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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 2

Results of Changes of Land Laws

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

The methods and results of all these changes in Europe are described at length in the series of Reports from the representatives of this country at foreign courts, which were laid before Parliament In 1870. They are unanimous as to the benefits which have resulted from the changes they report. Everywhere the production of the soil has been increased. Industry and thrift have been page 41 stimulated. Pauperism has been greatly reduced,

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

in many districts almost extinguished. Content has taken the place of chronic discontent. The rights of property have been greatly strengthened and are now everywhere secure.
In the case of France, it is interesting to compare the account given of its present condition by Mr. Sackville West, with the description given of it by the well-known writer, Arthur young, immediately before the Revolution of 1789. The state of France as described by Arthur Young was most wretched; everywhere he found, on the one hand, proprietors owning immense tracts of country heavily encumbered with debt, and which they were unable or unwilling to improve, and on the other, a vast body of poverty-stricken tenants overburthened with unjust taxation. In parts of France, however, there were even in those days, a considerable number of small peasant owners, cultivating their own land; and Young, with his usual discrimination, pointed out the difference in the condition of these as compared with the mass of the small tenants. He said of them, "their unremitting industry is so conspicuous and meritorious that no commendation would be too great for it. It is sufficient to prove that property in land is of all others the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour." In another passage he said, "The property in land is of all others the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour; and this page 42

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

truth is of such force and extent that I know of no way so sure to carry tillage to the mountain top as by permitting the adjoining villagers to acquire it in property;" and he added the words which have become a proverb, "Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will turn it into a desert. The magic of property turns sand into gold."

This opinion of Arthur Young, of the influence of ownership upon production and industry, is the more important, as, while admitting the merit of small properties, he feared they would result in indefinite sub-division of the land, and in the increase of population to an extent which the soil of France could not support. "The population flowing from this division, he said, would be the multiplication of wretchedness;" and "properties much divided would prove the greatest source of misery that could be conceived." In this opinion he was followed by many English economists. Of these the ablest exponent was the late Mr. McCulloch, who, writing in 1823, thirty years after the French Revolution, prophesied of France "that in half a century it would certainly be the greatest pauper warren in Europe, and along with Ireland have the honour of furnishing hewers of wood and drawers of water for all other countries in the world."

So far from these prophecies proving true, the very reverse has been the case, and the extension page 43 of ownership, the bringing within the reach of all

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

classes the opportunity of becoming owners, the efforts made by the Government to facilitate the connexion between ownership and cultivation, and the enormous increase in the number of small ownerships of land consequent upon the measures of the Revolution, have not led to a great increase of the population and to a consequent multiplication of a pauper class. They have had the very opposite result. Production has been greatly stimulated by the sense and security of ownership; but the population has not increased relatively in the same proportion; the average condition of the people therefore is vastly improved; pauperism is almost unknown in rural districts; the habits of industry and thrift are universal. The complaint now made by many economists is the reverse of that which was predicted by Arthur Young and McCulloch; they contend that the system of small ownerships is to be condemned because it tends to check the increase of population.
It is true that the population of France increases so slowly that it may almost be said to be stationary. It is not by any means certain however that this can be attributed wholly to the prevalence of peasant proprietors. In Belgium and Switzerland, countries differing widely in their commercial conditions, but agreeing in this that they have a very large number of peasant owners, the population is by no means stationary, and the page 44

Results of Changes of Land Laws

births exceed the deaths in a proportion not far different from that of England. Let us, however, assume for the purposes of argument that the prevalence of peasant proprietors, and the wide distribution of property in land, act as a restraint upon individuals in such a manner as to reduce greatly the rate of increase of population; is it a great disadvantage and a matter to be deplored? France is not a nation which has a genius for emigration; her sons love her soil too much, and care not to face the unknown in other climes. Without emigration, and with the rate of progress of population that prevails in England, France would not long supply a sufficiency for her population. The increase of the proletariat without corresponding increase of subsistence, would not be considered a matter for satisfaction. The prophecies of Arthur Young and M'Culloch, that her system of small cultivators would lead to her becoming the pauper warren of Europe, and her sons the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the rest of Europe, have not been fulfilled; but they make us feel what might have been the destinies of France under a different system. Both objections to her system of widely distributed property—namely, that it may lead to her becoming a pauper warren, or that it may tend to a very slow rate of increase of population—cannot be sound; which of them would be the most serious?
If the institutions of France have resulted in a page 45 self-acting process of adapting the growth of her

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

stimulates them to fresh exertions, beneficial not only to themselves but to the community in general."

This testimony in favour of the effects of a widely distributed ownership of land is not to be displaced by shewing that the average produce of wheat in France is considerably below that of England. It has already been shown by statistics that France is not a country wholly of small owners; nearly half her cultivated area is farmed by tenants; and there are 154,000 farmers who cultivate upwards of 100 acres as compared with 92,000 tenants of the same size in the United Kingdom. The wheat crops in France are mainly produced by the tenant farmers on these larger farms. The small owners as a rule do not produce wheat. The low average production of wheat in France is due to the soil and climate of her middle and southern provinces. In the north, the average production is as high as in England. No argument therefore can be drawn from this difference as against small ownerships.

Even Monsieur de Lavergne, who fully appreciates the system of large farms, and who is not in favour of an universal system of small proprietors, says on this point, "Is it right to extol the large property system to the disparagement of others, as has been done—to wish to extend it everywhere and to proscribe the small? Evidently not; for viewing the question merely from an agricultural page 47 point of view, the only one now under consideration,

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

general results argue more in favour of small properties than of large."

The same testimony meets us from almost every part of Europe. Of Baden, where landed property is very much divided, Mr. Bailie reports to the Foreign Office.

"The prevalent public opinion is that the system of small freeholds tends to promote the greater economical and moral prosperity of the people, to raise the average standard of education, and to increase the national standard of defence and taxation. It seems to be a generally established fact that the small fanners realize larger returns than the larger farmers do from the same number of acres, and the result is that the large properties and large farms are disappearing, and being parcelled out among a number of small farmers. In fact, the price of landed properties is determined less by their intrinsic value than by the possibility of selling or letting them in small holdings."

He adds that, "the small peasant proprietors do not differ from the larger proprietors in respect of dwellings, clothing, mode of living, or education. There is no doubt that since the revolution of 1848 there has been a great improvement in the houses of the peasants and their mode of living, and in the cultivation of the soil; and their present condition must on the whole be regarded as favourable in respect of their means and general well-being."

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Results of Changes of Land Laws.

Of Hesse Mr. Morier says: "An able-bodied pauper is a being altogether unknown. I even found a difficulty in describing the sort of person respecting whom I endeavoured to obtain information.

"The most vivid impression which I carried away from Viernheim was the equable manner in which the wealth of the place appeared to be distributed amongst its inhabitants. The whole population seemed to be on the same level of material comfort and well-being. I could not bring back to my recollection any sight or sound denoting the presence of a squalid class, or any indication pointing to a higher or a ruling class.

"When it has once reached a certain level of well-being, a peasant proprietary is a good judge of what amount of population the land will bear, and just as it increases in wealth and comfort, and in the special knowledge of the capabilities of the soil, so it becomes alive to the danger of jeopardizing this prosperity by over-population."

He speaks of spontaneous and systematic emigration as the safety-valve. "The use of this regulation is best understood in the Rhine provinces, which is one of the best cultivated and most prosperous districts in Europe. The Palatinate peasant cultivates his land more with the passion of an artist than in the plodding spirit of a mere bread-winner."

Of Lombardy, we are told that "Public opinion holds that small proprietors are advantageous to page 49 our mountain soils, where the spur of ownership

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

is required to compel production. From a social point of view the possession of freeholds may always be considered a benefit to the peasantry, and when la petite culture is possible it is favourable to agriculture."

There is no official report from Switzerland, but of the condition of the agricultural population we have abundant evidence from numerous writers who have studied that country, and who all unite in bearing testimony to the wonderful improvements which have been made of late years, to the marvellous industry and thrift of the small proprietors, and to the general diffusion of wealth, of comfort, and of intelligence. The Rev. Barham Zincke, who has written a most excellent account of this country, the result of many successive visits to it, says of the Canton de Vaud, "I saw no mansions in Switzerland, neither did I see scarcely any houses that with us would pass for cottages. What I did see was a surprising number of good comfortable small houses, which showed that the district was inhabited by a large number of well-to-do families . . . . It must be obvious that the yearly produce of these little reclaimed grass farms, in which every little patch and corner is made to support as many blades of grass as the most careful cultivation can force into existence, would not maintain in their present style of living all the families that reside in these comfortable houses.

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Results of Changes of Land Laws.

But the Swiss system suggests and encourages the practice of saving; and in most of these houses a capital fund has been accumulated, which so aids what these small farmers get during a year from their farms that their families are enabled to live with what is to them ease and comfort."

"It is an incidental and not unimportant result of this system that it works in the direction of enabling the population to provide themselves with better houses than under the territorial system they could rent from speculative builders of rows of cottages run up by contract on land let for the purpose on a ninety-nine years' lease. The comfortable little houses on the small farms throughout this district are the property of those who are living in them. That was the reason why they spent as much as they could spare in constructing them well, and in making them roomy and, in accordance with their ideas and wants, commodious."

"We may infer from the general condition of the Swiss that it is the possession of land, or the prospect of being able to acquire it, that saves a labouring class from sinking into a mob of pauperized drudges, and educates them into men."

How great is the difference between the state of the Swiss as regards their houses and the agricultural labourers of England as regards their cottages will hereafter appear; the difference between their occupiers is scarcely less.

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It is not, however, necessary to go beyond the immediate

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

possessions of the Crown of England for a conspicuous illustration of the results of a widely distributed ownership of land upon the production, the industry, the content, and the general wellbeing of a whole community. There is such a case close at hand in the Channel Islands. The people of those islands, since their union with England 800 years ago, have jealously preserved their local government and their distinctive laws. Chief among these distinctions are their land laws, which they have inherited from the common law of Normandy; these laws favour the dispersion of property, and forbid its accumulation by entail or primogeniture. The result is, that with an area no larger than hundreds of private estates in England and Ireland, the islands boast of not less than 4,000 landowners, cultivating in most cases their own property, and constituting a class of small yeomen.
The industrial results of these small yeomen are most remarkable; the island is cultivated to the highest point which it is capable of; the gross produce is extraordinary; there is a general diffusion of wealth; thrift and saving are conspicuous in every class; cottages such as we see in England and Ireland are unknown; the people are better housed than in any part of Europe; pauperism is almost unkown; everything testifies to the stimulus effected by the wide distribution of property, and page 52

Results of Changes of Land Laws.

by the fact that property is brought within the prospect of acquisition by every one.

The most enlightened people in the island, equally with public opinion, attribute these results to their distinctive land laws; to the fact that they have successfully resisted the introduction of English laws, which they believe would have an opposite tendency; and they significantly allege that if these laws had been introduced some centuries ago, the islands, by this time, would probably have been each owned by a single individual; and their cultivators might have been in the condition of the Irish tenants. As it is, a more prosperous, loyal, and contented class does not exist under the Crown of England than the small yeomen of the Channel Islands.