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 2

Landowners in Other States

Landowners in Other States.

If we compare the state of landowning, as

Landowners in Other States.

thus disclosed, with that existing in others of the civilized countries of the world, whether in Europe or in the New World, we cannot fail to be struct by the extraordinary difference. Nowhere is there anything at all comparable to the state of this country, except in parts of Spain, in Bohemia, and in Southern Italy and Sicily. Throughout the page 14

Land-owners in other States.

whole of Western, Central, and Northern Europe the greater part of the soil is everywhere owned by a large body of persons, including large numbers of what we should call the yeomen class, or small farming proprietors, and still more of the class of smaller owners, more properly called peasant proprietors.

France is said to be owned in respect of two-thirds of its total cultivated area by small farmers and peasant proprietors, and one-third of it only is owned by larger proprietors, who let their lands on farming leases to tenants. M. de Laverne, the highest authority on this subject, stated a few years ago, before the separation of Alsace and Lorraine, that the owners and occupiers of land in France might be divided into three classes, as follows:—