Land Tenures—peasant Proprietors, Metayers, Cottiers, and Large Tenant Farmers. Comparative Advantages of Large and Small Cultivation.

We now come to the second great question connected with this subject; the question, namely, as to the various forms of landed property and tenure existing in different countries, and the comparative advantages and disadvantages of each. The principal agricultural systems, or forms of land tenure, to be met with in Europe, are those of the peasant proprietors, the metayers, the cottiers, and the large tenant farmers; or, as they may be called from the countries in which they are (to a great extent, though page 8 not exclusively) prevalent, the French, the Italian, the Irish, and the English systems. In the first, the land belongs to the working classes themselves, and is owned by them in small independent properties, or freeholds, which they cultivate with their own labour and capital; in the second and third, the land belongs to a landlord, and is cultivated by small farmers with their own labour, the division of the produce being determined in the one case by custom, and in the other by competition; in the fourth, the land belongs to a landlord, and is cultivated by large farmers with the aid of hired labourers, the division of the produce being determined by competition. The first system prevails very widely, not only in France, but also in Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Channel Islands, &c., as well as in the free states of North America; the second is to be found in most parts of Italy, and in some districts of France; the third is principally exemplified in Ireland; while the fourth prevails throughout Great Britain, and in some parts of Holland and Belgium. The wide difference between these systems may be seen from the fact, that in France there are about five millions of lauded proprietors, while in England there are not more than fifty or sixty thousand. Few questions are so important to the labouring classes, or have given rise to keener discussion, than the comparative merits of these different systems. On the Continent, the advantage of having a large body of landed proprietors is held by the people, and by the great majority of economists and politicians, almost as an axiom. In this country, on the other hand, it has been the fashion, especially since the writings of the celebrated agriculturist, Arthur Young, towards the end of last century, to decry the Continental systems, and to represent the English as the only one compatible with good farming or national prosperity; but the facts and arguments brought forward by Mr. William Thornton, in his "Plea for Peasant Proprietors," and the powerful defence of the same system by Mr. Mill, have produced in impartial minds a very different view of the subject.

In estimating the merits of different agricultural systems, we have to consider their effect not only upon the production, but also on the distribution of wealth; we have to inquire, which system yields the largest produce? and also, which is most favourable to the physical and moral well-being of the peasantry? It is in regard to the first of these points especially, that the superiority of the English system has been so loudly and confidently asserted. It is said that labour is much more efficient when its operations are carried on upon an extensive scale; that the large farm, like the large factory, has many advantages over the small one, owing to the division of labour and other causes; that but few cattle can be page 9 kept on small farms, and hence that there is a deficiency of manure; and that the small farmers are wanting in education and intelligence, and have neither the capital nor the spirit which are needed for the introduction of expensive machinery and of improved practices of agriculture. Hence (it is argued) the produce is much greater on large farms, and therefore the English laws of inheritance, which keep the land in the hands of a few proprietors, are the best for agriculture; whereas the French law leads to an extreme subdivision of the soil, by which its productiveness is greatly diminished. This is one of the commonest arguments in favour of primogeniture and a hereditary landed aristocracy, and has been repeated again and again by their defenders. Some writers, in their zeal for the cause of aristocracy, have not scrupled to assert that the French law is ruinous to agriculture, and has reduced, or is tending to reduce, the people to beggary by the subdivision of the land. An examination of the facts of the case, however, will show that such extravagant statements are wholly without foundation; that even as a question of production, the superiority of the English system cannot be considered as by any means established; while with regard to the far more important question of distribution, and the condition of the labouring classes, the peasant proprietary system is greatly superior to our own.

It may be observed, in the first place, that the advantages derived from the division of labour are not nearly so available in agriculture as in manufactures, since the same person cannot always be employed in ploughing, sowing, or reaping. The kind of combination of labour most usual in the former, is what has been called simple co-operation—namely, where several persons are engaged together at the same work; and for this a single family is generally sufficient. Wherever, indeed, the land is too much subdivided so that the cultivators have not enough to occupy their time, there is a decided loss of productive power; and up to this point the size of farms is a matter of great importance. Beyond it, however, the advantages of large farms over small ones are by no means so marked. The tools and implements commonly used in husbandry are not expensive; and even those costly machines which have been lately introduced, may be bought by combination among the small proprietors, and let out to each in turn. On large farms, there is a saving in the matter of buildings, as well as in the cost of carriage, and in buying articles in large quanties; but although these advantages must undoubtedly count for something, they ought not, it would seem, to count for very much. As to the objection so often urged against small farms, that they cannot maintain a sufficient stock of cattle, it applies only to the cases where the subdivision of the page 10 land is extreme, and the peasants consequently too poor. Otherwise the fact is the very reverse. The small proprietors of Flanders, as shown by M. Passy, in his "Systems of Agriculture," and also by the author of the treatise on "Flemish Husbandry," in the library of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, have long been noted for their abundance of cattle and copious use of manures. "It appears astonishing," says the latter writer, "that the occupier of ten or twelve acres of light arable land should be able to maintain four or five cows, but the fact is notorious in the Waes country." Nor is it true that peasant proprietors, as a class, are deficient in skill, or without the intelligence to recognise, and the spirit to introduce, improved practices of agriculture. In science and theory they may doubtless be wanting, but they have often extraordinary practical knowledge. Such improvements as the rotation of crops and a judicious economy of manures, were practised by the Flemish peasants for centuries before they were introduced in England; and their agriculture is even now admitted by good judges to be probably the best in Europe. Experiments and improvements which require a great outlay of capital, or which have to be made on a large scale and over an extensive district, cannot indeed be undertaken, generally speaking, except by wealthy proprietors or farmers; although instances to the contrary are by no means wanting. Mr. Laing, in his "Journal of a Residence in Norway," and M. Reichensperger in his work on "The Land Question," show that the most costly and extensive systems of artificial irrigation are carried out in Norway, Germany, Italy, and France, by bodies of peasant proprietors, acting in co-operation with each other.

But whatever may be the inferiority in these respects on the part of the small proprietors, it is more than compensated by one circumstance—namely, by the far greater ardour of industry which men display when working for themselves, and not for a master or employer. This is seen especially where the peasantry are themselves the owners of the land; and indeed it is from this system, and not from that of the cottiers, or even the metayers, that conclusions as to the capabilities of small farms should be drawn. So striking are the effects of this superior industry, that Mr. Mill, and many other writers, hold it as an established fact that, with anything like equal skill and knowledge, the gross produce is greatest under small cultivation. As one of many proofs of this, he instances the enormous produce which English labourers, even without any fixity of tenure, extract from their little allotments. No large farmer could find it his interest to raise such a produce, or anything approaching to it, from the page 11 same piece of ground; and the reason is, that the labour which the allotment-holder, or the peasant proprietor, expends upon the land, is his own and that of his wife and children, whereas all the labour employed by the large farmer has to be paid for. It is true that the increase of produce is obtained by a more than proportional increase of labour, owing to the natural laws of the soil; and this, according to Mr. Mill, is the real explanation of the fact, that the net produce (or the surplus which remains after feeding the cultivators) bears a less proportion to the gross produce in the small than in the large system of farming, and hence that the latter is generally most advantageous as a mere investment for profit. It is not from any superior efficiency in the system, but simply because the land is not farmed so highly. The question of net produce, however, is one on which a common fallacy exists. One of the objections most frequently made to the small system of cultivation is, that even although the gross produce, and consequently the total population, of a country may be greater under it, yet the net produce, and the non-agricultural part of the population, are less. In proof of this, it is said, that in Franch about two-thirds of the whole population are agricultural, and in England at most one-third. In this argument, however, as pointed out by M. Passy and Mr. Mill, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. It is quite possible that the net produce may be greater relatively to the gross produce in one country as compared with another, and yet not be greater absolutely. We might suppose, for example, that the same extent of land which in France supported six people by the labour of four, in England supported three people by the labour of one: in which case the net produce would be as great absolutely in the former country as in the latter, though it would bear a smaller proportion to the whole produce. It is not, of course, meant that the actual state of things is so. As a matter of fact, it is well known that the average produce per acre, and also the net produce, and the non-agricultural population, in proportion to the extent of her territory, are much greater in England than in France; but this could not be inferred from so simple a test. Neither does Mr. Mill admit, as a general principle and apart from individual cases, that the net produce is less under small cultivation, although he grants that it bears a smaller proportion to the whole. "As a question, not of gross, but of net produce," he says, "the comparative merits of the grande and the petite culture, especially when the small farmer is also the proprietor, cannot be looked upon as decided. It is a question upon which good judges at present differ. The current of English opinion is in favour of large farms; on the Continent the weight of authority page 12 seems to be on the other side." Professor Kan, of Heidelberg, who has carefully investigated the subject, lays it down as a settled truth, that both the gross and the net produce are greatest on small or moderately-sized farms; but considers that an admixture of wealthy proprietors to lead the way in improvements, is a great advantage. M. Passy, speaking of net produce, gives it as his opinion that large farms are the best for grain and forage, but small ones for those plants which require much care and attention, such as the vine, the olive, flax, hemp, roots, kitchen-vegetables, &c. With regard to the inferior productiveness of the French, as compared with the English agriculture, Mr. Mill holds that this inferiority (which, he says, "taking the country as a whole, must be admitted to be real, though much exaggerated") is not due to the small cultivation, but mainly to the lower general average of industrial skill and energy in the former country: and also partly to the fact that the land is very frequently too much subdivided, and even when belonging to the same owner, is often broken up into a number of detached and inconveniently-situated patches.

On the whole, then, Mr. Mill's opinion on the vexed question of the comparative merits of the peasant proprietary, and large farming systems, considered as a question of production, is this—that, with anything like equal skill, the gross produce is greatest under the former; that the net produce is probably quite as great, if not greater, absolutely; and that, although it bears a less proportion to the gross produce, this is not owing to the superior efficacy of the large farming system, but simply to the fact that the land under it is not so highly cultivated.

The most signal advantages of peasant properties, however, are to be found in their influence on the distribution of wealth, and on the physical and moral well-being of the labourers. Indeed, every intelligent reader of Mr. Mill's work will recognise in them one of the most powerful of all means for the elevation of the people. Their good effects on the industry, the intelligence, and the moral qualities of the peasantry are equally conspicuous. The marvellous and indefatigable industry of peasant proprietors has been a theme for the admiration of all observers. "On this point at least," says Mr. Mill, "authorities are unanimous. Those who have seen only one country of peasant properties, always think the inhabitants of that country the most industrious in the world." Late and early they are ever at work on their little farms—sowing, reaping, pruning, watering, and tending every plant with the most assiduous care. The "magic of property" is the secret of these unwearied exertions. They know that they are labouring for themselves, and that every addition they make to page 13 the produce will increase their own comforts or give them greater means of saving, instead of merely contributing to swell the profits of an employer. Labour expended in this way loses half its irksomeness, and becomes to the small proprietor more like the gratification of a favourite pursuit or even a ruling passion. As an instrument of popular education too, peasant properties are of inestimable value. They call forth and develope the powers of the mind, and teach the agricultural labourers to think, to plan, and to execute for themselves. Education does not consist in book-learning only, or in the lessons taught at school, but also in the training received in the daily occupations of after life; and no pursuits are so valuable to this end, as those in which a man has to think and act for himself, and not merely to carry out the biddings of another. An objection, indeed, has been made to peasant properties, that, by the risk of losses attendant upon them, the cares and anxieties of the labourers are increased—the same objection which has so often been made to co-operation, and to the proposal that workmen should be admitted to a share in the profits and losses of their employers. But the day-labourer, who depends for his subsistence on the favour and fortunes of a master, has his own cares and anxieties no less than the peasant proprietor; and the difference between them is, that the day-labourer has many of the anxieties which depress, and few of those which stimulate and elevate the mind. "The position of the peasant proprietor of Flanders," says Mr. Mill, "is the reverse. From the anxiety which chills and paralyses—the uncertainty of having food to eat—few persons are more exempt; it requires as rare a concurrence of circumstances as the potatoe failure, combined with an universal bad harvest, to bring him within reach of that danger. His anxieties are the ordinary vicissitudes of more and less; his cares are that he takes his fair share of the business of life; that he is a free human being, and not perpetually a child, which seems to be the approved condition of the labouring classes according to the prevailing philanthropy. He is no longer a being of a different order from the middle classes; he has pursuits and objects like those which occupy them, and give to their intellects the greatest part of such cultivation as they receive." Nor is the situation of a peasant proprietor less favourable to the moral virtues of prudence, temperance, and self-control. The recklessness of day labourers, and their want of care to lay by any provision for the morrow, even when their wages are high enough to admit of it, have often been a subject of regret. Peasant proprietors, on the other hand, are, if anything, rather apt to be too penurious. They are content to deny themselves many an indulgence, to live on the humblest fare, and wear the coarsest page 14 clothing, until, by the gradual accumulation of their little hoards, they can gratify their most cherished object—the purchase of more land. English travellers, hastily passing through the Continent, have often mistaken these signs of providence and frugality for signs of poverty. In Switzerland, in Flanders, in France, almost every one saves who has any means of saving. Nor is this disposition confined to the small proprietors; the hope of one day possessing land operates powerfully, as a motive for saving, on the whole rural population, including the day-labourers, and even, in no small degree, on the work-people in the towns. Another admirable effect of property in land is to increase the sense of dignity and self-respect among the peasantry. The small proprietor is his own master, and is independent of the good-will or the ill-will of a landlord or an employer. He stands, too, in an intermediate position, and forms as it it were a connecting link between the hired labourer and the wealthy farmer or landowner. Peasant properties have thus a powerful tendency to do away with the present unjust distinctions of rank and class, and to promote that equal mutual respect which should exist between all men, whatever be the texture of their coat or the nature of their employment, provided it be an honest and a useful one. There is still another advantage, arising from the same source, which ought not to be omitted; and that is, the happiness derived from the possession of landed property, and the peculiar, and even affectionate interest it inspires. No kind of property appeals so strongly to the feelings, or calls forth so deep an attachment, as property in land; and agriculture, when pursued by the owner of the soil, is not only pursued to the best advantage, but has always been regarded as among the most delightful occupations of mankind. "A small proprietor," says Adam Smith, "who knows every part of his little territory, who views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful." The historian, Michelet, speaks of the French peasant's little property as "his mistress," and describes the feelings with which he regards it as forming "his innermost thought, his fervent passion." Such, too, were probably the feelings of the English "yeomen" of former times, whose disappearance from the soil and replacement by the "un-wieldly wealth and cumbrous pomp" of the large proprietors, have been so deeply mourned by our poets. In a country where the peasantry are not to a great extent the owners of the soil they cultivate, it may truly be said that one of the greatest and most unfailing sources of national happiness is wanting.

page 15

A large number of passages are quoted by Mr. Mill, in favour of peasant properties, from writers who have seen and studied the system in different parts of Europe, and describe its effects both on the productiveness of the agriculture and the condition of the peasantry. The subject is so extremely important to the labouring classes, and, moreover, the facts relating to it are so little generally known in this country, and have been so much misrepresented, that I think it may be advisable to give here several extracts from the passages and authorities cited by Mr. Mill.

We may first take the case of Switzerland. Of this country M. de Sismondi, the eminent historian, says in his "Studies on Political Economy"—"It is Switzerland, above all, which must be visited, which must be studied, to judge of the happiness of peasant proprietors. It is Switzerland which we must learn to know in order to be convinced that agriculture, when practised by the same persons who enjoy its fruits, suffices to procure a great abundance for a very numerous population; a great independence of character, the result of the independence of conditions; a great interchange of commodities, the consequence of the well-being of all the inhabitants, even in a country whose climate is rude, whoso soil is but moderately fertile, and where the lingering frosts and the inconstancy of the seasons often destroy the hope of the labourer. One cannot see without admiration these wooden houses of the humblest peasant, so large, so well built, so covered with carved ornaments. Within, large passages separate each chamber of the numerous household; each room has but one bed, abundantly provided with curtains, coverlets, and with the whitest linen; around it are well-preserved pieces of furniture; the presses are full of linen, the dairy large, airy, and of an exquisite cleanliness; beneath the same roof are to be found great stores of corn, of salted meat, of cheese, and of wood; in the stalls are seen cattle, the best tended and the finest in Europe; the garden is planted with flowers; both men and women are warmly and decently clothed, the poorest among them adhere with pride to their old national costume; all bear in their faces the marks of vigour and of health. Let other nations boast their riches, Switzerland can always proudly oppose to them her peasants." In another place, speaking of the system generally, Sismondi says, "Wherever we find peasant proprietors, there we find also that comfort, that security, that confidence in the future, that independence, which assure at once the happiness and the virtue of a people. The peasant feels strongly the sense of happiness attached to the condition of a proprietor. Therefore is he ever eager to buy land at any price. He will give for it more than it page 16 is worth, more perhaps than it will return to him; but how many reasons has he to prize highly the advantage of having always in future a good investment for his labour, without being ever compelled to sell it cheap; of finding always his bread in time of need, without being ever obliged to buy it dear! The peasant proprietor is of all cultivators the one who makes the most of the soil, because it is he who thinks most for the future, and he, too, who has been most enlightened by experience; he is the one who makes the best use of human industry, because, in sharing his occupations among all the members of his family, he distributes them throughout the year, so that there is no slack time for anyone; of all cultivators he is the happiest, and moreover, on a given space, the soil never nourishes and gives occupation to so many inhabitants as when they are proprietors; in fine, the peasant proprietor is of all cultivators the one who gives the greatest encouragement to commerce and manufactures, because he is the richest." In his "New Principles of Political Economy," Sismondi says, "In travelling through nearly the whole of Switzerland, through several provinces of France, of Italy, and of Germany, we have no need to ask, in regarding each part of the soil, whether it belongs to a peasant proprietor or to a tenant farmer. The intelligent care, the enjoyments prepared for the labourer, the ornamentation which the fields have received from his hands, very soon indicate the former." From this description, Sismondi excepts Savoy, where the peasants, although mostly proprietors, are extremely poor, in consequence, he says, of the mal-administration and oppressive fiscal exactions of the government. Another writer, Mr. Inglis, in his work on "Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, in 1830," describes the cultivation of the country round Zurich as elaborate and painstaking in the highest degree; and says of the peasantry that "in the industry they show in the cultivation of their land I may safely say they are unrivalled." Of the Engadine, a remote valley of the High Alps, where the peasants own the whole of the land, and live mostly upon their own produce, he says, "The country is incapable of greater cultivation than it has received. All has been done for it that industry and an extreme love of gain could devise. There is not a foot of waste land in the Engadine, the lowest part of which is not much lower than the top of Snowdon. . . In no country of Europe will be found so few poor as in the Engadine. In the village of Suss, which contains about six hundred inhabitants, there is not a single individual who has not wherewithal to live comfortably, not a single individual who is indebted to others for one morsel that he eats." In some other parts of Switzerland, however, there is not the page 17 same absence of pauperism. Berne, the largest and richest canton, has a numerous pauper population, owing to the workings of a very bad system of poor laws; although in that part of the canton which is occupied by peasant proprietors, they are as flourishing as elsewhere. Statistical accounts have been drawn up of the different Swiss cantons, from which it appears that the subdivision of the land is often extremely minute, and that the small properties are in many places more or less deeply mortgaged. "Yet the general conclusion deducible from these books," says Mr. Mill, "is that since the beginning of the century, and concurrently with the division of many great estates which belonged to nobles or the cantonal governments, there has been a striking and rapid improvement in almost every department of agriculture, as well as in the houses, the habits, and the food of the people. The writer of the account of Thurgau goes so far as to say, that since the subdivision of the feudal estates into peasant properties, it is not uncommon for a third or a fourth part of an estate to produce as much grain, and support as many head of cattle as the whole estate did before."

Mr. Laing, in his "Journal of a Residence in Norway," speaks highly of the results of peasant properties in that country; where the small proprietors are of older date, and more numerous in proportion to the population, than in most other parts of Europe. In his "Rural and Domestic Life of Germany," Mr. Howitt says, in speaking of the Palatinate, one of the many flourishing districts of Germany where peasant properties prevail—"The peasants are the great and ever-present objects of country life. They are the great population of the country, because they are themselves the possessors. The country is, in fact, for the most part, in the hands of the people. It is parcelled out among the multitude . . . The peasants are not, as with us, for the most part, totally cut off from property in the soil they cultivate, totally dependent on the labour afforded by others—they are themselves the proprietors. It is, perhaps, from this cause that they are probably the most industrious peasantry in the world. They labour busily, early and late, because they feel that they are labouring for themselves . . . The German peasants work hard, but they have no actual want. Every man has his house, his orchard, his roadside trees, commonly so heavy with fruit, that he is obliged to prop and secure them all ways, or they would be torn to pieces. He has his cornplot, his plot for mangol-wurzel, for hemp, and so on. He is his own master; and he, and every member of his family, have the strongest motives to labour. You see the effect of this in that unremitting diligence which is beyond that of the whole world besides, and his economy, page 18 which is still greater. . . The English peasant is so cut off from the idea of property, that he comes habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the large proprietors, and becomes, in consequence, spiritless, purposeless. . . The German bauer, on the contrary, looks on the country as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself a man; he has a stake in the country as good as that of the bulk of his neighbours; no man can threaten him with ejection, or the workhouse, so long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but of a respectful one." Professor Rau, in his treatise "On the Agriculture of the Palatinate," bears a similar testimony to the industry and intelligence of the peasant proprietors; and describes their agriculture as excellent, and as having already undergone great and progressive improvement. Such, too, is the case in all other parts of Germany. Mr. Kay, in his work published in 1850, on "The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe," a work in which he has collected a mass of evidence in favour of peasant proprietors, says, "In Saxony, it is a notorious fact, that during the last thirty years, and since the peasants became the proprietors of the land, there has been a rapid and continual improvement in the condition of the houses, in the manner of living, in the dress of the peasants, and particularly in the culture of the land. I have twice walked through that part of Saxony called Saxon Switzerland, in company with a German guide, and on purpose to see the state of the villages and of the farming, and I can safely challenge contradiction when I affirm, that there is no farming in all Europe superior to the laboriously careful cultivation of the valleys in that part of Saxony." In another place he says, "Reichensperger, himself an inhabitant of that part of Prussia where the land is the most subdivided, has published a long and very elaborate work to show the admirable consequences of a system of small freeholds in land. He expresses a very decided opinion that not only are the gross products of any given number of acres held and cultivated by small peasant proprietors, greater than the gross products of an equal number of acres held by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by tenant farmers; but that the net products of the former, after deducting all the expenses of cultivation, are also greater than the net products of the latter. . . . He mentions one fact, which seems to prove that the fertility of the land in countries where the properties are small, must be rapidly increasing. He says that the price of the land which is divided into small properties in the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has page 19 been rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. He and Professor Rau both say that this rise in the price of the small estates would have ruined the more recent purchasers, unless the productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually becoming more and more prosperous notwithstanding the increasing prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent justness, that this would seem to show that not only the gross profits of the small estates, but the net profits also, have been gradually increasing, and that the net profits, per acre, of laud when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed by a great proprietor. He says, with seeming truth, that the increasing price of land in the small estates cannot be the mere effect of competition, or it would have diminished the profits and the prosperity of the small proprietors, and that this result has not followed the rise. Albrecht Thaer, another celebrated German writer on the different systems of agriculture, in one of his later works expresses his decided conviction, that the net produce of land is greater when farmed by small proprietors than when farmed by great proprietors or their tenants . . . . This opinion of Thaer is all the more remarkable, as, during the early part of his life, he was very strongly in favour of the English system of great estates and great farms." Mr. Kay adds, "The peasant farming of Prussia, Saxony, Holland, and Switzerland, is the most perfect and economical farming I have ever witnessed in any country."

The country, however, which shows in the most striking manner the power of peasant properties, to reclaim and fertilise even the barrenest soils, is Belgium. The soil of a great part of Belgium was originally little better than a loose sand, and is now one of the most productive in Europe. "The provinces of East and West Flanders, and of Hainault," says Mr. M'Culloch in his Geographical Dictionary, "form a far-stretching plain, of which the luxuriant vegetation indicates the indefatigable care and labour bestowed upon its cultivation; for the natural soil consists almost wholly of barren sand, and its great fertility is entirely the result of very skilful management and judicious application of manures." "It is not pretended by our agricultural writers," says Mr. Laing, "that our large farmers, even in Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, or the Lothians, approach to the garden-like cultivation, attention to manures, drainage, and clean state of the land, or in productiveness from a small space of soil not originally rich, which distinguish the small farmers of Flanders, or their system." The author of the treatise on page 20 "Flemish Husbandry," published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, says, "The cultivation of a poor light soil, or a moderate soil, is generally superior in Flanders to that of the most improved farms of the same kind in Britain." As to their mode of living, he says, "The Flemish farmers and labourers live much more economically than the same class in England: they seldom eat meat except on Sundays and in harvest; buttermilk and potatoes with brown bread is their daily food." This homely fare, however, is not the result of greater poverty, but of economy and a strong desire to save money. "Accordingly," says the writer, "they are gradually acquiring capital, and their great ambition is to have land of their own. They eagerly seize every opportunity of purchasing a small farm, and the price is so raised by competition that land pays little more than two per cent, interest for the purchase money. Large properties gradually disappear, and are divided into small portions which sell at a high rate. But the wealth and industry of the population are continually increasing, being rather diffused through the masses than accumulated in individuals."

In the Channel Islands, the admirable effects of small properties in land are particularly conspicuous. Mr. William Thornton, in his "Plea for Peasant Proprietors" (a book which, Mr. Mill remarks, "by the excellence both of its materials and its execution, deserves to be regarded as the standard work on that side of the question"), says of the peasants of Guernsey, "The satisfactoriness of their condition is apparent to every observer. 'The happiest community,' says Mr. Hill, 'which it has ever been my lot to fall in with, is to be found in this little island of Guernsey.' 'No matter,' says Sir George Head, 'to what point the traveller may choose to bend his way, comfort everywhere prevails.'" "Literally, in the whole island," continues Mr. Thornton, "with the exception of a few fishermen's huts, there is not one so mean as to be likened to the ordinary habitation of an English farm labourer. 'Look,' says a late bailiff of Guernsey, Mr. De L'Isle Brock, 'at the hovels of the English, and compare them with the cottages of our peasantry.' . . . Beggars are utterly unknown. . . . Pauperism, able-bodied pauperism at least, is nearly as rare as mendicancy. The Savings Banks accounts also bear witness to the general abundance enjoyed by the labouring classes of Guernsey. In the year 1841, there were in England, out of a population of nearly fifteen millions, less than 700,000 depositors, or one in each twenty persons, and the average amount of the deposits was £30. In Guernsey, in the same year, out of a population of 26,000, the number of depositors was 1920, and the average amount of the deposits page 21 £40." In Jersey and Alderney the state of the peasantry is equally flourishing. With regard to the gross and net produce, and the numbers of the agricultural and non-agricultural population, of the islands, as compared with England, Mr. Thornton says, after producing ample evidence—"Thus it appears that in the two principal Channel Islands, the agricultural population is, in the one, twice, and in the other, three times, as dense as in Britain, there being in the latter country only one cultivator to twenty-two acres of cultivated land, while in Jersey there is one to eleven, and in Guernsey one to seven acres. Yet the agriculture of these islands maintains, besides cultivators, non-agricultural populations, respectively four and five times as dense as that of Britain." This greater density of population, agricultural and non-agricultural, does not arise from the superior fertility of the soil, which is naturally rather a poor one, but from the industry and skill of the husbandmen, and the copious use of manures. As to the comparative yield of wheat, and rent of land, per acre, Mr. Thornton says, "In the year 1837, the average yield of wheat in the large farms of England, was only twenty-one bushels, and the highest average for any one county was no more than twenty-six bushels. The highest average since claimed for the whole of England is thirty bushels. In Jersey, where the average size of farms is only sixteen acres, the average produce of wheat per acre was stated by Inglis in 1834 to be thirty-six bushels; but it is proved by official tables to have been forty bushels in the five years ending with 1833. In Guernsey, where farms are still smaller, four quarters per acre, according to Inglis, is considered a good, but still a very common crop." "Thirty shillings an acre would be thought in England a very fair rent for middling land; but in the Channel Islands it is only very inferior land that would not let for at least £4."

In no part of Europe, perhaps, have the benefits of peasant properties been more strikingly displayed during the present century, than in France. And yet France is the country in which, above all others, the system is accused of having led to the most calamitous results. It is of France that we hear it so constantly asserted, that small properties have been the ruin of her agriculture, and have reduced, or are threatening to reduce, her people to beggary by the subdivision of the land. "It is difficult," says Mr. Mill, "to account for the general prevalence of impressions so much the reverse of the truth." Previous to the Revolution, when peasant properties were, comparatively speaking, few in number, and the land was mostly in the hands of the nobles and other wealthy proprietors, the French agriculture was miserable, and the people wretchedly poor. Such is the page 22 account given by Arthur Young, who made an agricultural tour through nearly the whole of France, in 1787, 1788, and 1789. The only parts of the country where he found any remarkable exceptions to the general poverty and backwardness, were certain districts in which the land was occupied by peasant proprietors. On the great majority of small properties, indeed, the agriculture was as bad, and the cultivators as indigent, as elsewhere, in consequence, he says, of the land being too much subdivided; but in French Flanders, Alsace, Beam, and some other places where the properties were of larger size, he describes the cultivation as "equal to our own," and the peasant proprietors as enjoying a remarkable degree of comfort. Though himself a strenuous advocate of the large farming system, Arthur Young repeatedly notices the great stimulus to labour which property gives, and alludes to this "omnipotent principle" as capable of fertilising any soil, however rugged and barren. "The magic of property," he says, "turns sand to gold." "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 convert it into a desert." In summing up his opinions, he says, "It is necessary to impress on the reader's mind, that though the husbandry I met with, in a great variety of instances on little properties, was as bad as can well be conceived, yet the industry of the possessors was so conspicuous, and so meritorious, that no commendations would be too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour."

Since the revolution, however, when primogeniture and entail were abolished, and a large proportion of the great estates broken up into peasant properties, the progress of France, both in agriculture and in the well-being of her people, has been most remarkable. "A mighty change for the better in the condition of the lower orders of the French people," says Mr. Thornton, in his work on Over-Population and its Remedy, "was wrought by the revolution of 1789. Not only did all arbitrary exactions and all feudal privileges cease, but the division of extensive tracts of common land, and the confiscation and sale, at a very low price, of the vast estates of the nobility and clergy, enabled almost every cultivator to become a proprietor. At this moment one-seventh of the whole nation are land-owners, a much larger proportion probably than in any other part of the world. Most of the properties are of course very small; but, cultivated as they are with the minute and assiduous attention which are never bestowed but by small occupiers, they are sufficient to furnish their owners in general with a comfortable page 23 maintenance, or at least to contribute very materially towards it. That the French people in general are at present very well off, is remarked by every one who passes through the country; and it is important to observe, that their happiness is partly the effect of very recent improvement." Mr. Mill, in the lately published edition of his work on Political Economy, says, in referring to the statements he had already made in previous editions on the growing prosperity of France, "I little knew how much stronger my language might have been without exceeding the truth, and how much the actual progress of French agriculture surpassed anything which I had at that time sufficient grounds to affirm. The investigations of that eminent authority on agricultural statistics, M. Leonce de Lavergne, undertaken by desire of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France, have led to the conclusion that since the revolution of 1789, the total produce of French agriculture has doubled; profits and wages having both increased in about the same, and rent in a still greater ratio. M. de Lavergne, whose impartiality is one of his greatest merits, is, moreover, so far in this instance from the suspicion of having a case to make out, that he is labouring to show, not how much French agriculture has accomplished, but how much still remains to do. 'We have required' (he says in his 'Rural Economy of France,') 'no less than seventy years to bring into cultivation two million hectares (five million English acres) of waste land, to suppress half our fallows, double our agricultural products, increase our population by 30 per cent., our wages by 100 per cent., our rent by 150 per cent. At this rate we shall require three quarters of a century more to arrive at the point which England has already attained.'

"After this evidence," continues Mr. Mill, "we have now surely heard the last of the incompatibility of small properties and small farms with agricultural improvement. The only question which remains open is one of degree, the comparative rapidity of agricultural improvement under the two systems; and it is the general opinion of those who are equally well acquainted with both, that improvement is greatest under a due admixture between them." M. de Lavergne says that the average daily wages of an agricultural labourer, which Arthur Young estimated at nineteen sous, have risen to thirty sous, but that, from the greater constancy of employment and other causes, his annual earnings "must have doubled;" while the price of the principal necessaries of life has altered but little, and that of manufactured articles, especially clothing, has sensibly diminished. With regard to the peasant proprietors, Mr. Mill says, "Of five millions of small proprietors, three millions at least, according to that high authority (M. de page 24 Lavergne), pay less than ten francs of taxes, and possess, on an average, only one hectare (two and a half acres). Two millions pay from ten to fifty francs, and possess, on an average, six hectares, or fifteen acres. 'These last,' says M. de Lavergne, 'enjoy sometimes a real affluence. Their properties are divided by inheritance; but many of them are continually making new acquisitions by purchase, and on the whole their tendency is more to rise than to descend in the scale of wealth.'" In his "Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland," M. de Lavergne bears the following high testimony to the skill and industry of the peasant proprietors in many parts of France. "In the rich plains of Flanders," he says, "on the banks of the Rhine, the Garonne, the Charente, the Rhone, all the practices which fertilise the land and increase the productiveness of labour, are known to the very smallest cultivators, and practised by them, however considerable may be the advances they require. In their hands, abundant manures, collected at great cost, repair and incessantly increase the fertility of the soil, in spite of the activity of cultivation. The races of cattle are superior, the crops magnificent. Tobacco, flax, colza, madder, beetroot, in some places; in others, the vine, the plum, the mulberry, only yield their abundant treasures to a population of industrious labourers. Is it not also to small cultivation that we are indebted for most of the garden produce obtained by dint of great outlay in the neighbourhood of Paris?" Mr. Mill adds, "it is a striking fact, stated by the same eminent writer, that the departments which have the greatest number of small cotes foncières are the Nord, the Somme, the Pas de Calais, the Seine Inferieure, the Aisne, and the Oise; all of them amongst the richest and best cultivated, and the first of them the very richest and best cultivated, in France." Many other passages, bearing a similar testimony to the excellent agriculture of the peasant proprietors, are to be found in M. de Lavergne's "Rural Economy of France;" a work which, on the other hand, contains equally abundant evidence of the injurious effects of subdivision, when carried too far, or when the nature of the soil and of its products is not favourable to it.

The general conclusion, then, to be drawn from the above facts, is this—that peasant properties are attended with the most admirable results, when they are not too small, or, in other words, when the land is not too much subdivided. This is the conclusion to which the testimony, even of Arthur Young himself, the most renowned advocate of the large farming system, may be said to lead. He recommends, accordingly, that there should be a legal limit to the subdivision of properties: a proposal which Mr. Mill holds to be by no means indefensible in extreme cases, and which page 25 has been carried into effect by the governments of Bavaria and Nassau The undue subdivision of properties, again, arises in the main from the partition of inheritances among large families of children: so that we are thus brought to the population principle, which will invariably be found, on careful analysis, to be the real cause of poverty, in every country and under every industrial system, throughout the old world.

"The benefits of peasant properties," says Mr. Mill, "are conditional on their not being too much subdivided; that is, on their not being required to maintain too many persons, in proportion to the produce that can be raised from them by those persons. The question resolves itself, like most questions respecting the condition of the labouring classes, into one of population. Are small properties a stimulus to undue multiplication, or a check to it?"

On this most important point, as on so many others relating to peasant properties, opinions are by no means agreed. Most of the English political economists who have written on the matter at all, as, for example, Mr. M'Culloch, Mr. Jones in his "Essay on the Distribution of Wealth," and Arthur Young, assert that peasant properties have a strong tendency to lead to over-population, and consequently to a miserable and degraded state of the labouring classes. Mr. Mill, on the other hand, who enters much more fully into the subject, holds that the possession of land by the people, so far from leading to over-population, tends in a most remarkable manner to prevent that evil. "Against over-population," he says, "though not infallible, it is the best preservative yet known;" and he gives ample and satisfactory reasons (in addition to the indirect evidence afforded by the passages already quoted), in proof of this assertion. It is much easier for the peasant proprietor than for the day labourer, to see the evil effects of a numerous family, and to understand, as Mr. Buckle says, that "the question of wages is a question of population." He can tell at once that his little farm, if divided among more than a certain number of children, will be unable to maintain them in comfort; but in the case of the hired labourer, the prospect of employment for his children is vague and indefinite, and he is thus tempted to rely on chance, and to bring into the world a large family without any certainty of being able to provide for them. For these and many other reasons, Mr. Mill holds that the situation of a peasant proprietor is much more favourable than that of a hired labourer to a careful restraint on population, and therefore to the removal of poverty; and the same view is strongly urged by Sismondi, Mr. Laing, and others who are well acquainted with the two systems. "There never has been a page 26 writer," says Mr. Mill, "more keenly sensible of the evils brought upon the labouring classes by excess of population, than Sismondi, and this is one of the grounds of his earnest advocacy of peasant properties. He had ample opportunity, in more countries than one, for judging of their effect on population." Mr. Laing, after pointing out that the peasant proprietor has far better means of knowing whether or not he can support a family than the day-labourer, remarks that "it is the depending on chance, where judgment has nothing clearly set before it," which "produces among us the evils of over-population; and chance necessarily enters into every man's calculations, where certainty is removed altogether; as it is where certain subsistence is, by our distribution of property, the lot of but a small portion instead of about two-thirds of the people." Mr. Mill gives the fullest confirmation of this view, by showing from statistical evidence and the testimony of various writers, that the countries of Europe where population increases most slowly, and where prudential motives in this respect are found to operate most powerfully and most generally, are countries of peasant proprietors. Among these he instances especially Norway, Switzerland, and France; in the last of which countries, population, as shown by the census returns, has of late years been almost entirely stationary.

In summing up his opinions on the whole subject of peasant properties and their effects, Mr. Mill says, "As a result of this inquiry into the direct operation and indirect influences of peasant properties, I conceive it to be established that there is no necessary connection between this form of landed property and an imperfect state of the arts of production; that it is favourable in quite as many respects as it is unfavourable, to the most effective use of the powers of the soil; that no other existing state of agricultural economy has so beneficial an effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and prudence of the population, nor tends on the whole so much to discourage an improvident increase of their numbers; and that no existing state, therefore, is on the whole so favourable, both to their moral and their physical welfare. Compared with the English system of cultivation by hired labour, it must be regarded as eminently beneficial to the labouring class. We are not on the present occasion called upon to compare it with the joint ownership of the soil by associations of labourers."