^^^^^^i ^fc |.-v»j<.^nyj>r>vsi''-.'?- ,-i -'^Mm-'.^^i^mm^^'^. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^iS'itmiW^.f^jfjr ^S^'^'n' i'l ■• '^t^: ■.•■■.■ v-V) ■■■■■ K'!v>' ■' ■ ■ • ||vS. •■?>■■, >■;■;■■ • ■;;>■( ". V-j- ■■•'»",v. m^.r. >-■„■ t , ■V. l".f ■ ^.tf ' r-i\V' t ^ ' I W i^ X o .C ^^U^JU (^^, a^. V. ^ ^(Hu^ FREE TJRADE IN LAND. BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON FREE TRADE IN LAND. BY JOSEPH ^KAY, Esq., M.A., Q.C., OF TRIN. COLL., CAMBRIDGE; .\UTHOR OF "the LAW RELATING TO SHIPMASTERS AND SEAMEN." EDITED BY HIS WIDOW. WITH PREFACE THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. STfjirtj (2^tjiti0u. LONDON: C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1879. t f * r € r € * ^^\ g t t t * r * • « *« t * * t t < t t c • c c « < * « « « « t « « ♦ « « • • t • • • « «* • • • •»• • • •,• :•• • • • t • • • Tk€ rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved. H7) PREFACE. ^ I HAVE been asked to write a few words of intro- UJ <^ duction to this Volume. I do it willingly, although >- ^ I cannot think that any special introduction is DC £2 required. The subject discussed in it is so important, and the manner in which it is treated is so good, that I hope and believe the Volume will recommend itself to that increasing portion of the public which takes an interest in one of the greatest and most pressing f^questions of the day. ^ It is a matter of deep regret that the Author of ^ the Letters of which the book is mainly composed, £j did not live to complete his work. He was compe- tent, perhaps above any other writer on the subject of our Land Laws, to treat his favourite question with admirable clearness of exposition, and with a knowledge and experience derived from much travel ^ abroad, from careful investigation at home, and from § accurate legal study of the difficulties by which it is """ surrounded. vi Preface. As the reader acquaints himself with the contents of the Volume, he will perceive how moderate and how just are the views which are advocated in it. There is nothing to alarm intelligent owners of land ; there is no support given to any of the wild proposi- tions which some speculative writers have put forth, and which ignorant and illogical men have adopted or favoured. The Author is always just ; he seeks to give that freedom to the soil which our laws have given to its produce, and which they give to personal property of every kind ; he would leave to their free action the natural forces which tend to the accumulation of landed property on the one hand, as well as those which tend to its dispersion on the other ; he would so change our laws as to give to every present generation an absolute control over the soil, free from the paralysing influences which afflict it now from the ignorance, the folly, the obstinacy, or the pride of the generations which have passed away. He shows, by abundant evidence, how great is the gain to the humbler classes of society, to the labourers, and peasants, and small farmers of the countries in which the reforms he advocates have been effected, and he pleads urgently on behalf of the suffering and helpless population of our country, bound to the land by a tie which is more that of Preface. vii serfdom than one of ownership and of independent enjoyment and possession, I venture to recommend this Volume to owners of estates, to tenant farmers, to the labourers on their farms, and to the crowded populations of our large villages and towns. There is no class of our people which has not a great and direct interest in the reforms it explains and advocates. It may prove a legacy of much good from one who is now withdrawn from amongst us, if it hasten the time when, in addition to the many gains of freedom of which we justly boast, we mav boast also of the freedom of our soil. JOHN BRIGHT. March 26, 1879. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. Mr. Kay intended to publish the contents of the following Letters as soon as he had completed the series. He wished to re-arrange them in Chapters, and divest them of the repetitions incidental to their original form, that of a series of Letters pub- lished in the " Manchester Examiner and Times." My husband, however, died while engaged in the composition of No. XV., the concluding portion of which would have contained an account of the Land Laws of Germany. There would have been one more Letter onlv, in which he would have summed up the results he had arrived at, and which he had already indicated in the earlier Letters. Since it is beyond my power to carry out precisely what my husband intended, I have decided to pub- lish the Letters as they were written, with only such slight alterations as the writer himself indicated while the work was in hand. X Editors Preface. These alterations occur in Letters II. and VII., which have been slightly recast in accordance with wishes he had expressed to me. In a few cases paragraphs have been inserted as they were written by my husband after the publi- cation of the Letters, and with a view to their final arrangement. MARY E. KAY. i8 Hyde Park Gardens, March 29, 1879. CONTENTS. Preface by the Right Honourable John Bright v Editor's Preface ...... ix Memoir . . . . . . .1-8 Introduction to the Letters . . . 9-10 LETTER L THE actual condition OF THINGS WHICH THE PRESENT LAND LAWS HAVE PRODUCED. Returns of so-called "Doomsday Books " In what respects misleading Size of great estates in England . Scotland ..... Ireland . . . . Effect of present Land Laws on peasantry in Great Britain Foster accumulation of land in few hands . II 12 14 15 16 19 20 LETTER n. ON SOME FALLACIES AND MISCONCEPTIONS. Misconceptions as to " Primogeniture" . Entail ....... Objections to expression " Free Land " . 24 25 Xll Contents. Sir Stafford Northcote criticised . Mr. Francis Newman .... Mr. Froude ..... True causes which prevent land coming into market PAGE 26 27 28 29 LETTER III. THE EXISTING LAND LAWS. Land Laws offspring of Feudal System . Laws which oppose " Free Trade " in Land Settlements and Devise Primogeniture .... Leases for long terms of years 33 33 39 39 LETTER IV. EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXISTING LAWS. Estates kept out of the market Parental control lessened .... Effect upon Heirs ..... Unworthy persons maintained in influential positions Management of estates interfered with Agricultural improvements retarded 44 48 49 50 50 52 LETTER V. EVIL CONSEQUENCES {coiltimied). Expense and obscurity of conveyances . . . -55 Investigation of Titles . . . . . • 5^ Uncertainty of Titles . . ... '57 Benefits of the South Australian system of Registration of Title . 58 Accumulation of land in {^vt hands . . . -59 Contrast between English and German peasantry . . 60 Evil consequences aggravated in Ireland by Absenteeism . 6i Contents. xui LETTER VI. EVIL CONSEQUENCES {continued). Recapitulation of Letters IV. and V. Law of Distress . . Law of Fixtures Administration of Game Laws Want of Leases County Franchise and Education Stimulus to Extravagance 64 65 68 70 73 74 76 LETTER Vn. ON REGISTRATION. Registration defined and explained Reason of failure of Registration in England Contrast with foreign countries 78 79 80 LETTER VIIL IMPRESSIONS PRODUCED BY FOREIGN TRAVEL 1844-1850. Author appointed travelling bachelor of the University of Cam- bridge . . . . . . . .82 Switzerland visited . . . . . -83 Training College of M. Vehrli at Constance . . . 84 Contrast between Saxony and Bohemia . . . .88 Education in Switzerland . . • . . . -91 Want of, in France . . . • . -91 LETTER IX. ON FRANCE. French System of Land Laws Code Napoleon 94 97 XIV Contents. Division of land in France Size of estates French people content with System 97 98 100 LETTER X. WITNESSES TO THE EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH LAND LAWS Letter of Mr. Cobden quoted M. Passy M. Gustave de Beaumont M. de Lavergne Mr. Hamerton Corn and Wine produced in 1850 and 1S76 104 no 112 "5 116 116 LETTER XL EVEN THE FRENCH SYSTEM PROMOTES THE PROSPERITY AND HAPPINESS OF THE RURAL POPULATION. Mr. Coleman on French agriculture . . . . II9 Increasing use of machinery in France .... 122 Counteracting influences to excessive subdivision in Norway . 123 In Switzerland . . . . . . .126 LETTER XIL THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. Objection to French System from climate Land Laws of Guernsey Of Jersey .... Value of Land in Channel Islands Trade with London Prosperous condition of small owners Houses and cottages Markets .... answered 132 133 133 135 135 136 139 141 Contents. xv LETTER XIII. ON BELGIUM. Soil and climate .... Effect of local customs and manufacturing towns Contrast between tenants and owners Small properties not burdened with debt . System of Registration 146 148 150 154 156 LETTER XIV. DISADVANTAGES OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF LAND LAWS. Excessive limitation of owner's power of devise . . . 161 Effect upon father's authority . . . . .162 Improvements slowly ^dopted in France .... 163 Tendency to excessive subdivision . . . .164 LETTER XV. THE SYSTEM OF LAND LAWS IN FORCE IN PRUSSIA, AND IN TWO OR THREE OF THE SMALLER GERMAN STATES, Division of Land in Prussia . . . . 168 Appendix ...... 173-331 Index to Appendix ..... 332 M E M O I R. \The folloiuing kindly record published in the '■'■Manchester Examiner and Times'' of the wth October 1878, seems to form a fitting introduction to this series of Letters. — Ed.] With deep regret we have to announce this morning the death of Mr. Joseph Kay, a man whose many and various associations with this district have made his name familiar to thousands of our readers, and whose private virtues endeared him to a multitude of devoted friends. Mr. Kay had long been a sufferer — he never entirely recovered, indeed, from the serious illness which prevented his appearance at the last Salford election, but his death, up to within a k\v hours before it happened, was quite unexpected — and, as a political thinker and writer, he may be said to have died in harness. His death occurred on Wednesday, at Fredley, near Dorking, Surrey, his home during the last few years, the name of which, too, will be henceforth sadly familiar to the readers of this journal. By many ties the late Mr. Kay was connected with Manchester, or, rather, with the neighbouring borough, wliich he always called his native town. There he was born, and received his earliest education ; there he filled an important judicial office, and there on two occasions his name was inscribed on the banner of political liberty during momentous political crises. From his boyhood he A 2 ]\Ie7noir. had been an earnest and zealous political student, and, as the brother and pupil of Sir James Kay-Shuttlevvorth, his thoughts were early directed towards social and ethical reforms. Thus, though he was no longer a young man when he first consented to become a candidate for parlia- mentary honours, he brought to the contest an ardent and enthusiastic nature, singularly well informed on the most important political questions, and able to discuss them with no less insight than eloquence. But the secret of Mr. Kay's influence was chiefly due to the sterling honesty of his character ; the charm of his manner, the closeness of his reasoning, and the vigour and force of his oratory, never failed to carry away a popular audience ; but they were all the more eftective because they were expressive of the thoughts and feelings of one of the kindest and honestest men of his time. And while his loss will be lamented by thousands who only knew him as a public man, by those who had watched his career as a lawyer and judge, who had read his luminous and forcible essays on such subjects as Education, Land Tenure Reform, (Sec, and who had listened to his stirring orations as a political champion, we do not hesitate to say that only those who had the privilege to call him friend were able to gauge the depth of tender- ness in his nature, the sweetness and gentleness of his disposition, and the measure of his excellence in the most sacred duties of life. Mr. Joseph Kay was born at Ordsal Cottage, Ordsal Lane, Salford, in the year 1S21 ; he was the son of the late Mr. Robert Kay, the representative of an old Lancashire trading family. As we said above, he went first to a school in Salford, where some of the best-known of our citizens of to-day were his schoolfellows. Afterwards he was educated with the sons of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and at this time the echo and excitement of the anti- slavery agitation reached the ears of the sons of the great philanthropist, and their friend's first aspirations as a politician were in favour of freedom to the slave. At ]\[emoir. 3 Cambridge Mr, Kay had a successful career, and after taking his degree, his appointment as " travelling bachelor" in 1844 gave him the opportunity of investigating the legal codes of foreign countries, and of testing by the experi- ence of direct observation the comparative advantages of divergent systems. To the studies of this time are due the most important literary labours of his after life. Startled, as he has said, at what he saw of the results abroad of "free trade in land," he made close inquiries into the working of the Land Laws, as well as the educa- tional systems of Germany and Switzerland. In one of his recent letters he thus refers to his first experience of the duties of his office : " I left England on my appointed duties, furnished with introductions from our Government and from the German Ambassador, Chevalier Bunsen, to all the Governments and other authorities and heads of institutions who could aid me in my proposed inquiries. I went first to Switzerland, partly because in that country were to be found some of the greatest leaders of the educational movement which had been for many years spreading through Western Europe, and partly because I knew that some of the cantons were, even at that time, making the greatest efforts to perfect the schools for the children of all classes of their people. I visited first the rich agricultural cantons of Neuchatel, Berne, Vaud, Argovie, Zurich, Geneva, and Thurgovie, As I travelled through these prosperous districts, from school to school, I was more and more struck by the prosperous appearance of the farms, by the high farming, the substantial comfort, size, and excellence of the farm buildings, the number, beauty, and fine condition of the cattle, the extraordinary richness of the pastures, and the evident care that I observed on every hand not to waste anything, either land in wasteful fences or in undrained plots, or any portions of the manures from the farms and homesteads, or anything that could by any means conduce to increase the produce of the farms. I was astonished 4 Memoir. also to see how much care and expense were bestowed on the embellishment of the exterior of the houses, as if the inmates were really interested in them, I noticed, also, that although the everyday working dresses of the men and women were of very coarse, substantial, and often home-made materials, I seldom, if ever, saw rags even on the working days, while on the Sundays men and women always appeared in comfortable, substantial, unpatched clothes, and often, if not generally, in their national costume, or at least with some part of their picturesque cantonal ornaments. But what surprised me as much as, if not more than, anything, was that as I drove along the public roads for miles, even near the towns, the roads were bordered by rows of magnificent fruit trees of various kinds. These trees had no protection against theft. There were no hedges or palings. They were all open to any passenger along the roads. I have seen hundreds of miles of such roadside orchards in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, and have constantly looked with astonishment at the wonderful respect for property which all this evinced. After some time spent in examining the primary schools throughout Switzerland, I went to the Lake of Constance, to visit and inspect the celebrated Training College for Teachers, which was then presided over by the celebrated Vehrli, at that time one of the most distinguished pro- moters of the education of the working classes in Europe." Vehrli took him to see a large agricultural school in the neighbourhood, which was maintained in order to enable the sons of small farmers to improve to the utmost their modes of farming and the capabilities of their land. Everything he saw was a source of wonder to him, and he began to study not only the education question, but the not less grave one of " free trade in land." When he saw the agricultural labourers struggling for themselves, working for no landlord, sharing their winnings with no master, he was more and more impressed with the moral and social effects of the release of the land from feudal laws. And Memoir. 5 then he began to ask himself — Would a hke release have like results in England ? "I returned to England," he said, "and began the earnest study of our Land Laws. I then returned to the Continent, and travelled through the princi- pal countries of Germany. Throughout these countries I found that the feudal laws had been done away, and that the educated yeomen farmers and peasants were cultivating their own lands. Everywhere I found the good effects of these great reforms manifested in the moral wellbeing of the yeomen farmers and peasants, in the healthy self-help they manifested, in their hopeful looks, in the good and substantial appearance of their villages and houses, in the economical and careful management of their fields." In 1846 Mr. Kay published " Education of the Poor in England and Europe," and in 1850 " The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe." It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that for many years Mr. Kay has been a regular contributor to our own columns, and the ink is scarcely dry on his last written connnunication. With what ability he has dis- cussed the Education and Land Law Reform they do not require to be told ; few modern writers, indeed, have brought to bear on these subjects so much thought and such exact knowledge, and his wdse lessons have been rendered all the more valuable by remarkable illustrative power, and by the advantage of a graceful and vigorous style. A few years ago he published a treatise on " The Law relating to Shipmasters and Seamen," which estab- lished his position as an authority on the maritime and mercantile law of the countr}'. In these and his other literary works Mr. Kay has left a rich legacy of political wisdom, of the value of which we have happily not been entirely ignorant during his lifetime. As an education reformer Mr. Kay was no mere theorist ; he was deeply interested in the first attempt at anything like a system of national elementary education in this country initiated by his brother, Sir James Kay- 6 Memoir. Shuttlevvorth. When the first English Training College for Teachers was established by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and Mr. Tufnell at Battersea, Mr. Kay for about a year had great opportunities of observing and assisting in its management. jMr. Kay was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple on the 5th of ]\Iay 1848, and joined the Northern Circuit. In 1862 he was appointed Judge of the Salford Hundred Court of Record, and this appointment brought him into closer contact with the borough, though he had never ceased to keep up inti- mate social relations with many of his early friends here. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1869. In the same year the Manchester Court of Record was amalgamated with the Salford Hundred Court, and Mr. H. W. West, Q.C., and Mr. Kay were appointed joint judges of the new court. Though Mr. Kay has not sat as judge for some time, he held that office at the time of his death. ^ Of Mr. Kay as the Liberal candidate for Salford it is quite needless to say more than a few words. His ability and attainments were recognised by his opponents, and his telling speeches will not soon be forgotten — speeches in which sound and sterling views were expressed in choice and eloquent language, and with the skill of a practised and scholarly orator. How deep was the regard and how sustained the trust Mr. Kay won from the Liberal party in Salford in 1874 (when he and Mr. Henry Lee were opposed to Mr. Cawley and Mn Charley) was emphatically mani- fested when Mr. Cawley's lamented death in 1S77 caused another contest. ISIr. Kay had only spoken a few times in the borough since the previous election, and he was then suffering from the effects of his exertions at a meeting in the Town Hall in the previous February. Yet though it was known that his presence was impossible — notwith- 1 Shortly after being made a Queen's Counsel, Mr. Kay was elected a Bencher of the Inner Temple, and in 1872 was appointed Solicitor- General of the County Palatine of Durham. Memoir. 7 standing the disadvantage of a fight in the absence of the standard-bearer — the influence of his very name was con- sidered so great that his candidature was accepted with en- thusiastic acclamation. It was said at the time of his first contest that " he was a Liberal in the best sense of the word, neither an obstructive nor a destructive ; " and he certainly never advocated change for the sake of change ; but always maintained that without confidant modifications according to the changing wants of the age, no institutions could be kept " in good repair." He married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the late Captain Thomas Drummond, who was for some years Under-Secretary of State for Ireland, and without any violations of that reserve which should be held specially sacred at this moment, it may be said that never was a union more com- pletely happy. His long and painful illness was borne with serene steadfast composure, and his almost heroic cheerfulness was sustained by the tenderest and most devoted love ; and the kindness and consideration for others which throughout his life won for him the love and regard of all who knew him intimately were not wanting in his last hours. At such a time the rancour of political strife is forgotten, and in the case of a man in whom party differences rarely, if ever, interfered with private friendship, it is all the more easy to realise how much in his departure we have lost as a community. There have been many men whose oppor- tunities for active political life have been more extensive, and Mr. Kay will perhaps be remembered rather as a philosophical thinker and writer than as an ardent partisan. Only his most intimate friends could fairly estimate his great capabilities, his generosity, and disinterestedness. At a period like the present, indeed, it is difficult to avoid repining for the loss of a man apparently so well fitted to play a conspicuous part in political life \ but how few men leave us whose careers have been rendered so useful to 8 Memoir. their fellow-creatures. No fulsome record of imaginary virtues, no catalogue of imaginary services, will be in- scribed on the tomb of Joseph Kay, but those to whom he was nearest and dearest may be assured that his memory will be kept green in the hearts of the best men and women of his native town as a genial and accomplished gentleman, a faithful friend, and an honest man. INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS. Decettiber 15, 1877. In these letters I wish to explain, as simply, clearly, and shortly as I can, the facts of a great subject, which will henceforward until its settlement more and more draw to itself the attention of the public — I mean the subject of the Land Laws. It is surrounded by so many technicalities, and by so many statutes and decisions of the courts — the law is so difficult even for lawyers to understand ; such a vast litera- ture of rubbish has grown up around it ; so many thousands of cases have been argued and reported upon its meaning ; and lawyers are so unwilling to put their own hands to the work of reform — that it is not wonderful that the most singular mistakes should be made by many public speakers in dealing with this question, and that the real reforms which are needed, should still be wrapped in so much obscurity. And yet I believe that this subject is capable of a simple and intelligible statement, and that the facts in which the unprofessional public are interested are few and easy of comprehension. I am, however, almost astonished at myself for venturing on the above statement, when I reflect that I have known the deed of settlement of one estate to require many months for its preparation ; to cover nearly a barrow-load of paper w'hen written out preparatory to being engrossed on parch- ment; and to cost over ;^4oo for the conveyancer's charges lO Introdnctio7t. alone, without reckoning either the solicitor's charges or the cost of the necessary stamps. And yet, with all this cumbrous, costly, and scarcely intelligible verbosity, the title of such an estate is scarcely ever free from some doubt or question. I propose to try to explain : — 1. The actual condition of things which the present Land Laws have produced. 2. What the actual existing laws are, under which this condition has been produced. 3. The different state of things which exists in foreign countries. 4. What remedies we ought to seek LETTER I. THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THINGS WHICH THE PRESENT LAND LAWS HAVE PRODUCED. December 15, 1877. To ascertain this we must consult some extraordinary and interesting returns, which have been recently prepared — I mean, of course, the so-called " Doomsday Books." These returns were moved for in the House of Lords, on the 19th February 1872, by the present Earl of Derby — himself one of the largest of the English landowners — who in moving for the returns showed clearly what his motive for wishing for them was, by stating his belief that the number of landowners in the United Kingdom was nearer 300,000 than 30,000, as had been constantly stated ; that it was a popular fallacy to suppose that small estates were gradually being absorbed in the larger ones ; but that " it was true that the class of peasant proprietors formerly to be found in the rural districts was tending to disappear." It was therefore with the expectation, if not with the object, of making out these propositions, that the return was demanded of and granted by the assembly of the greatest landowners of the United Kingdom. So far as giving us an approximate idea of the size and number of the great estates, these returns are as interesting as they are astounding ; and astounding they most certainly are, for they disclose a state of things existing in Great Britain and Ireland which has no parallel in any other civilised country in the world. But even in professing to 12 Actual Condition of Things zvhich state the size and number of the great estates, they do not tell us the whole of the story, for they do not include in the alleged sizes of these estates the acreage of any woods or plantations, or of any waste or common lands, all the vast extent of which property is not added to the estates of their owners. " Doomsday Books," therefore, only give the sizes of the estates after deducting the immense area covered with woods, plantations, waste, and common lands. So far as showing the number of the owners of small agricultural estates, or as they used to be called "yeomen proprietors' estates," the " Doomsday Books " are utterly worthless, if not utterly misleading, for not only do they mix up in the number of " owners of one acre and up- wards " all the large number of small building plots pur- chased by members of the middle and shop-keeping classes, on which to erect houses or villas, but they also mix up in the same number and reckon as oivners of land all holders of land on leases for terms exceeding 99 years. That is, in order to swell the number of small 07vners, they have reckoned leaseholders as oivners ! It is difficult to conceive a more misleadmg statement. I will try to explain why I say so. First of all, it should be remembered that, at the end of these terms of more than 99 years, the lands held by these leaseholders return to the great landowners, to- gether with all that has been expended upon them, and together with all the improvement in value which has resulted from this expenditure. A leaseholder has never the same feeling towards, nor the same full interest in the land he so holds, that he would have if he knew that it was his own property. But more than this, the land held for these terms of more than 99 years is almost always subject to various kinds of covenants and conditions — such as to expend upon it a certain sum of money for buildings or otlier kinds of improvement; or to expend at certain periodi- cal times on restorations ; or to insure ; or to cultivate in a particular kind of way ; or not to use the lands for certain named and specified purposes ; or not to shoot the Present Land Latvs have Produced. i -x o game ; or to allow the landlord to enter to inspect, or to shoot the game, or for other purposes ; or not to cut any timber, or not to remove fences, or to keep up erections on the land ; or to observe some other agreed duties. Many of these leases contain agreements that the land- owners shall have the power to enter and take possession, if any of these covenants is broken. Besides all this, it must be remembered, as I know from the best possible authority, that neither the " Rate Books," nor any other parochial documents either could, from their entries, or did enable the Local Government Board to ascertain what lands were held for even ^q years. But, in those cases where lands were merely reputed to be held on lease, the overseers and rate collectors were instructed to obtain the best available information as to the term on which they were held, and to omit or insert the lessees accordingly. And when it is remembered how natu- rally unwilling, for many substantial reasons, both the land- owner and the lessee generally are to make public the terms of the holding, or the nature of their mutual arrange- ments, it may be faindy conceived how utterly worthless this part of the returns of the " Doomsday Books " really is. Such a holding as this is less like real ownership than a horse hired by any one is like a horse which belongs to him ; for, at any rate, when any one hires a horse he is not bound down by covenants as a leaseholder is. I say, there- fore, that it was ridiculous and misleading in the extreme to include these leaseholds for more than 99 years among the freeholds, or, in other words, among the small estates belonging out and out to the occupiers themselves. If Ave could possibly ascertain the number of yeomen proprietors actually owning out and 'out small farms, we should find that number a very small, and, as Lord Derby admits, a constantly decreasing one. Even the House of Lords did not venture to propose that these 99 years' leaseholds should be reckoned as freeholds. The nearest approach to such a proposition was made by the Marquis of Salisbury, 14 Actual Condition of Things which who " urged that the 999 years' leaseholds ought to be included in the returns." But when we come to consider the number and size of the great estates, we find the returns of extraordinary interest. Although the full size of these great estates is not shown, on account of the omission of woods, waste lands, and commons, the returns are indeed so startling, that one is lost in astonishment that Lord Derby should have deemed it for the interest of his brother landowners to disclose the truth. I shall only attempt to state some of the more remarkable results, merely observing that each one is worthy of serious reflection, and that its full significance can only be grasped by trying to form some approximate idea of the meaning of these figures. The total area of England and Wales is, after deducting the quantity within the metropolitan area, 37,243,859 acres. How is this vast extent divided among the inhabitants ? 66 persons own 1,917,076 acres. 100 persons own 3,917,641. Less than 2S0 persons own 5,425,764, or nearly one-sixth of the enclosed land of England and Wales. 523 persons own one-fifth of England and Wales. 710 persons own more than one-fourth of England and Wales. 874 persons own 9,267,031 acres. Just think how small a number 874 persons are in a church or town hall, and then try to realise what the figures 9,267,031 signify. And it is to be remembered that in none of these cal- culations are the extents of woods, commons, and waste lands included. But to continue, in the county of Northumberland, which contains 1,220,000 acres, 26 persons own one-half the county. One Englishman owns more than 186,397 acres, another more than 132,996 acres, and another more than 102,785 acres. Present Land Laws have Produced, 1 5 A body of men, whicii does not probably exceed 4500, own more than 17,498,200 acres, or more than one-half of all England and Wales. In Scotland the returns are still more startling. The total acreage of Scotland is 18,946,694 acres. One owner alone has 1,326,000 acres in Scotland, and also 32,095 in England, or a total of 1,358,548 acres. A second owner has 431,000 acres, a third owner has 424,000, a fourth owner has 373,000, a fifth owner has 306,000. Twelve owners have 4,339,722 acres, or nearly one-quarter of the whole of Scotland ; or, in other words, a tract of country larger than the whole of Wales, and equal in size to eight English counties, viz., Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Derbyshire. 20 owners have each more than 120,000 acres. 24 owners have 4,931,884, or more than one-quarter of Scotland. 70 owners have about 9,400,000 acres, or about one-half of Scotland. 171 owners have 11,029,228 acres. While nine-tenths of the whole of Scotland, that is, of the whole of 18,946,694 acres, belong to fewer than 1700 persons. The existence of these vast properties in Scotland has led to the depopulating of great tracts of country in order to create large deer forests. There is no return of their acreage, but the Hon. Lyulph Stanley calculates that m.uch more than 2,000,000 acres have been cleared of hundreds of thousands of sheep, and depopulated, in order to make room for deer ; or in other words, the homes and farms and food of thousands of families have been destroyed in order to feed the deer and encourage sport, and this in a country which is alleged to be so crowded as to make it absurd to suppose that any alteration in the Land Laws would enable the middle or labouring classes to acquire land. 1 6 Actual Condition of Things which But let us turn to Ireland. Here, also, the framers of the returns have reckoned leaseholds for more than 99 years as freeholds. And here, also, it is impossible to ascertain from the returns the number of yeomen pro- prietors who exist in the island. No doubt the number, spite of the sales of lands under the Encumbered Estates Act, the Land Act, the Bright clauses, and the Disestablish- ment Act is very small. But whatever the number, the returns do not enable us to ascertain it, for the reasons already given. Now certainly one would have said a priori, that if there was any country in the world in which it was desirable to have a large and widely-distributed body of yeomen pro- prietors, that country was Ireland. Such proprietors, wher- ever they exist, are always found to be conservative in the best sense of the word, deeply interested in public peace and order, self-denying and saving, prosperous, and anxious to promote the good education of their children. In all countries where the Land Laws have allowed or promoted the existence of such proprietors, these results have in- variably followed. Similar laws would be followed, as I believe, by similar results in Ireland. But not only are there very few such proprietors in Ireland, but the system of creat estates adds, in Ireland, to its other evils one which is not experienced to any great extent in England or Scotland, namely, the evil of absenteeism. A large pro- portion of the great landowners of Ireland reside in distant countries, carry away the revenues of their Irish lands into those countries, and instead of spending those revenues among their Irish tenants and neighbours, in the promotion of Irish industries and in the improvement of their Irish tenants, spend them among other people, while their Irish tenants are left, without the support or countenance of their landlords, to the tener mercies of agents, who are often strangers to Ireland. But let us see what light these returns throw upon the division of land in Ireland. Present Land Laws have Produced. 1 7 The total area of Ireland is 20,159,678 acres. Of this — 452 persons own each more than 5000 acres. 135 persons own each more than 10,000 acres. 90 persons own each more than 20,000 acres. 14 persons own each more than 50,000 acres. 3 persons own each more than 100,000 acres. I person owns 170,119 acres. 292 persons hold 6,458,100 acres, or about one-third of the island. 744 persons hold 9,612,728 acres, or about one-half of the island. Taking the acreage of the 1 2 largest owners in each of the three kingdoms, we have tlie following result : — In England, the 12 largest owners hold in the aggregate 1,058,883 acres ; and their respective acreages are 186,397 — 132,996—102,785—91,024—87,515—78,542—70,022 — 68,066 — 66,105 — 61,018 — 57,802 — and 56,600. In Scotland, the 12 largest owners hold in the asffrre- gate 4,339,722 acres; and their respective acreages are 1,358,548 — 43i>ooo — 424,000 — 373,000 — 306,000 — 302,283 — 253,221— 220,663— 194,640— 175,114— 166,15 [ — and 165,648. In Ireland, tlie 12 largest owners hold in the a-> of which ^39 had been paid down. In this case the money had to be borrowed from different persons, one of whom got ^i for a loan of ;^io for 10 months, and the buyer's sister 10^. for the loan of £^\i for a year. He is a labourer, and his wife is a laundress. They are glad to have the land and expect that it will be free before they die. They never could save before, they say. The next tenant bought a farm of 5^ acres for ^164. He is 92 years of age, has nine sons and two daughters. Seven of the sons are at sea, and one of them gave the purchase money and a further sum to erect an additional farm building. The next farm, containing 1 7 acres, which was held at a rent of ;^27, was bought by the tenant for ;^648, of which he paid down ^226. The money had been saved at sea. Since the purchase he paid ^{^87 for building material, and con- verted the thatched cottage into a two-storeyed slated house. He has seven children, too small to be any help, and lives altogether on the labour of the farm. The next tenant, an able seaman, had a farm of 10 acres, for which he gave ;:^2 73, paying down ;;^73, wdiich he had borrowed from friends. His reason for buying was lest he should be turned out of the farm. No improvement has been made, but he hopes to pay off the debt. The next tenant was a widow, who had bought 9|- acres for ^314 ; she paid down ^79, of which ;z^75 had been borrowed at 6 per cent., and all except ^15 had been repaid. Last year she had a good bit of flax, which enabled her to jiay off ^10. She has Evil Consequences of the Existing Lazus. 47 two daughters and a boy 15 years old, and the whole family work on the farm and have no other means of support. She bought the land lest she should be 'thrown out ' and have to 'go lie behind a hedge.' The house is thatched, clean, neat, and comfortable. The next farm contained 51 acres, which was bought for ;z^i583, which the tenant paid in full. He handed it over to his son to work, and lives himself on an adjoining property. The eighth tenant who was visited bought 15 acres for ^422, and paid down ^106, leaving the remainder on mortgage. He died soon and left the farm to his widow in trust for his son, a lad of 15, who was at sea. The fatlier, who was a Scotchman, had sold the tenant-right of a farm in Fermanagh for ^600, and preferred to buy the small farm to renting a greater one. The house had been greatly improved. The last case was that of a farm of 18 acres, bought for p/^508, of which ;^i68 had been paid down. The purchaser died, leaving the lands to his widow for life, and then to his youngest son. She is 'laying by' for him, and is well pleased with the purchase of the farm. Mr. Shaw Lefevre admits that it misht be dansrerous to draw conclusions from these limited cases, and one property, if they did not confirm the evidence laid before the committee. In every case great benefit had resulted from the purchase. It had been ' a spur to indus- try and thrift,' and the increased industry and activity required to pay off the loan will, he thinks, establish a habit for the future. He remarks that many of the families were partly supported by contributions from members who were at sea, and that he has always contended that small landowners are not necessarily to be expected to derive the whole of their subsistence from the land. He feels con- fident that many of the older people he saw would in England be in the workhouse. Under the English system the whole of the nine small farms which he visited, con- taining 150 acres, would be thrown into one, and, instead of nine families, there would be one farmer's family superior in social position, but not superior in intelligence, to those 48 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laivs. whom he saw ; and four or five famiUes of labouring men, with a quarter of an acre for a garden, without any hope of bettering their condition, and with no prospect for their old age but the poorhouse. He visited a second glebe, which was still to be sold." As I have said before, it is really ridiculous to assert that these deeds and wills do not keep great numbers of estates out of the market ; but if they do not, if their object is not specially to effect this, of what good are they? Is it to be supposed that the landowners tie their own hands, limit their powers over their own estates, and sub- ject themselves and their successors to all the many incon- veniences which necessarily attend the limitation of their powers over their estates for no prospect or hope of advan- tage ? Such a supposition is absurd. These deeds and wills are notoriously framed for the express purpose of preventing the great estates dividing or coming into the market. They do most successfully accomplish the end for which they are so framed. They very greatly diminish the number of sales of land that would otherwise take place. They thus raise the market price of land very considerably, and by this means make it more and more difficult for small capitalists or tradesmen to purchase. 2. But let us look at another consequence of these deeds and wills. The son constantly knows that, do what his father will, he (the son) is sure, under one of these deeds or wills, to succeed to the estate. The son is, therefore, to a very great extent rendered independent of his father. The j)arental control and authority are lessened just in those very cases in which they are most needed, and in which they ought to be increased rather than diminished. As soon as the young man is 21 he finds himself surrounded by money-lenders, who make it their special business to devote themselves to the wants of such heirs, and who are always on the look-out for them. The father has no power to save the son from these harpies. He is Evil Consequences of the Existing Lazvs. 49 deprived of a great check upon his son. If the father threatens to cut off the son's allowance, unless his miscon- duct is discontinued, the son can, and often does in such a case, laugh in his father's face. The money-lenders are only too happy to relieve present wants, and to lead on to further loans. And in this way the heir ofien comes into the possession of his estate with such a weight of debts and liabilities around his neck, that during the remainder of his life there is no owner who has either capital or virtue enough to manage the estate decently. In such a case, would it not be an unalloyed good to all concerned if he could sell the land ? Who is there who, among his acquaint- ances or neighbours, cannot recall many instances of this kind? If it were not for these deeds and wills, in all these cases a part or the whole of such an estate would come into the market. 3. These laws induce unprincipled or careless land- owners to be tenfold more careless than they otherwise would be about the education of the child who is to succeed to the ownership of the estate. They know that however badly the child may be brought up, however extravagant, or reckless, or dissipated he may turn out, he cannot, no matter what may be his extravagance or folly, lose or lessen the estates or the social status of the family, but that the land will go undiminished to the next owner mentioned in the deed or will. Not only does the knowledge that the estate must come to him, however he should behave, act most prejudicially on the child's character, but the knowledge that the child cannot get rid of it increases this evil, by rendering the father more callous as to the proper training of his child than he would be, if he knew that the future of the family estates and of the family status depended entirelyon the character of the future owner. Many and many an heir is utterly demoralised by these causes. And then the country suffers in a double sense, for not only are the estate and the tenants neglected, but a man is put into the influential 50 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. position of a landowner, whose early education and habits have rendered him totally unfit to be entrusted with any influence whatever, and who never would have enjoyed any such influence if it had not been for these Land Laws which I have attempted to describe. These laws in this way often set up in influential positions, as examples to society, men of luxurious and idle habits, depraved tastes, and corrupted morals. 4. These laws keep in influential positions a large body of men, however unworthy of these positions they may be — men who have always known that tliey need not work, who have in consequence often grown up in ignorance and frivolity, who are so rich and in such influential positions as to enable them to exercise great influence on public affairs, and to make their own conduct and manners the standard for the thoughtless and weak-minded, who are supported and strengthened in their position by the state of the county franchise and the county magistracy, and who more than any other class foster habits of idleness, self- indulgence, and extravagance. 5. But I will try to explain another serious evil, which constantly results from tying up and charging these estates in the way I have described. \\\ the majority of cases the owner does not come into possession of the land until he is past middle age. He is then generally married, and he has probably a family of children. He knows that he has no interest in the land beyond his own life. Some- times he has a power of charging the estate to a small extent for younger children. If such a man really cares for the future of his family, look at the position in which he is placed. In nine cases out of ten he receives the property burdened with charges to his mother, h.is brothers, and sisters. He feels he ought to save something for his own younger children. Now, except in the cases of the larger estates, how can he hope to do this during the re- mainder of his life, and at the same time to spend money in the improvement and proper maintenance of the estate, its Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 51 buildings, farms, &c. His eldest son is to take the whole of the land. Every penny he spends upon the im- provement of the estate is so much taken from what he could have saved for the younger children, and so much added to the eldest son's already unjust share. How often, under the pressure of these circumstances, is not the unfor- tunate owner obliged to neglect eitlier the estate or his children ? Of course, the more heavily the estate has been previously charged with debts, the worse does such a case become. It is difficult to conceive a system more certain to repress any efforts for improvement, or to discourage any outlay of ca})ital upon the land. Mr. Caird, C.B , F.R.S., who is strongly opposed to the system of small estates, writing in 1851, in his "Agricultural Survey of England," says : " Much of the land of England — a far greater propor- tion of it than is generally believed — is in the possession of tenants for life, so heavily burdened with settlement en- cumbrances that they have not the means of improving the land which they are obliged to hold. It would be a waste of time to dilate on the public and private disadvantages thus- occasioned, for they are acknowledged by all who have studied the subject." The same gentleman, on the 25th September 1S77, at the meeting of the Social Science Congress at Aberdeen, in his address on " Economy and Trade," with especial reference to the condition and prospects of British agriculture, said, " The evil that exists in the present land system is, not that we have great proprietors amongst us — for, as a rule, their estates are the most liberally managed, but it is because of the too common existence of the possession of land by persons so heavily encumbered by settlements and debts, that they are incapable of doing justice either to their pro- perty or to themselves. For the sake of progress in the fuller development of our agricultural resources, it is desir- able that the land in such cases should pass into other hands. And the advantage of enlisting a large body of competitors for it, when exposed for sale, induces the offer- 52 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. ing of estates, whenever practicable, in single farms, and thus tends in some degree to its subdivision." In foreign countries, where the land is not put into such a position by deeds or wills that it cannot be sold — where, in fact, the land can always be sold whenever it is expedient for the owner to sell — an owner, if embarrassed by debts, or mortgages, or claims, would sell the whole or part of the estate, and having paid off all his debts, would either devote himself to some other employment or business, or would cultivate properly the portion of the estate remaining to him after the sale. These evils in Great Britain and Ireland can never be effectually remedied, or even seriously miti- gated, as long as landowners are allowed by law to tie up the land by deed or will for long series of years after their own death. It is true that the Legislature has attempted to relieve landowners so circumstanced, but these measures have only been partial and most insufficient palliatives for a widespread evil. 6. This system tends very greatly to retard the progress of agricultural improvement. Let any one who knows any large number of the land- owners, or " the landed gentry," as they are popularly called, ask himself how many of their sons are ever taught scientific agriculture, or the details of estate management. Generally, when they come into possession of their estates, they know as little of either as they know of the details of a Manchester business. They generally understand hunt- ing, shooting, fishing, billiards, athletic sports, perhaps in rare cases something of art. They know the points of a horse. They understand dogs, and all descriptions of game. But how many know anything whatever of scientific farming, of plantations, of orchards, or of scientific garden- ing? Let any one who knows much of them look round him and ask himself this question. When they come into their estates they are, so far as tlie details of estate manage- ment are concerned, entirely in the hands of their agents or stewards. The very ignorance of such landowners as I Evil Consequences of the Existing Laivs. 53 am describing makes them lean against changes and im- provements. Tiieir ancestors and predecessors have gone on in a certain wa}^, wliy should not they ? As they cannot estimate tlie value of reforms, the very name of them is hateful to them. These reforms require study, thought, and mental exertion, to which they have not been trained, I remember a singular instance of this. One of my intimate friends, a man who had been brought up in hard-working business habits, came some years ago into the possession of a large estate, in a part of the country in which anything like scientific farming was utterly unknown, and in which the ordinary farming was of the lowest possible description. The land in all that part of the country was a heavy clay soil. Drainage was unknown. Tiie farms for miles round were more or less covered with rushes, and with the herbage springing up in soil charged with mois- ture. jSIy friend sent for a scientific farmer, and said, " What must I do in order to reform this state of things ?" Under this gentleman's advice, tileries were erected on the estate, drainage tiles were made, gangs of drainers were engaged, the estate in a few years was drained from end to end. The products of the estate were greatly increased, the herbage improved, the rushes disappeared, rents were raised, and willingly paid. But while this was being done, and until the results had become too plain and too remark- able to be denied, my friend was subjected to sneers, insults, and opposition of all kinds from the neighbouring squires, who seemed to hate the interference with the old wavs. Is it then astonishing that in 1870 a committee of the House of Lords, consisting of four great landowners — the Duke of Richmond, the INIarquis of Salisbury, the Earl of Derby, and Lord Egerton of Tatton — reported that of the 20 million acres of land in the country -requiring drainage, only 3 millions had been drained, and that, taking into account also all other necessary improvements, only one-fifth of the land had been properly dealt with ? Is it, therefore, 54 Evil Conseqiicnces of the Exist lug Laws. surprising that ISlr. I\Iechi, the eminent agriculturist, esti- mated that the land does not yield one-fifth of its proper production ? However intelligent the agent or steward of these land- owners may be, the ignorance and idleness of the latter, joined often to tlieir want of ready funds, and to the heavy charges on their estates, oppose an insurmountable bar to anything like a proper development of the land. And even when the landowner is sufficiently intelligent to promote improvement, he is too often hindered by the state of the charges on his estate, by the knowledge that he will only possess it for his life, and by the necessity of providing for younger children during tlie short continuance of his possession. All this results from the deeds and wills I have described. Of course, I well know that there are happily many bright exceptions to the description I have endea- voured faithfully to draw — men who deeply feel their great responsibilities ; who do all they can to fit themselves for the proper performance of their important duties ; who remember that "property has its duties as well as its rights;" and who are the centres of kindliness and Intel- ligence in their influential stations. But these are excep- tions, as compared to the general character of the class I have described. And whether I have described fairly or unfairly, let each reader look around and consult his own personal experience. These bright exceptions, I contend, exist in spite of, and by no means as a consequence of, our present system of Land Laws. I must reserve the further consideration of tlie conse- quences of these deeds and wills until my next letter. LETTER V. EVIL CONSEQUENCES {coiltinucd). February 23, 1878. In No. IV. I endeavoured to state, as simply and calmly as I could, some of the consequences of tlie deeds and wills which bind an estate for so many years. I tried to show that — 1. They prevent the sale of estates which would other- wise come into the market. 2. They lessen due parental control. 3. They induce careless landowners to be tenfold more careless than they otherwise would be, about the education of their children. 4. They maintain in influential positions men unworthy of those positions. 5. They deprive many landowners of the means of pro- perly managing their estates. 6. They tend very greatly to retard the progress of agri- cultural improvement. In tlie present letter 1 propose to continue the considera- tion of the consequences of these deeds and wills. 7. The power which our law gives to landowners to direct not only the succession to, but the management of, the land for so great a number of years after their death renders it necessary in preparing these deeds and wills to make them very long and expensive. In them the land- owner provides for many circumstances and contingencies which may happen during all the many years during which the deed or will continues in force. For after the deed is 56 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laius. once made, or, in the case of a will, after the death of the owner who made it, no alteration or addition to meet new or overlooked contingencies can be made. It is necessary, therefore, in framing these deeds or wills to introduce numerous lengthy and carefully-worded provisions to meet all kinds of possible events which may happen after the maker's death. The obscurity that this sometimes— nay, often — introduces into these deeds or wills is scarcely credible. It is no uncommon thing for them to be laid before two or three of the ablest counsel, and for each of these learned gentlemen to give a different interpretation of their meaning. Nothing then remains to the unfortunate victim of this perplexity but to resort to litigation, and to seek the interpretation of the Courts, and very fortunate may he count himself if he finds the judges themselves agreeing as to the meaning of the words. I have known cases where such litigation has gone on for years and years ; and I knew one such case where, the entire value of the estate having been absorbed in the costs of the litigation, the only struggle which remained was which firm of solici- tors was entitled to the estate in repayment of their costs ! 8. This system of deeds, wills, long leases, and mort- gages, all of which may bind the land for many years after they are made, renders it often very difficult and very ex- pensive for a purchaser, even when he can find a small plot of land for sale, to ascertain what the real state of the title to such property is. It is often affected by so many ancient deeds, wills, mortgages, and leases — these are often scattered in so many hands — it is often so difficult to find out whether all the persons entitled under the various deeds and wills are dead, or whether their title to the property is extinguished, there being no registration office here, as in many foreign countries, where a purchaser can ascertain at a glance from the registration book every deed which affects the land — that the mere inquiry into the title of a small plot of land and the legal expenses attendant thereon, are often quite sufficient to deter a man who is not rich from ventur- Evil Consequences of the Existing Lazvs. 57 ing to agree to buy a plot of land which he would other- wise have been glad to purchase. And such is the con- fusion that sometimes exists, that the examination into the title of a small farm of 5 or 6 acres may be quite as difficult and expensive, if not more so, than the examina- tion into the title of an estate of many hundreds. So lately as the month of December, 1877, a poor man who purchased 3 acres of glebe land and ^15 per annum of tithe rent- charge, had to pay ^117, ()S. 2d. for the mere legal expenses attending the examination of the title and the deedconvey- insj them to him. Of course, where an estate has been laid out for sale in building plots, and the title has been investigated once for all, and a proper statement of it prepared for the use of all purchasers ; or where an estate has been for generations in one family and has not been encumbered or affected by many deeds or transactions, it may well happen, as I see stated in your columns, that a fortunate purchaser may in- vest much money in land, and yet have comparatively little to pay to the lawyers. But a man must know little or nothing of tlie subject, if he supposes this to be the case with respect to the majority of sales in the agricultural districts. I'here, the legal expenses are often enough to deter a prudent man who wishes to purchase a small plot of land. 9. But, even when all this trouble has been taken, and when all this expense has been incurred, there is in very many cases no absolute certainty that there is no flaw in the purchaser's title, or that no undiscovered charge may be sprung upon him. Such a thing is impossible in many foreign countries, because there, before any deed o?- will or mortgage can be rendered binding or valid, a short account of it must be written out upon tlie page of the public registra- tion book which relates to the particular piece of land. And if, when a man buys land and gets his deed of purchase entered in the registration book, a former deed has been made, but not entered on the page of the registry book, it will not affect the subsequent purchase in any way, or be 58 Evil Conscqiienccs of the Existing Lazvs. of any validity as against such purchase. Eut it is not so here. If the vencior of land is a rogue, there is often no perfect security for the purchaser that he has discovered all the prior charges upon the property. As an instance, 1 may mention what happened to a friend of mine. He purchased a small estate in the south of England. Before purchasing, he made his solicitor institute a most minute search into the state of the title. He was informed that he might safely complete the purchase, and that there was no charge upon the property, except those of which he was aware. The purchase money was accord- ingly paid down. The former proprietor executed the deed of conveyance, and my friend thought he was safe. The former proprietor was insolvent and left the country. A short time afterwards, my friend was informed that the estate he had purchased was mortgaged in ;^i,2oo to another per- son, who produced the mortgage deed, and claimed the money due to him from the estate, and my friend was obliged to pay. In many foreign countries the mere legal formalities attendant on the transfer of a plot of land are very simple, certain, and inexpensive. It is quite as simple as the transfer of a ship, or as the effecting of an insurance on a house, is with us. There is no need for a long, costly, and uncertain search into the title. The buyer has only to go and look at a page of the registry book to find out every- thing about the title. There is no need for a long, unin- telligible, and costly deed of conveyance, because such a deed would be utterly useless, neither the seller nor the buyer being able to tie up the estate for future years, and therefore having no need, and no power, to swell the deed with provisions for all sorts of possible future contin- gencies. A short, simple document, costing a few shillings, settles the matter between buyer and seller. A copy of it is entered in the registration book, and the whole matter is completed, and, wiiat is equally important, completed with perfect security for the rights of the purchaser. The benefits actually realised in South Australia from Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 59 sucli a system of registration are tluis described by Sir Robert Torrens, the author of the measure, in a work pubHshed by liim, and entitled "The South Austrahan System of Registration of Title : " — " I. Titles being indefeasible, proprietors may invest capital in land, secure against risk of deprivation and the no less harassing contingencies of a Chancery suit ; mort- gagees, having also no further occasion to look to validity of title, may confine their attention to the adequacy of the security. 2. A saving amounting on the average to 90 per cent., or iSj-. in the pound sterling, has been effected in the cost of transfers and other dealings, irrespective of the contingent liability to further expenses resulting from suits at law and in equity, the grounds of which are cut off by the alteration of tenure. 3. The procedure is so simple as to be readily comprehended, so that men of ordinary edu- cation may transact their own business. 4. Dealings in land are transacted as expeditiously as dealings in jnercliandise or cattle, fifteen minutes being the average time occupied in filling up the form and completing a transaction." 10. But let us proceed with the enumeration of the consequences of these Land Laws. I have shown how they cause the land more and more to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands and in ever-increasing estates. I have shown that even advocates of the present system, like Mr. Froude, admit this. I have shown how, for many years, they have been tending gradually but steadily to absorb all the small freehold estates of the yeomen into the great properties, and that even Lord Derby is compelled to admit this. This has gone on until the old race of small yeomen freeholders, who only a iQ.\N years ago were to be found all over our islands, has almost entirely disappeared. By doing this, these laws have deprived the small farmers, the shopkeepers, and all our vast number of peasants, of almost every chance of acquiring land, even in the smallest portions, except small building plots in the immediate neighbourhood of towns. These laws also promote more and more a system of large 6o Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. leasehold farms, and lessen year by year the number of the smaller leasehold farms. They thus year by year separate the large peasant class more and more from the land and from the next step in the social scale. They render it more and more hopeless for a peasant either to acquire land, or even to rent a small farm. They thus deprive him of all strong motives to exercise exertion, self-denial, or economy. They make his future hopeless, and condemn him to poverty. Take the case of a young Norfolk peasant. The village school is often only one conducted by a poor uncertificated woman teacher. He leaves this school at 9 or 10 years of age to add to the small earnings of the family. He lives in the small crowded cottage of his parents. At 21 years of age, he may earn 12 or 14 shillings a week. To hire a cottage for himself is most difficult, for the number of cottages is kept as small as possible by the landowners, so as to avoid any surplus poor population settling on their estates, or near their mansions. Has such a peasant, by any number of years' prudence, saving, or self-denial, any chance 'of buying or building a cottage, or of buying a small plot of garden ground, or the smallest farm ? The very supposi- tion is ridiculous, from the utter impossibility of his doing anything of the sort. Can he obtain a cottage and garden on lease? Certainly not. Must he, then, remain a poor peasant all his days? He must, unless he can persuade some charitable person to enable him to emigrate, and unless he can tear himself away from his relations and all his old associations for ever. What has he to look forward to in his old age ? Nothing but the workhouse, if he is rendered too ill or feeble to work and his children cannot support him. Can this be considered a healthy or sound condition to which to have reduced the numerous peasantry of the three kingdoms 1 And all for what? Solely to support in enormous wealth and luxury a very small class of landowners. It is difficult to make English readers, who have not travelled, understand how strangely different is the condition Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 6i of the small farmers and peasants in the greater part of Western Europe. Throughout the Republics of Switzerland and France, the great empire of Germany, and the king- doms of Italy, Holland, and Belgium, the laws restricting the sale of land having been abolished at various periods since the great French Revolution of 1789, the land has been subdivided into estates of all sizes — from the garden of a quarter of an acre, or the small farm of 3 or 5 acres, to the larger estate of thousands of acres. The con- sequence is that a small farmer, or a small shopkeeper, or a peasant, if prudent, economical, and industrious, may always look forward to the time when he may buy his own freehold, and start as an independent owner. Millions of such small owners are to be found throughout the length and breadth of these countries. And how different, how strangely different, is their condition to that of our own dependent and hopeless peasantry. I remember the case of an educated, respectable German peasant. I spent several autumns in tlie village where he lived. When I first went there he was engaged to be married, and he was hard at work — at peasant's work — during the day, and at some handiwork in the evenings, earning and saving with the intention of buying a piece of land. and building his own cottage house upon it, and he was delaying his marriage until he and his betrothed could accomplish this. At my last visit to his village, some four or five years since, he told us with pride that he had bought his land, built his house, and married, and that he was doing well. Such a history in England would be impossible. II. But many and great as are the evils which this system of Land Laws causes in Great Britain, these evils are very seriously aggravated in Ireland by the additional I curse of absenteeism, I showed in No. I. that about one- half of the whole of Ireland — i.e., one-half of 20,159,678 acres — was owned by only 744 persons, and that two-thirds of this vast extent of land was owned by only 1,942 per- sons. But, in addition to the fact that the greatest part of 62 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laius. Ireland is thus monopolised by so small a number of persons — an evil, as I think, of vast magnitude — a great part of these Irish landowners do not live in Ireland, but in London, or on English estates, or in foreign capitals. Their rents are collected by agents in Ireland, and are sent to England or abroad, to be spent among strangers and to enrich them, instead of being spent among their own tenants, farmers, schools, charities, and tradespeople to enrich them. This absenteeism deprives the Irish people of the only compensation which renders the system of Land Laws which produces these great estates excusable — viz., the presence and the active good influence of a respectable resident landlord. Such a man ought to be, and is supposed in theory to be, the friend and comforter of his poor tenantry, the person to whom they can apply in need and in difticulty, their adviser and protector, the encourager of all the local charities and schools, the kindly entertainer of his neighbourhood, the magistrate who is ready to advise in local difficulties, the general centre of the district. If he is not this, what is he but the man who takes the larger share of products of the earth, raised by the labour of others — a burden, in fact, which the cultiva- tors of the soil must support without return ? But worse than all this, the absence of these men throws the farmers and labourers of Ireland into the hands of agents, who manage for the absent owners. How is it possible that these agents can feel the same interest in the tenantry, with whom their principal duty is that of extracting rents and of rigorously exacting the performance of the stipulated duties ? The natural tendency of the agent's work is to render him hard and exacting. The temptation of his work is to be much more than this, for his own ends and gain ; and what remedy, what effective remedy, has the poor tenant, with the landlord at a great distance, and the agent with great powers close at home? Does an agent support the schools and religious ministers? Does an agent encourage and support the Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 6}^ local charities? Does an agent perform the hosjntaliiies of the hall? Does an agent sit on the bench and watch over the interests of the neighbourhood? Is an agent free to intervene without a slow and often forgotten application to the owner in sudden cases of distress ? Does an agent interest himself in the thousand-and-one works of charity and good which a good landlord looks on as his simple duties ? Is it not perfectly well known, that in an agent- ridden country like Ireland, with the owners separated by the sea, the contrary of all this is generally the case? All this has been most keenly felt for many generations in Ireland. O'Connell raised his powerful voice against it. The leaders of the Irish people cry out against it now, earnestly and vehemently. But there is not the slightest possibility of applying a remedy to this evil, except by repealing the laws, which have produced it as one of the many bad consequences of our Land Laws. Mr. Drummond, the Under-Secretary of Ireland, wrote to the Irish magistracy those now celebrated words, " Property has its duties as well as its rights ; " but it seems to me that the Irish absentee landowners forget their duties almost entirely, while they are only too keen in the enforce- ment of their rights ; and yet we English are surprised and indignant that, when we and our laws have produced this state of things in Ireland — viz., an absentee class of land- owners in a country two-thirds of whose 20,159,678 acres are held by only 1,942 persons in this year 1S78 — the Irish people should be discontented and some of them dis- affected. LETTER VI. EVIL CONSEQUENCES {contiuuecT). In No. IV. and in Xo. V. I endeavoured, without men- tioning names, or making any attack on individuals for what I consider the faults of a system of laws, to point out, as shortly and clearly as I could, some of the direct conse- quences of our English Land Laws, which permit an owner to bind an estate by deed or will for so many years after the owner's death. I endeavoured to show that these laws : — 1. Prevent estates being sold which would otherwise undoubtedly come into the market. 2. Lessen due parental control, 3. Induce careless landowners to be tenfold more care- less than they otherwise would be, about the education of their children. 4. Maintain in influential positions men unworthy of those positions. 5. Deprive many landowners of the means of properly managing their estates. 6. Tend very greatly to retard the progress of agricul- tural improvement. 7. Render it necessary to make the deeds and wills very long and expensive. 8. Render it often very difficult and expensive for a purchaser to ascertain the state of the title of a plot of land he may wish to purchase. 9. Often leave the actual title to a plot of land uncertain, Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 65 spite of all the labour and expense bestowed on its careful investigation. 10. Deprive the small farmers, the shopkeepers, and the peasants of almost all chance of buying land. 1 1. Aggravate all the above-mentioned evils in Ireland by the curses of absenteeism and agent management. In this letter I propose to show what are some of the less direct, but the no less certain, consequences of our English system of Land Laws. Few persons, who have read or thought at all, will need to be told by me that for many generations the land- owners have been the most powerful class in the State, or that they have almost monopolised the power of one House of our Legislature, whilst they have been, when united, the predominant and far the most powerful section of the other, or Lower House. It is not, therefore, matter for surprise, knowing what we do of human nature, that they should have used, or that they should still use, their opportunities in the promotion of the power and interests of their own class, however patriotic and honourable their conduct may have been where their own class interests were not particularly concerned, or not more concerned than the general interests of the community. I propose, therefore, to explain, as simply as I can, some of the advantages and privileges which the class of the landowners have secured for themselves, merely remarking that, if the Land Laws I have described had not bound them together by a strong sense of common interest, and sup- ported them in a position of great wealth and power, they never would have been able to retain so long the exclusive privileges which, in days of greater ignorance and of less general wealth, thev created for themselves. 12. THE LAW OF DISTRESS. If a Manchester merchant were to hire from a jobmaster a carriage and pair for two years, at ;^4co a year, and at £ 66 Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. the end of the first year were to inform the jobmaster that he was unable or unwilling to pay for the first year's hire, the only remedy which the jobmaster would have, in order to obtain his ;^4oo, would be to commence an action to recover his ;^4oo, to go to trial, to recover a verdict and judgment, and then to instruct the sheriff to seize so much of the merchant's goods, &c., as would be sufficient to satisfy the claim for ;^40o and the costs of the action and other proceedings. If, while these proceedings were pend- ing, the merchant should become insolvent, the jobmaster would be only able to come in with the other creditors, and to obtain as much for each ])ound that was owing to him as the other creditors obtained. Surely all this is fair and equitable. The merchant might be able to show at the trial that he ought not to be called upon to pay, on account of the fraud or misconduct of the jobmaster, or by reason of the terms of the original agreement, such as, for instance, that the jobmaster was not to be paid, if the carriage or horses did not answer certain stipulated requirements, &c., &c. But the powerful class of landowners long ago secured themselves against the delays and expenses and uncer- tainties of law, and so arranged the law that they should have a short, easy, and summary remedy in their own hands for obtaining their rents, freed from all necessity of applying to lawyers. If a farmer take a farm for, say, two years, at a rent of ;^4oo a year, without a word being said about "distress" or anything of the sort ; and if, like the merchant, he is unable at the end of his first year to pay his rent of ^^400, the landlord is enabled by the law, by means of his agents, and without the trouble, or expense, or delay of an action, or trial, or judgment, or execution, to enter upon the farm, and to seize so much of the cattle, stock, furniture, &c., as will, when sold by public auction, suffice to satisfy his claim for rent and for all the expenses of entry, seizure, taking care of the property seized, the sale, &c. Nay, more, if the farmer proves to have many more creditors, and to owe Evil Consequences of the Existiiig Laws. 6^ much more than ^^400 to each of several other creditors for the very cattle, stock, and furniture so seized, the land- lord may. disregard these unfortunate creditors, and, even if the farmer has been made insolvent and his affairs put into the Bankruptcy Court, so that his property may be divided equally and equitably amongst all the creditors, as in the case of the merchant, the landlord may still seize so much of the farmer's stock, cattle, furniture, &:c., as will satisfy his ^^^400 and all the costs he, the landlord, has been put to. If this is a fair law for the landowners, why should it not be also fair for the jobmaster and for all men of business ? Why should not the Manchester merchant be able to distrain on the calico printer for the value of the cloth he has sent to be printed, or upon his customer for the goods he has purchased from him ; why should not the shopkeeper be allowed to distrain upon the customer who has carried off a large amount of goods on credit, and who does not pay when that credit has expired? Why should the landowner, in short, be allowed to take the law into his own hands, and to be favoured more than the rest of the farmer's creditors, when all other creditors except landlords are compelled to resort to expensive legal proceedings to make out their claim, and, in case of the insolvency of the debtor, only to take their proportion of what remains to be divided ? The only reasonable answer is that the landowning class have been rendered by the Land Laws so strong and so united that they have been able to obtain these laws in their own favour, and to defend and keep them after they were once obtained. This law of " distress " was originally derived from the ancient feudal law ; and after the power of the Church and Crown had been greatly diminished, and after Parliament became, as it did after the expulsion of James II., mainly the representative of the landowning class, this law was rendered more stringent against the tenants by many Acts of Parliament. 68 Evil ConseqtLcnces of the Existing Laws. 13. THE LAW OF FIXTURES. Another extraordinary landowner's law, which was estab- lished in feudal times, and which the landowners have been strong enough to retain down to the present day, though not in all its original severity and unfairness, is the law relating to what are called in legal phraseology "fixtures." In the feudal times it was settled that the law should be that whatever a tenant of land (whether tenant only from year to year or tenant under a lease) annexed to the land during his tenancy should belong from that moment to the landowner, and not to the tenant, who had paid for it and annexed it. All the tenant's legal right to such annexed thing, however costly it was, ceased from the moment it was annexed. But might made riglit in the feudal days, when these laws were first enforced, and might makes these same laws, though somewhat modified, right now. The trading classes struggled from the earliest time against this landowner's law, and gradually obtained exemptions in favour of " trade fixtures," or those erected for the purpose of trade and business, but the law has always operated, and still operates, most severely against agricultural tenants, though some very insufficient and unsatisfactory modifications, subject to conditions which seem designed to render them nugatory, have recently been granted to them, to satisfy the growing discontent — a discontent which accompanied and was the result of growing intelligence. To show how hardly this law presses upon the tenant, who most probably knows nothing whatever about it when he commences his tenancy, let me give a few instances. If the tenant erect a conservatory on a brick foundation, he cannot remove it at the end of the tenancy, however short that tenanc}-, or however much the conservatory may have cost him, but it becomes, as soon as erected, the property of the landowner. So, too, if the tenant erect Evil Consequences of the Existing Laws. 69 greenhouses in his garden, or a veranda to the house, or wind or water mills, or storehouses, they belong to the landowner as soon as erected, and cannot be removed. I give these merely as instances of what seems a most unjust and inexpedient law. And it must be carefully borne in mind that the law is equally stringent, even if the " fixture " can be removed without doing the least injury to the pro- perty to which it is affixed, and it is equally stringent, no matter what the cost or value of the "fixture" may have been. It is no answer to say that the tenant, when he took the house or farm, knew the law, and, therefore, knowing the law, chose for some reason to go to the expense. As every lawyer knows, and as the thousands of cases litigated on this subject show, not one man in ten thousand knows any- thing about tliis law ; it is scarcel)' ever mentioned in leases, and even where it is, it is onlv with reference to the "fix- tures " already on the premises; and it is certain that {^^ lawyers even, without consulting the great tomes on land- lord and tenant law, and on " fixtures," would be able to say offhand whether a particular article were a " fixture " or not, or were subject to this strange power and privilege of the landowner. It is a law which has existed at least since Edward I.'s reign. It emanated from the power of the great landown- ing class. It is sustained by the same power now. Of course, if a valuable "fixture" could not be removed without injuring the premises to which it was attached, no such removal should by law be permitted, until ample compensation had been made to the owner of the premises for all such injury, whether prospective or otherwise. And it must be remembered that, if this law were repealed to- morrow, it would always be open to the landlord, before letting his premises, to make it a term of the agreement that the tenant should put up no fixture and make no alteration in the premises during the tenancy, an-(i.) A weaver in Argovia (one of the Swiss cantons), says Mr. Symons, ' is almost universally the proprietor, or the son of a proprietor of land, and few householders are there in the whole canton who do not keep a pig, and generally a few sheep. Their cottages are strewn over the hills and dales, and exhibit in the interior every degree of comfort and ease. . . . The cottages of St. Gall and Appenzel (two Swiss cantons) are scattered separately over the vales and hills, each standing in the midst of its little estate, with the goats or sheep, with their melodious bells around their necks, grazing on the land, which is generally pasture. The interiors of the cottages, which are built of wood, are cleanly bevond description, and are well furnished with every article of cottage comfort,' (see his ' Report on Swiss Handloom Weavers,' fassim)." So far Mr. Thornton. I quote him to show how absurd it is to reckon this class of small land- owners with the agricultural farming landowners in order to reduce the general average of the size of farms properly so cailed, and which are cultivated by the ov/ners themselves. I cannot leave the notice of Switzerland, which this part of 1 28 Prospe7'ity of the Rural Popitlatioii my subject has forced upon me, without quoting a sentence from Mr. Laing's " Notes of a Traveller" (p. 354) ; and all the more so because he is the cold and very cautious critic of the French system of Land Laws which prevails in Switzer- land. He says : "The peculiar feature in the condition of the Swiss population — the great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery — is the air of well-being, the neatness, the sense of property imprinted on the people, their dwellings, and their plots of land. The spirit of the proprietor is not to be mistaken in all that one sees." The above remarks I well know, from my own persona observations during many visits to that country since 1843, are singularly true. I was living in 1876 for six weeks among a community of these Swiss proprietors and farmers, on a rich slope of the mountains above the Lake of Thun. On the vast slopes of these mountains, within six miles of where I was residing, there were three communes or parishes, composed of many homesteads and many farms. Each parish had its excellent school and its trained and certi- ficated teacher. Each of these parishes had vast tracts of common pasture grounds on the higher parts of the mountains. On these common pastures, at different heights up the mountains, as far as the pastures extend, large wooden cowsheds are built. As the snow melts, the cattle of the whole parish are driven by a certain number of experienced herdsmen up the mountains, first to one great cowshed and its pastures, and then later on, as the snow melts, to another still higher, until they attain an altitude of some 6000 feet above the sea. Each evening the herdsmen bring them to the shed, milk them, churn the butter, make cheese, carefully collect the solid and liquid manure, and then men employed for the purpose from time to time carry down the produce and sell it in the valleys below. In October, when the cattle have returned to the homesteads, driven down by degrees by the snow from one pasture ground to another, the produce of the season is divided among the farmers of the parish, according to the amount of their land and the tinder the French System. 129 number of their cattle. After this has been done, each farmer puts his cows into their winter quarters, and the man,ure is carefully brought down from the cowsheds to the parish and its farmers. This is effected by carrying it in large wooden tubs or cases, slung on the backs of porters. I have myself seen all these operations. But what I particularly want to observe is that in this beautiful land (which ought to be a " pauper warren " according to the English prophet, as it is governed by the French laws) these parishes, with their rich meadows, from which, by means of manure, two crops of hay are annually obtained, with tlieir fruit trees, their picturesque cottages surrounded by their kitchen gardens, their picturesque winter cowsheds, and the general look of weUbeing and comfort which prevailed, formed one of the most prosperous, happy, and beautiful scenes imaginable. But travellers go and see the men and women working in their everyday — carefully and decently patched and mended — workday clothes ; the travellers are there in the sum- mer months, when the children are not in the schools, but helping in little ways in the fields, in old patched workday clothes, and often without shoes and stockings, their tidy garments being put away for Sundays and schooltime, when they must appear clean and neat ; and these intelligent tra- vellers return home with the most piteous accounts of the pauperism and misery which they had observed in Switzer- land, not troubling themselves to notice the same people on Sundays, when you may meet the whole family in neat, un- patched clothes, often made out of an excellent home-spun material, with clean and comfortable linen, and the. women with their silver chains or cantonal costumes. I have often stopped to chat with them, and said to myself, " What a contrast to an English labourer's family, on the same good day of rest ! Are these the people who are being ruined by the French system of compulsory subdivision? " I shall conclude this letter by a passage I shall quote from Mr. Thornton's '-Plea," &c., (p. 147, second edition). I 130 Prosperity of the Rural Poptdation, &c. He says : " Taking a comprehensive view of France, we have seen that the number of landed proprietors has long remained nearly stationary ; that cultivators deriving a livelihood from their own fields have, in general, land enough for their maintenance in comfort ; and that the con- dition of the peasantry and labouring classes has for many years been steadily improving." In my next letter I hope to describe how the same or nearly the same laws as the French have operated in Jersey and Guernsey. LETTER XII. THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. September 8, 1878. In my Letters, Nos. IX., X., and XL, I have tried to explain the effects of the French system of Land Laws upon the yeo- men and peasant farmers, not because I was in favour of those laws, but in order to show that those laws which are in force in France, Norway, Holland, the Rhine provinces of Germany, most of the cantons of Switzerland, and a great part of Italy, were not causing the evils which the enemies of all reform of our laws were industriously, and I hope ignorantly, charging upon them. On the one hand, these laws enable the large and small farmers to buy farms of their own, while they also enable the mechanic and the day labourer to buy their cottage, garden, orchard, or field, and to look forward with hope to becoming greater proprietors; while our Land Laws, by tying up the land in estates of 1,300,000, 400,000, 200,000, 100,000, and 50,000 acres, deprive the small farmers, the peasants, and the mechanics of all chance of buying either farm, field, garden, or orchard. On the mere statement of these facts, which are only too painfully notorious, and which are shown in detail in Letter No. L, which system, let me ask, is the most likely to pro- mote the happiness and virtue of the people? In this letter I propose (i), to answer another objection to the French system ; and (2), to show what results the French system of Land Laws has produced in Jersey and Guernsey, a part actually of our own territory. 132 The Channel Islands. It is constantly urged in this country by opponents to reform of the Land Laws, and by men who ought to know better, if indeed they have ever given a serious thought to the subject, that the system of free trade in land would never succeed in our country, on account of our changeable, cold, and uncertain climate, and that therefore it is better to tie up the land in estates of one million and four hundred thousand acres, and to farm them by tenants, who generally have not even the security of a lease. The objection has been urged over and over again, and even before a late com- mittee of the House of Commons. But what are the facts? In the short summers and long severe winters of Norway ; in Holland, with its fogs and long winters ; in Northern France, with a climate very similar to our own ; in Southern France, with its sunny and hot climate ; in the plains of Switzerland, with their short but hot summers ; in the mountain cantons, with their severe winters and short sum- mers ; in Italy, with its hot climate ; in the cold climate of Northern Germany, with its severe winters ; in the hot climate of Southern Germany ; on the banks of the Rhine, with its splendid vineyards and orchards ; in the Channel Islands, with a climate scarcely warmer than Devonshire ; in fact, everywhere where free trade in land, or the French system, is being tried over the whole face of Europe, these laws are promoting the welfare, the happiness, and the morality of the people. When the blessing of the abolition of the feudal laws has been once conferred, no Government, whatever its political tendencies, has been found strong enough, or courageous enough, to attempt to repeal the new system of laws \ and struggle as the landowners of our empire may, no sooner will the people understand the character and effects of our own Land Laws, than the day for their complete abolition will have come. But let us turn to a portion of our own empire, whicli, strange to say, has for a long series of years enjoyed, spite of English landowners, a system of Land Laws almost pre- The Channel Islands. 133 cisely similar to the French system, and let us see how it works there, I refer to the Channel Islands. And cer- tainly the first observation which strikes one is this : if the system of laws produces as many evils as the English land- owners and their friends allege, why do not they, the most powerful party in this country, release the Islanders from the tyranny of these laws ? The answer is here just the same as everywhere else : the people of the Channel Islands are satisfied with them, are Avonderfully prosperous under and in consequence of them, as I will show, and no change could be effected in them, except at the cost of a rebellion in the Islands ; and consequently the English landowners are compelled to endure the spectacle of a people, forming part of our own empire and close to our own shores, flour- ishing in an extraordinary way, by what is refused to our people here, viz., the abolition of the feudal Land Laws. For nearly all the statistics and facts I am going to give about the Channel Islands, I am indebted to a work I have often quoted, " A Plea for Peasant Proprietors," by William Thomas Thornton, C.B., and to a very interesting article by an experienced traveller and an able writer, the Rev. F. B. Zincke, contained in the " Fortnightly Review," (No. CIX., New Series, January i, 1876). Both these gentlemen speak from their own personal and recent researches in the Islands, and I need hardly say both are witnesses above all suspicion. Now it appears that the Land Laws of Guernsey require land to be divided among all the children of the last owner, daughters as well as sons, though they treat the latter in general more liberally than the former, and permit the eldest son, besides sharing with his brothers, to take in addition his father's principal dwelling-house and about sixteen perches of ground adjoining it. The law in Jersey slightly differs from that in Guernsey. In Jersey, the Land Law permits the eldest son not only to take the dwelling-house and the curtilage, and a small portion of his own selection, equal to a little more than 134 The Channel Islands. two English acres, but, in addition, one-tenth in vakie of the remainder of the property. He takes, besides this, a small portion of land pcmr les mousquets, that is, nominally to enable him to fm"nish his contribution to an ancient assessment for the militia. This contribution is, however, never exacted, as the War Department supplies the militia with rifles. The rest of the property is then divided amongst all the children, including the eldest son, in the proportion of two- thirds among the sons and one-third among the daughters, but with this qualification, that no daughter shall take a greater share than a younger son. (See " Succession Laws of Christian Countries," by Eyre Lloyd, barrister-at-law ; page 57.) So that it will be seen from the above statement that the Channel Islands have a law of compulsory subdi- vision very similar to that of France, but modified by some advantages in favour of the eldest son. But then it must be borne in mind that the French law permits the father to dispose by will, either to his eldest son or to any other person, of a certain defined portion of his estate, so that the Land Law of the Channel Islands will be found to be substantially similar to that of France, and to be open to all the objections so constantly brought against the much calumniated law of the latter country by our own naturally well-satisfied landowners. Let us see how this obnoxious law operates in the Channel Islands. We have already shown what results it has produced in other countries. But first let me state in the following table what the area and the population of the principal islands were in 1S61. Nam- ^?cu!dvXn!^ P°P"'-ion.' Jersey 25,000 56,078 Guernsey ..... 10,000 29,780 Alderncy ..... 1500 4933 Sark ..... 600 600 IMr. Zincke says, that the largest proprietors of land capable of cultivation own only about 100 acres in Jersey The Channel Islands, 135 and about 50 acres in Guernsey. Mr. Thornton says that, whereas in England 30^. an acre would be thought a fair, and indeed rather a high, rent for middling land, it is only inferior land that in Guernsey and Jersey will not let for at least ;^4 ; while in Switzerland the average rent is ^QG an acre. And indeed, according to Mr. Le Quesne, in his "Ireland and the Channel Islands" (p. 123), the average rent of good land in the Channel Islands may be estimated at ;^6 an acre. There are, of course, in the Islands, and especially in Alderney, as in France and Switzerland, many small pro- perties which are much smaller than the size I have men- tioned, and which do not exceed one or two or five acres in extent. But the same remark applies to these, as to the similar plots in France and Switzerland. They are generally not farms. Their owners do not pretend to be farmers. Some of these plots are the kitchen gardens of shopkeepers in the towns. Some are the small plots or fields of cottagers, who earn their living by day labour. Some are the gardens of market gardeners, who now carry on a large trade with London in early vegetables, «Scc. And such is the enterprise and intelligence of these small proprietors and gardeners, that they have — small as their population is, and small as their resources would be ex- pected to be, by those who expect to find countries where land is much subdivided to be mere " pauper warrens," — established a large trade with London in early vegetables, potatoes, grapes, apples, and pears. In 1873, as Mr. Zincke informs us, Jersey sent to London ;j^3oo,ooo worth of early potatoes, and Guernsey fifty tons of grapes grown under glass, an article of export, the amount of which increases every year. And as Mr. Zincke most truly adds, " without the division of the land, which obtains throughout these islands, these astonishing results could not have been produced. The temporary occupiers of other men's lands cannot plant orchards or build vineries ; and as to the potatoes, which must be forced into maturity by the middle 1 36 The Channel Islands. of May, the culture they require is so costly — it amounts to about ^40 an acre — that, as a general rule, it will not be applied on a large scale, or to land of which the culti- vator is not also the owner." And this enterprise and intelligence of these small proprietors is shown in other remarkable facts. Guernsey contains only 10,000 cultiv- able acres in its whole extent — an amount of land which would in Great Britain and Ireland only constitute a respectable medium-sized estate — and yet this small island, with no large town, and only its yeomen and peasant farmers, is now spending ^^i 6,000 in building a covered market for vegetables and fruit. It has also, Mr. Zincke informs us, lately carried a broad street across the town of St. Peter's Port, from the harbour to the heights above the town, at a cost of ;^io,ooo. But the great glory of this little island is its noble harbour, upon which it has from the resources of its inhabitants recently expended ^^285, 000. Of this, at the time of Mr. Zincke's visit, 1875, ;^65,ooo had been paid off, and the remainder of the outlay was being cleared off at the rate of £\S^o a year. " No one," Mr. Zincke says, " can see without surprise the massiveness of the enclosing walls of the harbour, and the amplitude of space on the top of them for quays, car- riage roads, and footways." Jersey, too, it appears, is constructing a new harbour in deeper water, for the accommodation of larger ships, as their old harbour was found too shallow. So much for the enter- prise of these " pauper warrens." Take another test of the prosperity of the two principal Channel Islands. !Mr. Thornton says (" Plea," &c., page 40) : "The agricultural population is more than four times as dense as in England, there being in the latter country only one cultivator to 17 acres of cultivated land, while in Guernsey and Jersey there is one to about four. Yet the agriculture of these islands maintains, besides culti- vators, non-agricultural populations, respectively twice and The Channel Islands. 137 four times as dense as that of England. The difference does not arise from any superiority of soil or climate possessed by the Channel Islands, for the former is naturally rather poor, and the latter is not better than in the southern counties of England. It is owing entirely to the assiduous care of the farmers and the abundant use of manure." Mr. Brock, a late bailiff of Guernsey, and therefore a person who ought to be competent to express an opinion on such a subject, says : " There are larger estates in England than the whole of this island." Mr. Brock might have said that there is one estate in England 20 times as large as the whole of this island, and several 10 and 15 times as great; and one in Scotland 130 times as great ! Mr. Brock con- tinues : " Let the production of the island be compared to that of any 10,000 acres kept in one, two, or three hands in Great Britain, and the advantage of small farms will be obvious." (" Guernsey and Jersey Magazine," October 1837, p. 258 ; Thornton's " Plea," p. 41.) But let us inquire what the condition of the yeomen farmers and small owners is. I shall again cite Mr. Thornton, who has both examined for himself and who has examined the best authorities. " 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." ("Tait's Magazine" for June 1S34.) "No matter," says Sir George Head, " to what point the traveller may choose to bend his way, comfort everywhere prevails," ("Home Tour through various Parts of the United Kingdom ") ; and then Mr. Thornton gives the results of his own observations in the following remarkable passage : — " What most surprises the English visitor in his first walk or drive beyond the bounds of St. Peter's Port is the appear- ance of the habitations with which the landscape is thickly studded. Many of them are such as in his own country would belong to persons of middle rank ; but he is puzzled to guess what sort of people live in the others, which, though in general not large enough for farmers, are almost invariably 138 The Channel Islands. much too good in every respect for day labourers. The walls are often completely hidden by rose trees, geraniums, and myrtles, which reach up to the ledge of the roof, and form an arch over the door. Every window is crowded with pots of choice flowers, which are sometimes to be found also in the little front garden, though the latter is more commonly given up to useful than to ornamental plants. Such atten- tion to elegance about a dwelling has always been held to signify that the inmates are not absorbed by the cares of life, but have leisure and taste for its enjoyments. But beauty is not the only nor the chief recommendation of the Guernsey cottages. They are always substantially built of stone, and being generally of two storeys, contain plenty of accommodation. The interior is not unworthyof the exterior. In every room, pulley windows, with large squares of glass, take the place of leaded casements with diamond-shaped panes ; equal attention is paid to comfort and to neatness in the fitting up ; there is abundance of all needful furniture, and of crockery and kitchen utensils ; and flitches of bacon, those best ornaments of a poor man's chimney, are scarcely ever wanting. This picture is not drawn from one or two select models, but is a fair representation of the generality of the dwellings of the peasantry. Literally, in the whole island, 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. . . . The people of Guernsey are as well clad as lodged. The working dress of the men, who wear a short blue frock over their other clothes " [a similar dress to that worn by the Swiss, French, and many of the German farmers and peasants, which washes easily and well, and which keeps the under garments clean, but which is so short as not to interfere with the free action of the limbs], " is not indeed very becoming, but is never ragged ; and on Sundays they don a suit of broadcloth, while their wives and daughters make an equal display of the outward symbols of respectability. "What makes the evident afiluence of these islanders a The Channel Islands. 139 still more gratifying spectacle is its almost universal diffu- sion. Beggars are utterly unknown. . . . Pauperism, able- bodied pauperism at least, is nearly as rare as mendicancy. There are two so-called ' hospitals ' in Guernsey, one for the town and the other for the country parishes, which, in addition to the purpose indicated by their name, serve also as poorhouses and houses of industry ; yet the inmates of all descriptions in the town hospital, at the time of my visit, were only 80 men, 130 women, 55 boys, and 39 girls, and I was assured that every one of the adults was incapa- citated from earning a livelihood by some mental or bodily defect, or by bad character. No one fit for employment had been compelled to take refuge there by inability to procure work. The same remark applies to the country hospital, in which I found 18 men able to work, but who were either habitual drunkards, or otherwise of such bad character that no one would employ them. The average number of inmates, of both sexes and of all ages and classes was 146."' (Thornton's " Plea," p. 100.) Writina; of the houses and cottatjes of the farmers and. peasants in the islands generally, i\Ir. Zincke says : — ■ " All that one sees in them speaks of sufficiency, ease, and prosperity throughout all classes. The number of sub- stantial houses in the environs of their two towns surprises one who calls to mind the smallness of the islands of which they are the capitals. In the country parishes, too, good houses abound. One accustomed to the uninhabited look of so large a proportion of the rural parishes of England wonders how the possessors of so many good houses as he sees here can find the means to live in them. So with the better class of houses. The same is observable with respect to the houses of the peasantry and of the artisans. A month's search for something of the mean and dilapidated kind, not unknown among ourselves, was quite unsuccessful. I went into several cottages, all of which I found well built, roomy enough, and in good repair. This was verj^ remark- able in the houses of the peasantry. As to the clothing 140 The Channel Islands. of their inmates, I nowhere saw the dirt and rr.gs wliich so frequently shock us here at home, as signs both of actual pressing want and of the decay or extinction of self-respect. But to the eye of one who may be visiting these islands indications of the well-to-do condition of the people are presented on every side. The churches I saw were large for the acreage of their respective parishes, and were well kept ; so much so, indeed, in most cases, that one could not but notice their dimensions and condition. They evi- dently belong to large congregations, who take a pride in them. The churchyards told the same tale. They are as carefully kept as the churches, and contain what to English eyes is an unusual proportion of solid tombs and massive tombstones. It is plain that here there are few so poor as to be obliged to bury their dead in unnamed graves. " In accord with the testimony of the churches and of the churchyards is that of the village schools, judging by what a passer-by can see both of the buildings and of the little scholars. So also, particularly in Jersey, is the excellent condition of the roads, and the dressiness, almost every- where, of the roadside margins. These generally consist of stone walls, or well-trimmed hedges, or earth banks, upon or beside which are rows of trees, sometimes fruit trees, all of which, whether fruit-bearing or timber trees, are carefully tended. This dressiness of the roadside in rural districts is again something new to English visitors, and adds much to the pleasure of a day's walk or drive in the interior of Jersey. To the thought it is even more pleasing than to the eye, for it intimates that every cultivator loves and is proud of his land, and is desirous that it should present a fair appearance to his neiglibours and to the casual passer- by. It shows, too, that, with the careful attention which is found .only in small cultivators who are at the same time owners of the soil, he is making the most of his opportuni- ties ; for these trees, which he plants on his roadside boundary bank, will some day send down their roots into the roadside margin, and even extend them into what soil The Channel Islands. 141 there may be beneath the road itself, and will find space for expansion above the road, without detriment to grass or corn. With such cultivators nothing is lost." IMr. Thornton says of the dwellings of the farmers and peasants in Jersey : " As the estates of the peasantry are larger than in Guernsey, so also are their dwellings — a much greater proportion of which are of sufficient size to be styled farmhouses. Some of them, indeed, have so much architec- tural pretension that they might almost be mistaken for the residences of independent gentlemen, if the fields of corn, parsnips, or cabbages, lying close under the parlour window's, did not show that they really belong to farmers. On the other hand, the mere cottages are very inferior in outward appearance to those of Guernsey, being commonly built of rough stone, and sometimes apparently without any cement. Their inferiority,however, is probably " (as Mr. Zincke shows certainly) " only external ; for, though I did not myself enter any of them, tlie well-dressed people whom I saw leaving them on Sunday were evidently not prevented by want of means from making themselves comfortable." (Thornton's "Plea," &c., p. 102.) ]Mr. Zincke remarks that in the countries where small properties, the result of free trade in land, exist, or, as he says, " Everywhere in the world, except in our own country, we find general markets for the general accommodation of the middle and working classes flourishing." All who have travelled among the French and German countrv towns must have noticed this. The wives of the small farmers and market gardeners come in with vegetables, fruit, flowers, eggs, fowls, and all the produce of the season. In the smallest country towns, as was once the case with us, these markets are to be found flourishing. They are of the great- est value both to the small farmers, labourers, and general inhabitants of the locality, and they are also great incen- tives to the careful production of many vegetables and fruits which would otherwise be neglected. The prosperous condition and good supply of these 142 The Channel Islands. markets is often a very fair index of the condition and pros- perity of the farmers and market gardeners in the district around. These markets also enable the labourers to obtain what they need of garden stuff and of eggs, bacon, and poultry, much more easily, much more cheaply, and much better than in our country. The Rev. F. B. Zincke complains of the decay of such markets in our country, and attributes it to the disappear- ance of our ancient class of yeomen farmers, who owned their own small properties, and he might have added, as he seems indeed to infer, to the miserable and pauperised con- dition to which we have reduced our peasantry. He says, (see his Essay, p. 4) : — "The people who supply a market of this kind are not extensive cultivators, but peasant proprietors. Of these, each does all that ingenuity and labour can, to turn every square foot of his little estate to the best account. Every scrap and corner of it, and what they are producing, and what they can be made to produce next year or a dozen years hence, are constantly mapped in his mind's eye. Here is a bit of wall, or an angle in a back yard, where there is room for a fig or a plum tree. The fig or the plum tree is planted before this bit of wall, or in this angle, and is carefully tended. This little bit of grass-land will support a few apple trees. The apples before long will be ripening above the grass. Before his potatoes are out of the ground, beet or broccoli is set between the rows. No leaf of this beet or broccoli will rot on the plant, but, as soon as it has done its duty to its parent, will be culled for the cow. The cow will supply milk and butter or cheese for the market. Cows and pigs and poultry are each kept in part as save-alls, and all alike for the market. These are the people who supply the market. Every week the good housewife herself brings to the accustomed stall all that she has ready for sale. This insures that everything the locality can produce, (and under this system every locality can be made to produce a great variety of good things), should be The Channel Islands. 143 exhibited in the market place in great abundance, and at very moderate prices. In the Guernsey vegetable market I counted upwards of a hundred of these peasant women in their stands at one time, many of them exhibiting upwards of twenty baskets of garden and dairy produce. Those who have any familiarity with the growing difficulty experienced in this country, possibly a result of our present system of land tenure, in supplying the working classes in our towns " (and, he might have added, in many of our richest rural districts) " with vegetables, fruit, eggs, butter, and milk, will regard such a market as that of Guernsey as of no small advantage to a locality." But, as Mr. Zincke says, another cause which contributes to maintain these general markets is that they are, to a very great extent, supported by the yeomen and peasant pro- prietors, who learn by their own interest to raise whatever their land can be made to produce, and also how to make the best use of every good thing they raise. They know, he says, in what ways poultry may be cooked, as well as how to make soups of herbs and other simple but nourishing ingredients. Haricots and onions are much used by them. Cabbages are a valuable part of the household supply. Apples and plums are dried and stored for future use. All this is traditional lore in the small landowner's home. A varied, abundant, and cheap supply of vegetables and fruit is as necessary an ingredient in the dietary of adults as milk is in that of children. And yet in our rural districts it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the labourer to buy any of these articles of food. And I have known cases where milk has been refused to the labourers, except on the application of influential landowners. As to meat, how often do our rural labourers see it on their tables, unless it be a slice or two of bacon mixed with their bowl of potatoes on the Sundays ? But in the population of small landowners in the Channel Islands, there are many who are able to buy meat, as is proved by the fact mentioned by Mr. Zincke, that in tlie 1 44 The Channel Islands. meat market of St. Peter's Port, which is alongside the vege- table market, in Guernsey, there are thirty-six well-supplied butchers' shops, " a large number," as Mr. Zincke says, " for so small a place." The contiguous fish market, too, contains forty fishwives' marble stalls, on which, one morning in September 1875, Mr. Zincke counted twenty- two species of fish and Crustacea. The homes, the cottages, the farms, and the gardens of these prosperous islanders are their own. And how much- is summed up in that fact ! Is it not obvious, as the Rev. Mr. Zincke most truly and wisely says, that among the peasant and small farmer classes there can be no true home unless the house in which the family lives is its own property? What a vast difference there is between the cottage m which the English labourer lives by sufferance, liable to be turned out any month or year, and the cottage which the Channel islander and the foreign farmer or peasant has acquired as his own by his own exertions ! If our small farmer or peasant has no lease, if the peasant may be turned out of his poor cottage at any moment, what motive is there to care for the shell of the cottage, except as a temporary shelter, of which he knows not how long the poor enjoyment may be spared to him ? Such peasants will not repair ; they will not beautify in many ways, which would otherwise be their pleasure; they will not try, by hard labour, to add to its conveniences. Why should they love to add to the beauty of their humble porches by train- ing over them gay flowers ; why should they bestow every spare penny on their garden and its productions ; why should they spend their extra time and labour on its fences ; why should they carefully prune and graft their fruit trees ; why should they spare from their savings to buy new shrubs and trees, which next year or month may be their land- lord's? What is there, in short, to create in their breasts that healthy and happy love of their cottages which the small owners of the Channel Islands, Switzerland, Germany, and France feel towards their own little homesteads, hardly The Channel Islands. 145 acquired, it may be, by much toil and self-denial, but when acquired, their own, safe from the greed or uncertain or tyrannical will of any one ? And is not this a great moral lesson for the people, worth, if necessary, the sacrifice of some portion of the net produce of the soil ? But it is not necessary to pay even this price ; for nations who have promoted just laws, and repealed, no matter by what labour, these selfish and class feudal laws, have found themselves repaid by a just Providence, by the increased, and still increasing, industr}', self-denial, temperance, con- servative feeling, contentment, and prosperity of the rural classes. Would to God that all Englishmen had had the oppor- tunities which I have enjoyed of studying the results of abolishing these unjust, oppressive, and truly demoralising feudal Land Laws ! LETTER XIII. ON BELGIUM. September 23, 1878. Before leaving the important subject of the effects of the French system of Land Laws in the different European countries in which it has been in force for many years, I wish to direct the attention of your readers shortly to the effects of this system in the kingdom of Belgium ; and I am all the more anxious to do so because many questions were put to witnesses upon this subject by members of the recent comm.ittee on the Irish Land Act, 1870, which has been sitting this year, showing too plainly that great misconceptions prevail as to the results of this system in that country. " The case of Belgium," as Mr. Cliffe Leslie says in his "Land Systems of Ireland, England, and the Continent" (p. 348), " is the more striking an example since the peasant there has none of the special gifts which the skies of France bestow on la petite culture. The olive is not his ; and the vine, though it grows an indifferent vintage on a few slopes in the east and south of the kingdom, is nowhere to be met with in Flanders. The soil of Flanders, moreover, is so poor by nature that even 'second' or intermediate crops require special manure. . . . The Pays de Waes, it should be observed, is not more fertile than the rest of the sandy regions, although it may appear so from the greater moisture of the soil, and its natural qualities were so far from attract- ing earlier cultivation than the rest of the province, that it Ou Belgium. 147 was not reclaimed for centuries after the environs of Ghent. More manure to the acre is applied in it at this day than anywhere else, even in Flanders." And M. de Laveleye, who is one of the most competent of, if not the most com- petent, writers on the agriculture of Belgium, and who is the author of two celebrated works on the agriculture of Belgium and Holland — viz., " L'Economie Rurale de la Belgique," and " L'Economie Rurale de la Neerlande " — and also of a most interesting essay in the " Systems of Land Tenure in various Countries," entitled "The Land System of Belgium and Holland," says (see his Essay, p. 199): " Li England a contrast is often drawn between Flanders and Ireland, and the former is said to enjoy agri- cultural advantages not possessed by Ireland, such as great markets, a better climate, abundance of manure, more manufactures. . . . Flanders does enjoy certain advantages, but they are equally accessible to the Irish, derived as they are from human industry ; whereas the advantages possessed by Ireland, coming as they do from nature, are not within the reach of the Fleming. " Let us look, first, at climate and soil. The climate of Ireland is damper and less warm in summer, but less cold in winter. In Flanders it rains 175 days in a year; in Ire- land 220 days. On this account the Irish climate is more favourable to the growth of grass, forage, and roots, but less so to the ripening of cereals ; yet the Fleming would be but too happy had he such a climate, cereals being but of secondary importance with him, and often used as food for his cattle. He seeks only abundance of food for his cows, knowing that the value of live stock goes on increasing, while that of cereals remains stationary. Butter, flax, colza, and chicory are the staple articles of his wealth, and the climate of Ireland is at least as well suited to the production of these as that of Flanders. "As for the soil of Ireland, it produces excellent pasture spontaneously, whilst that of Flanders hardly permits of the natural growth of heather and furze. It is the worst soil in 148 Oil Belgium. all Europe; sterile sand like that of La Campine and of Brandenburg . . . Having been fertilised by ten centuries of laborious husbandry, the soil of Flanders does not yield a single crop without being manured, a fact unique in Europe. . . . Not a blade of grass grows in Flanders with- out manure. Irish soil might be bought to fertilise the soil of the Fleming." M. de Laveleye goes on to show what extraordinary pains the Flemish farmers bestow on the collection, purchase, and preservation of manure, and what large sums they expend in its purchase, and he then con- tinues : " On the whole, for carrying farming to a high pitch of perfection, Ireland enjoys far greater advantages than Flanders, the land being much superior, the climate equally favourable to the growth of valuable crops, and the same markets being at hand " to both countries. But then, he might have added, the Irishman has not the wonderful stimulus of owning the land which he farms ; and that, while in Belgium, as will be seen by and by, a great part of the farmers are spurred on to ever-renewed exertion and enterprise by the wonderful incentive of feel- ing that the land they farm is their own, and that every farthing and every hour's labour they expend upon it, is so much expended for their own sole benefit. Let the poor Irish tenant, working under an agent and without any lease even, be put in such a situation as the Flemish farmer, and we should soon see whether our Irish brother would not soon equal, if not outstrip, his Flemish competitor. In Belgium, the French system of compulsory subdivision of a great part of the land on the death of the owner, as described in No. 9, is in force. But although this is the law of the land in Belgium, its effects are so modified in some parts of that coun-try by local customs, and in other parts by the fact of the exist- ence of so many manufacturing towns, that the consequence is that, while there are, as in all countries in which the French Land Laws are in force, great numbers of small farms, kitchen gardens, and single plots belonging to their culti- On Belgium. 149 vators, there are at the same time a great number of estates which belong to the old noble families or to the rich manu- facturers in the towns. These latter estates are seldom farmed by the owners themselves, but are let in farms of different sizes either to farmers who have no land of their own, or to farmers who, having small farms of their own, are desirous of cultivating more land than that which belongs to them, and of thus hastening the lime when they will be able to add to their own property by purchasing more. In Belgium the nobility have, spite of the law of forced subdivision on the death of an owner, retained, as many of the French nobility also have done, large estates. So that in Belgium leasehold farms are to be found in most parts of the country, existing side by side with what we should call " freehold " farms, or farms actually belonging to the cultivator. Owing to the circumstances mentioned, and to the con- stantly varying fortunes of members of the manufacturing class — to their occasional insolvency, to their occasional want of all available capital for speculations, and to their frequent changes of occupation — there is a constant change going on in the land market; some seeking to buy, some to sell, some to sell in plots in order to obtain the higher price, and many eagerly competing to obtain sometimes only one and sometimes more of such plots. It is found in Belgium, as in France, that when a large landowner sells he can generally obtain much more by sell- ing in a number of small plots than by selling the whole estate in one lot. The farms, which are let on lease by the manufacturers and others, are, as a rule, let on very short leases — three, six, or nine years at most, and more generally for three or six than for nine. And on these farms all the evils are to be found which result everyvvliere from short leases, insufficient security for outlay, and the little interest felt by such a tenant in improvements, as compared to the deep interest taken by the real owner in improving and expend- 150 On Belgmin. ing upon his own land. About one-third of the occupiers of land in Belgium are ozvners, and the other two-thirds ie7iants with very short leases. Professor Baldwin, the chief inspector of agricultural schools in Ireland, was sent to Belgium in 1867 to study the condition of the agricultural tenants in Belgium. He was examined this year, 1878, before the select committee on the Irish Land Act, 1870, and gave some most import- ant evidence upon the comparative condition of the smaH landowners and of the mere tenantsof Belgium. He says that " the small tenants are in a very indifferent condition, to say the least of it ; that they are rack-rented ; but the small owners, as a rule, are very prosperous and very contented, as they have an income from two sources ; they have the income as proprietors, and the profit of the farm as well. I went in West and East Flanders from house to house, and I found more happiness and comfort and prosperity in the houses of the small proprietors" than in those of the mere tenants. "The tenant farmer has no money, and he is in a wretched state." M. de I.aveleye (see his Essay in " Systems of Land Tenure," p. 227) says : " If the cultivator of the soil is the owner of it at the same time, his condition is a happy one in Belgium, as everywhere else, unless the plot he holds is insufficient to support him, in which case he has to eke out his existence by becoming also a tenant or labourer. But as a rule the peasant proprietor is well off. In the first place, he may consume the entire produce of his land, which being very large, especially in Flanders, his essential wants are amply satisfied ; secondly, he is independent, having no apprehensions for the future ; he need not fear being ejected from his farm, or having to pay more in pro- portion as he improves the land by his labour." In short, he knows that the full and entire value of every improve- ment he effects will be his own or his children's, and that he or they will derive the whole advantage of every extra hour's labour. On Belgium. 151 But, as ISI. de Laveleye says (see Essay, p. 228), "the situation of the small Flemish tenant farmers is, it must be owned, a rather sad one. Owing to the shortness of their leases, they are incessantly exposed to having their rents raised or their farms taken from them. Enjoying no security as to the future, they live in perpetual anxiety. So mucli does this fear of having their rents raised tell upon their minds, that they are afraid to answer any question about farming, fancying that an increase of rent would be the inevitable consequence." But this state of things is gradually disappearing, by the gradual division of the larger estates among smaller pro- prietors, who farm their own land themselves. In 1846 there were only 758,512 owners of land in the whole of Belgium. On the ist January 1865 there w^re in the entire kingdom 1,069,326 owners. (See M. de Laveleye's Essay, p. 204.) Thus it appears that between 1846 and 1865 the number of landowners had considerably increased. ]\I. de Laveleye (see his Essay, p. 212) gives the following as the reasons why the Flemish husbandman derives such abundant produce from a soil which is naturally, as he says, " so poor," viz : — " I. The perfection of both plough and spade work. "2. Each field has the perfection of shape given to it to facilitate cultivation and drainage. " 3. Most careful husbanding of manure. None is wasted, either in town or country ; and all farmers, down to the poorest tenants and labourers, purchase manure from the dealers." (I have shown already how extraordinarily careful of their manure the small Swiss farmers are, and what pains they take that none shall be wasted, but that all, both solid and liquid, shall be returned to the land.) " 4. The great variety of crops, especially of industrial plants, viz., colza, flax, tobacco, hops, chicory, &c., yield- 1 5 2 On Belgium. ing large returns and admitting of exportation to the most distant countries. "5. Second, or 'stolen' crops, such as turnips and carrots, after the cereals, of English clover, sparry, &c., whereby the cultivated area is in effect increased one- third. " 6. Abundance of food for cattle. Although the soil is not favourable to meadows, yet, taking the second crops into account, one-half of the available superficies is devoted to the keeping of live stock. Hence the rise of rents, although the price of corn is hardly increased. " 7. House-feeding of the cattle, by which the cows give both more milk and more manure. " 8. Minute weeding." Writing of the great value set upon manure by the small farmers, M. de Laveleye (Essay, p. 209) says : " The institu- tion in Flanders in aid of agricultural credit is the manure merchant, who has founded it in the best of forms ; for money may be spent in a public-house, but a loan of manure must be laid out on the land. " The poor labourer goes with his wheelbarrow to the dealer in the village to buy a sack or two of guano, under- taking to pay for it after the harvest. The dealer trusts him, and gives him credit, having a lien on the crop pro- duced by the aid of his manure. In November he gets his money ; the produce has been doubled, and the land mproved. "The small farmer does as the labourer does; each opens an account with the manure dealer, who is the best of all bankers. " The large farmers of Hainault and Namur do not buy manure, fancying they would ruin themselves by doing so. The Flemish small farmers invest from fifteen to twenty millions of francs in guano every year, and quite as much in other kinds of manure. Where does large farming make such advances ? " In another place (see Essay, p. 199) M. de Laveleye says : 0?i Belgium. 153 " The 'Flemish farmer scrupulously collects every atom of sewage from the towns; he guards his manure like a treasure, putting a roof over it to prevent the rain and sunshine from spoiling it. He gathers mud from rivers and canals, the excretions of animals along the highroads, and their bones for conversion into phosphate. With cows' urine, gathered in tanks (exactly as in Switzerland), he waters turnips, which would not come up without it ; and he spends incred- ible sums in the purchase of guano and artificial manures." What a contrast to many parts of our own country ! Not many miles from where I am writing there lives a very intelligent farmer, much respected both by his neighbour farmers and by the gentry around. He farms between 100 and 200 acres. His land consists of a loamy soil, perhaps a foot and a half deep, lying on the top of chalk, which is much broken up and more pervious to rain than even gravel. His land requires much manure. He has made, on the higher part of his land, large tanks, cut in the chalk, but not lined with cement or anything which could make them watertight. He has conducted by pipe drains into these tanks the sewage from extensive farm buildings and dwelling- houses. His land slants downwards from these tanks, rendering it very easy to irrigate it with the liquid manure, and, as I have said before, it is land which requires all the manure it can get. What does this intelligent and really superior English farmer do ? He allows all the liquid manure, of which there is a vast quantity, to run away into the chalk to be lost, except a small quantity, which he uses for a kitchen garden. The solid sediment he has the good sense to make use of. And then, having thrown away all this valuable liquid manure, he goes to the market from time to time, and buys manure in a stinted manner, as he fancies he can afford. If he had been a farmer in Switzerland, farming his own land, his tanks would be watertight, he would have a water- cart on his farm, and before the first crop was sown, and as soon as the first crop was removed, the cart, having been 154 ^^^ Bclgumi. filled from the tank, would water the land, and so prepare it for the next crop that, by the aid of this rich and constant manuring, can be obtained from it. But, alas ! there is as much manure wasted and thrown away in England as would, in my opinion, double or treble the produce of our country, if properly applied. I have given an instance of the waste of a very intelligent farmer. What must it be among the small and less scientific farmers through- out the country, farming another man's land, without lease or any valid security for improvements ! M. de Laveleye denies that the small properties of Flanders are burdened with debts, or that loans on them are raised at ruinous rates of interest, as opponents of the French system of Land Laws allege. A similar objection has been brought, as I have shown, against the small properties of France, and, as I have shown, has been dis- proved by the most competent writers on this subject. Another objection which has been often urged against la petite culture (or the cultivation of small farms by their owners) in Belgium is that it does not admit of the use of agricultural machinery. I have shown how a similar asser- tion with respect to France is disproved by the actual facts. With respect to Belgium ]\I. de Laveleye says : — " To disprove this objection I need not point out that to Flanders are due the best forms of the spade, the harrow, the cart, and the plough — Brabant ploughs having for a long time been imported from Flanders into England. It may be said that these are primitive, and not very costly implements. I need only reply, look at what is going on in Flanders at the present day. " The most costly agricultural machine in general use in England is the locomotive steam threshing machine. Well, this machine is to be found everywhere in Flanders. Some farmers will club together to purchase one, and use it in turn J or else a villager, often the miller, buys one, and goes round threshing for the small farmers on their own ground at so much per day and per hundred kilos of corn. The On Belgium. 155 same thing takes place with the steam plough as soon as the use of it becomes remunerative. " To keep hops in good condition, very expensive machines are required to press them. At Poperinghe, in the centre of the hop country, the commune has purchased the machines, and the farmers pay a fixed rate for having their hops pressed — which is at once an advantage to them and a source of revenue to the commune. " The example of Flanders, therefore, proves that the division of land forms no obstacle to mechanical economy in farming." All this, as I have already shown, is equally true with re- spect to the yeomen and peasant farmers of France farming their own lands ; and even in Surrey, one of the richest farming districts of England, and in the part of Surrey in which I am residing, the same plan is pursued among the large leasehold farmers. Some one person buys the thresh- ing machine, and it is hired in turn by all the farmers of the district around. M. de Lavele3'e says (see Essay, p. 231) that in normal years there is no pauperism in the rural districts of Flanders; and it must be remembered that in No. XII. I showed that the same was true with respect to the Channel Islands. He also says that a stranger visiting Flanders should guard against rashly drawing unfavourable inferences from certain facts arising from custom. Some people, as he says, seeing women working in the fields barefooted, are apt to consider such a fact as a proof of extreme destitution. But they would be in error in coming to such a conclusion, as it is the custom of the country. " Well-to-do farmers' daughters, who are stylishly dressed on the Sunday's, will work bare- footed during the week." And as I have said in former letters, it is perfectly absurd to judge the condition of the men or women of the small fiirmer classes of Germany, Switzerland, and the Channel Islands by the working clothes worn by them on week-days when at work. These clothes are always decent, never in rags ; they are often 156 On Belgium. made of strong home-spun materials ; they are naturally stained by the work, the earth, and the rain, though often washed ; they look poor enough in truth, but what would these complaining travellers have ? Would they have the men and the women go to their work in their Sunday dress, or in their cantonal costume, or in their ornaments? In all these countries, if you wish to see how the small farmers and their families dress, you must see them on Sundays, and ask yourselves then if our small farmers or our poor peasants and their families would bear the contrast. So it is also with the children. If they are not attending school, they wear their old patched clothes. Their school and Sunday clothes are laid by while they are assisting in the farm or garden labours. There is in Belgium, as in all the countries under the French law, an excellent system of registration, which, by enabling a buyer to ascertain at once the exact state of the title to the land he wishes to buy and of the claims upon it, renders the purchase very easy, very expeditious, and very cheap. If any one wishes to buy, he goes to a notary, who obtains for him a copy of the exact state of the title from the official entries in the registry office. The notary then prepares the deed of sale, which in all these countries is very short and simple, as none of our complicated settlements and arrangements are possible. This deed of sale is then signed by the buyer, the seller, two witnesses, and the notary. The minute or abstract of this deed is then taken to the office of the registrar, who puts an abstract of it on his register. After this the registrar transcribes the deed in full. The purchaser of the property who has been the first to have his deed transcribed is the legal purchaser as against all other subsequent buyers. There is, by these means, no difficulty whatever in ascer- taining the state of the title of a plot of land at any moment. The whole transaction is very short and simple, and the expenses are very small. But registration would effect only a very partial good in On Belgium. 157 England, unless we had got rid of the landowners' power to make the laws and complicated settlements, deeds, and wills which the law now permits them to make. M. de Laveleye says that the small owners exercise great self-denial in their food and mode of life, in order to lay by money wherewith to purchase more land and to give their farms a better outline ; and he says that the larger proper- ties are hardly ever divided in consequence of the law of succession or forced subdivision, but simply on economical grounds, viz., because they fetch higher prices wlien sold in lots ; and he adds that the peasant proprietor attaches so much value to the proper outline of a field that he would rather sell it in one lot than in plots ; and Mr. Cliffe Leslie says (" Land System," page 309) : " Little plots are continu- ally for sale ; transfer is easy and cheap ; the labourer is frequently a buyer; and the notary does a flourishing busi- ness though his charges are low." Writing of the character of the villages in Flanders from his own observation, Mr. Cliffe Leslie says (" Land System," p. 317): "The very variety and beauty of the houses in these Flemish villages is no mean result of the cultivation of the country, and must have a most beneficial effect on the minds of the rural population. The grace of the dwel- lings of the wealthier small proprietors, embowered in tiny pleasure grounds, is beyond description. But the humblest workman's cottage is exquisitely neat, and each has some- thing about it which gives it a character of its own. And look within ; look at the furniture, the bright ware, the clock, the petroleum lamp, the chest of drawers, and its contents, and see what a quantity of auxiliary industry agriculture has called into existence in the house of the poorest of its village servants." Now such is the description in another of M'CuUoch's " pauper warrens," of tlie effect of this terrible French Land Law. And be it remembered, the prosperous condition of the Belgian yeomen and peasant farmers, who cultivate their own land, has grown to its present state, just as in France, I s8 On Bdoium i3 spite of defective education, caused by the religious strife which has afflicted that brave and industrious little country so many years. Since the last elections, which have led to such a victory for the Liberal party, we may now soon expect to see good schools, liberal teaching, and well-educated teachers in every commune ; and by their means Ave shall see in Belgium what Germany and Switzerland have already attained — improved cultivation, good agricultural schools, more scientific farming, and a still greater advancement than they have even now attained, in the prosperity and well-doing of the rural districts. But, even as it is, look what wonderful prosperity that small kingdom has attained : Look at its network of railroads, opening up every district, however remote; its wonderfully prosperous towns; its restoration of its glorious mediceval buildings ; its restored cathedrals ; its galleries of modern art in almost every town ; the costly and splendid improvements which are being carried out as if regardless of expense in its capital, and the look of wealth and abundance which meets you on every side ; and then let any dispassionate observer consider whether this country, like its powerful neighbour France, is not prosper- ing by the prosperity of all classes of its citizens. LETTER XIV. DISADVANTAGES OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF LAND LA WS. \Note by the Editor of the ''^ Mancliester Examiner aiid Times." — We have a melancholy satisfaction in being able to add the following to the important letters on the Land Question, by the late Mr. Joseph Kay, which have been published in our columns at intervals for some time past.] I HAVE now endeavoured to present to my readers as fair and dispassionate an accoinit as I was able to give of the effects of the French system of Land Laws, in those European countries in which they have been in force for such a length of time, as to enable a fair judge to form a reliable opinion on such a subject. I have shown how these laws are work- ing in France, Belgium, the Channel Islands, Switzerland, the Rhine provinces of Germany, in Holland, and in Norway; and I have cited the opinions of many able, experienced, and most distinguished men of different countries in support of the statements I have made. The same system of Land Laws has been put in force in Southern Italy since she shook herself free of foreign and clerical masters. It is too soon to inquire into the effect of these laws in Italy at present, but it requires no great gift of prophecy to predict, that the vast, ill-managed, and badly-cultivated estates of the great nobles of the Roman, Neapolitan, and Sicilian provinces will soon follow the fate of the once similar estates of the French nobles, and be sold and divided among yeomen and peasant farmers, who i6o Disadvantages of the Frejick System. will reclaim the wastes and marshes, and brinsc health, plenty, and comfort where disease, misery, and sterility now prevail. Even since I wrote the account of the condition of the yeomen and peasant farmers of France, and showed how far removed they were, spite of all the disasters of the late war, from being the " pauper warren " which had been prophesied, remarkable statements have appeared in two of our leading journals, one of which, the "Times," has at all times been a vehement opponent of "free trade in land," or of any system approaching in character to that of France. The "Times" of the 12th of September, 1878, in a leading article upon the immense and costly works pro- jected and already commenced with wonderful success by M. de Freycinet, the enterprising Minister of Public Works, and warmly supported by M. Leon Say, the cautious financier who now controls the French Exchequer, and by the aged and cautious M. Dufaure, who is the head of the French Ministry, says : " On one subject he (M. Say) spoke with a confidence on Avhich France may be congratulated. The increase of national wealth continues as great as ever. The accumulations of France astonished Europe in 1873. M. Say reckoned the savings of the country available for investment since the beginning of the year at 28r,ooo,ooof., and referred with natural pride to the ease with which during the last two months he had raised a loan of over four-and-a- half millions sterling at three per cent. The success of this great operation was the more remarkable as the ordinary machinery for reaching investors was dispensed with. With such resources to look to, he had no apprehensions that the country will be unable to meet tlie obligations which the development of public works will entail." It should be remembered, that to defray the expenses of the gigantic works of which M. Say and the " Times " speak, about 5oo,ooo,ooof. a year will be required for the next ten years. Disadvantages of the French System. 1 6 1 And the "Spectator" of the 14th of September, 1878, writing on the same subject, says : " So great are the savings of the people that more than ^10,000,000 sterUng has been deposited in the savings banks in the past seven months. . . . The Government can obtain money more cheaply than at any time in the past 35 years. . . . Whatever the other consequences of the law of equal partition in France, // certainly has developed the passion of indust7'y to an impre- cedented degree. The French peasant^ owning his land, 7uorks and saves as no ma?i luorks and saves — certainly not the Englishman, who, though industrious, has not acquired from the possession of property the instinct of thrift." But I shall be asked : If the French system of Land Laws makes the yeomen and peasant farmers, who cultivate their own land, so prosperous and happy in all these countries into which this s\'Stem of laws has been introduced, what objection can be reasonably raised against it? This is a reasonable question, which I wdll try to answer. I. It must be remembered, from what I have said in No. IX., that if a father has a large family, this law leaves him the power of leaving by will to any one whom he cliooses only a very small portion of his land. For example, if he had six children at the time of his death, he could only ) devise as he chose one-seventh of his estate ; if he had eight children, one-ninth • and so on. All the rest of the land is divided by the law among the children equally, if they choose to claim their shares. Of course, in a vast number of cases, they do not so choose. Before the father's ■ death they have generally chosen their mode of life. Some go to the towns, some to the army, some to artisans' work, some to service, and so on. All these know nothing about farming whatever. Moreover, they know that there would not be land enough for all if they chose to divide the estate, and, also, that farm buildings would have to be built, and that farm stock would have to be purchased for each por- tion ; so that, as any reasonable man will perceive, although the law gives each child a share of the land if he chooses 1 62 Disadvantages of the French System. to take it, it continually happens that the circumstances I have just mentioned make them unwilling to divide the farm. And in this case, either the farm is sold in one lot in the market, and the proceeds are divided among the children, or one of the children takes the farm, and gradually pays off the shares of his brothers and sisters. All this is for- gotten or misunderstood by English writers on the subject, who are constantly treating the subject as if the farm must necessarily be divided, because the law says each child shall be entitled to a certain share. The great estates go on gradually dividing, partly because they consist of many separate farms, each of which can be sold separately ; and partly because many of the smaller proprietors are always looking out for the chance of buying small plots of land wherewith to enlarge their small estates. But, although this is so, still, no doubt, there are many cases in which, spite of all these considerations, the land is actually divided when the whole extent of it is so small as to make division highly inexpedient. And this, no doubt, is a bad effect of this system of laws. How far this evil, where it does exist, is counterbalanced by the vast benefits conferred by this law upon the rural classes, time and experi- ence alone can sufficiently explain. 2. Another evil, which results from this system, is that it often diminishes the authority and influence which a father ought to exercise over his family. In a family in which tiiere are five or six children, all know that the law gives them an equal share of the property on the death of the father, and that in such a case the father would be able to leave as he chose only a seventh of his land. The children know that, no matter how badly they behave or how little respect they show to their father, they are sure of their share when he dies, and that he cannot in any way deprive them of it. The portion of which he can dispose in such a case is too small to be worthy of much consideration. The father is in this way deprived of much of the moral influence which he ought to exercise, and which it is highly expedient Disadvantages of the French System. 1 6 o he should exercise, if he is a worthy and moral man. If his family consists of only one or two children, this reason against these laws is deprived of much of its weight. In such cases the law allows him to leave one-half or one-third of the whole land, according as he has one or two children, to any one he pleases, and consequently he is able to affect his child or children seriously by his will, if they prove unworthy. The English law is still more open to this objection. When an estate is settled and tied up for several lives or many years, the son who is to succeed knows that nothing he does, no disobedience or disrespect he shows, no immo- rality or debased character he exhibits, can affect his rights as successor. He may show himself to be a spendthrift or a villain; he may treat his father with utter contempt; he may become the companion of swindlers of the worst description ; but the estate is sure, if he lives, to become his own. And it is this knowledge and this result of our settlements, deeds, and wills which have utterly destroyed the influence of many a good father, and ruined in morals and character thousands of sons. How far the limited effect of this con- sideration, so far as the French system is concerned, mili- tates against the vast benefits conferred by that system, only time, education, and experience can explain. 3. Another evil, arising from the French system of com- pulsory subdivision on tlie death of the owner, in those countries in which this system is in force, and in which the yeomen and peasant farmers are not educated, is this : A great number of farms come into the possession and ownership of uneducated yeomen and peasant farmers. Where these men are educated, and where many of their sons pass through good agricultural schools, as in Switzer- land and Germany, there you find the farmers consulting one another about improvements, upon the qualities of manures and machinery, and upon the best means of mak- ing the most of their land. You find there also scientific farming advancing from year to year, and the produce of 1 64 Disadvantages of the Fj^eiich System. the land increasing and improving. But where Httle or nothing has been done for the real education of these classes, or for their training in scientific farming, although you may find wonderful industry, self-denial, and economy, and the most careful cultivation of the farms, you will also find that they farm, if I may say so, from tradition, from what they have heard from their fathers and neighbours ; and you will find an unwillingness or an inability to receive new ideas, or to avail themselves of the improving knowledge of their own time in other countries. Of course this is an evil which education and time will cure, but it is an evil which, where education is wanting, is more observable in countries in which the land is much subdivided, than in those in which the land is cultivated by men of more capital, and with better means of educating and training their children. 4. Another evil which results from this French system is that, as a general rule, it has a tendency to subdivide nearly all the great estates. I say a tendenc}^ because in some countries, as in Belgium and France, spite of the stringency of this law, many large estates remain undivided, and in the hands of the same family, from generation to generation : but still the tendency of the French law is as I have said. Now, I must say that, while I think it a vast evil to do as we have done, and to shut out the peasants from all chance of buying land, and the small farmers from almost all chance of buying any, and to have so framed our laws that by far the largest proportion of the land is tied up for generations in the hands of a few great owners, still I think it is also a 1 1 great evil to do away with large proprietors altogether. If they are good and intelligent men, they perform great and most important functions in the body politic, and are able, by their larger command of capital, to try experiments in scientific agriculture and in costly machinery, and to encourage and promote many new improvements which poorer men would not venture upon until their success had been proved by others. Of course, this is only true where Disadvantages of the French System. 165 the great landowner is an educated, scientific man of business, who makes the scientific care of his estate the business of his life. No one grudges such a man the possession of many acres ; and such a man, if he knew that he could not, as at present, prevent by any deed or will his estate from being sold after his death, would bestow infinite care on the proper education of tlie son whom he selected to succeed him, so that the estate might continue to be well and scientifically managed, and might not be sold or divided after his own death. And the son, as I have already pointed out, under such a state of law, knowing that the law did not secure the succession to the estate to him, as it does now, and that his father would not leave him the estate unless he fitted himself to manage it properly after his father's death, would be much more likely to fit himself by study for such management than now, when our law seems to do all it can to render the son, under one of our settle- ments or wills, wholly independent of the father's influence, and wholly indifferent and indisposed to educate himself for the scientific management of the estate. In these respects I have always been strongly of opinion that the immoral influence and results of our system of Land Laws are about as bad for the common weal as they could be. And if the only choice before us lay between, on the one hand, continuing the injurious unfairness and the great moral evils resulting from our present system, or, on the other hand, adopting the French system even with its defects, I, for one,' should not hesitate a moment in electing the French system, which, although open to the objections I have mentioned, at the same time promotes in such a re- markable degree the self-denial, the foresight, the wonderful industry, and the moral habits of the French yeomen and peasant farmers. [The following sentence, extracted from Mr. Kay's book on the " Social Condition and Education of the people," in which he has discussed this subject, contains the result 1 66 Disadvantages of the French System. he arrived at, and forms a fitting conclusion to this unfin- ished letter. " The best and soundest plan, however, is to give the proprietor power to leave his land to whomsoever he will, but to deprive him at the same time of all power of preventing his successor from selling any portion of the land and of leaving his successors any other than the whole estate in the land devised to them." The reader is also referred to Letter IX., p. 94, and Appendix, p. 311. Editor.] LETTER XV. THE SYSTEMS OF LAND LAWS IN FORCE IN PRUSSIA, AND IN TWO OR THREE OF THE SMALLER GERMAN STATES. I HAVE now described to those of your readers who are interested in the subject, and in as simple and popular a manner as I could, the nature of the French system of Land Laws, and their effects in the countries in which they are in force — viz., France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, the Channel Islands, the Rhine provinces of Germany and Norway ; and in my last letter I have tried to point out, as fairly as I could, all the disadvantages of which I am aware, which tend in any degree to counterbalance the enormous benefits wliich these laws have conferred upon all the countries, into whicli they have been introduced. I now propose to explain, as clearly as may be, the systems of Land Laws which are in force in the great kingdom of Prussia, and in two or three of the smaller German States. Your readers will soon see how they promote in the fullest manner free trade in land ; how they set themselves against the tying up of estates, as in Great Britain and Ireland, for long series of years ; and how they facilitate, as much as possible, the acquisition of land, either for gardens, orchards, or farms, by all classes of the people. The state of the division of the land in Great Britain, as described in No. I. of this series of letters, may well indeed appear astounding to an educated German, when he com- 1 68 Land Laics in Pj-nssia. pares it with what the greatest of their statesmen have successfully devoted their energies and abilities to effect in Prussia and Germany, and when he considers that the division of land in his own country meets with the almost universal assent and praise of all thoughtful and intelligent men. Eut first of all, before we inquire into t"ne nature of their Land Laws, let us consider what the actual state of the division of the land in the kingdom of Prussia was in 185S, the last year, I regret to say, of which I have been able to procure any official and trustworthy returns. I am indebted for these returns to Mr. Harris-Gastrell's very learned report on Prussia and the North German Confederation, published in Part L of the " Reports of Her Majesty's Representatives respecting the Tenure of Land in the several Countries of Europe, 1869." Mr. Harris-Gastrell divides the landed estates of Prussia into three classes — 1. Small properties. 2. Middle properties. 3. Large properties. As to the SDiall properties, he says, that in 1858 there were in the whole kingdom — estates under 3^- acres, 1,087,081, estates between 3I to 20 acres, 609,828. Sites of houses with or without a house-garden attached are excluded from the above numbers. As to the middle properties, he says, that in 185S there were in the whole kingdom — estates from 20 to 200 acres, 389,823, — estates from 200 to 400 acres, 15,048. As to the large properties, he says, that in 185 8 there were in the whole kingdom — estates over 400 acres, 18,197, and that of these, in 1S65, there w-ere only 108, which were assessed to the Land Tax at a net return of ovqv ^ic^oo, or, stating in a summary the total of the above table, there were in 1858, as he says — Small properties .... 1,696,909 Middle properties . . . . 404,871 Large properties . . . . 18,197 Of the small proprietors, he says that a considerable number Land Laws in Prussia. 169 possess sufficient land to support themselves and their families. The minimum for this purpose, he says, is 7 acres, or thereabouts, in very fertile and well-favoured districts ; but that the minimum increases to 20 acres or more in districts with decreasing local advantages. The remaining small proprietors are mainly persons, as he observes, " who are auxiliarly occupied with agriculture ; " that is, either labourers, who own a kitchen-garden or a field; or market gardeners, who raise vegetables and fruit for the markets ; or owners of vineyards. It appears that there are, or rather were, in 1858, about 800,000 day labourers, working for wages, who 07cmed small plots of land such as I have men- tioned above, and that many of these were artisans or the small industrial people of the village. Only compare this state of things to that described in No. I., and the sizes of what are called " great " estates, with the sizes of the enormous estates of England, Scotland, and poor Ireland, and try to realise the vast difterence between the position of a small farmer or a peasant in ourlslands and in Prussia. Remember, that, as I have shown in my first letter, 874 persons in England and Wales ovtn 9,267,031 acres; and that 4500 men in England and Wales own more than 17,498,200 acres ; that in Scotland one owner has 1,326,000 acres, and that 12 owners have 4,339,722 acres; while in poor, discontented Ireland, 744 persons hold 9,612,728 acres, or about one-half of the island, and that of these a great number are absentees. And then consider the significance of the fact that, in the great kingdom of Prussia, there are only 108 landowners whose estates are large enough to be rated at ^^1500 a year. [Note by the Editor. — Mr. Kay was engaged in writing the above letter on the 5lh of October 187S. In the evening he made, as usual, a short entry in his diary : — " Worked at No. XV." These are the last words my husband ever wrote in this diary which he had kept regularly for the greater part of his life. The next day, Sunday the 6th, he 'was seized with a sudden increase of the painful illness from which he had been suffering during many months, and died on Wednes- day the 9th of October 1878.] APPENDIX. APPENDIX. -0 The following Appendix contains portions of the first chapter of a book published by Mr. Kay in 1850, entitled "The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe ; Showing the Results of the Primary Schools, and of the Division of Landed Property in Foreign Countries." It was the intention of Mr. Kay to reprint this chapter, or portions of it, as an Appendix to the volume he meant to publish, embodying the contents of his letters on "Free Trade in Land." My husband did not intimate exactly what portions of the chapter he wished to be re-published, and as it has thus become my duty to make a selection, I have selected those portions only which directly illustrate the subject of these Letters. It will be observed that I have retained the numbers of the Index for the sake of those who may happen to possess the original volume. The circumstances under which the book was composed, and the scheme and design of this first chapter, will be made clear by the following paragraphs taken from the Introduction. " In 1844 t-lie Senate of the University of Cambridge honoured me by appointing me Travelling Bachelor of the University, and by commissioning me to travel through Western Europe in order to examine the social condition of the poorer classes of the different countries. " During the last eight years I have travelled through Prussia, Saxony, the Austrian Empire, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, the Duchy of Baden, Hanover, Oldenburg, Lombardy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Holland, as well as through England, Wales, and parts of Scotland and Ireland. I undertook the greater part of these journeys in order to examine the comparative conditions of the peasants and operatives in these several countries, the 1 74 Introdttction to different modes of legislating for them, and the effects of these different modes of legislation upon their character, habits, and social condition. " I have ventured to believe that it will not be wholly unin- teresting or unprofitable to some of my own countrymen, if I IDublish some of the information I collected during my different tours through Europe. " It is important tliat we should make ourselves acquainted, as far as possible, with the state of the poorer classes in the countries of Western Europe ; for there is much to learn from the results of the systems of legislation pursued by their governments and people. '• We are much too apt to look down upon foreign nations, and to imagine that all our institutions are superior to theirs, and that each class of our people is more prosperous and happy than the corresponding class of any foreign country. " I do not hesitate, then, to affirm, — and the proof of this affir- mation I shall immediately show, — that the moral, intellectual, and social condition of the peasants and operatives of those parts of Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and France, where the poor have been educated, where the land has been released from the feudal laws, and where the peasants have been enabled to acquire land, is very much higher, happier, and more satis- factory than that of the peasants and operatives of England ; and that, while these latter are struggling in the deepest ignorance, pauperism, and moral degradation, the former are steadily and progressively attaining a condition, both socially and politically considered, of a higher, happier, and more hopeful character. " I think it will appear from the following pages, that the remarkable improvement which has been witnessed in the condition of a great part of the German and Swiss poor since 1800, has been the result of two causes ; viz. — "ist. The admirable and long-continued education given to all the children ; and "2d. The division of the land among the peasants." In illustration of these causes the chapter proceeds to describe the condition of the poorer classes of foreign countries under a series of heads, of which the following have been selected as most closely connected with the subject of Free Trade in Land. — Editor. Appendix. /D 2. The Education of the Teasants, combined with the Subdivision of Land, tends to strengthen their Pru- dence, Foresight, and Economy.— The laws prohibiting marriage in certain cases in Switzerland. — Opinions of Reich en- sperger and Thaer. — Statistics of the age of marriage in Geneva, Vaud, Prussia, and England. — The postponement of marriage does not necessarily increase the immorality of the peasants. — Opinions of Mill, Laing, Sismondi, Rau, Quetelet, and Legoyt. — Statistics showing the rate of the increase of population in different countries. — The parish of RIontreux.— Opinion of Nicholls. — The small amount of pauperism in some of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. 5. The Education of the Peasants and the Division of the Land tend very greatly to improve the Culti- vation of the Land. — The difference between tenants-at-will and peasant proprietors. — The Irish peasants are tenants-at-will —Opinions of Reichensperger and Kraus. — The produce of land farmed by small proprietors is greater than its produce when farmed by great proprietors. — Opinions of Reichensperger, Rau, Thaer, and Shubert. — Increased productiveness of agriculture in Prussia since the subdivision of the land. — Rau's account of agri- culture in the Palatinate. — Banfield's account of the condition of agriculture in the Prussian Rhine provinces. — Opinions respecting the progress of agriculture in Prussia. — The improvement in the cultivation of the land in Saxony and Switzerland since the division of the lands. —The difference between the state of agriculture in Wales and Scotland and in Saxony and Switzer- land. — Gleig's account of farming in Saxony.— The hillside farming in Saxony. — The agricultural colleges of Switzerland and Germany. — Sismondi's description of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland. — Nicholls' and Reichensperger's descriptions of the small farms of Belgium. — Ilowitt's account of peasant farming in the Palatinate and in Germany. — Professor Rau's account of the state of agriculture in the Palatinate. — Strohmeier's account of the progress of agriculture in the canton of Soleure. — Professor VuUiemiii's account of the progress of agriculture in the canton of Vaud. — Herr von Knonau's account of the progress of agricul- ture in the canton of Zurich. — Herr Pupikofer's account of the progress of agriculture in the canton of Thurgovie. — Herr von Knonau on the management of cattle in Zurich. — Inglis' account of farming in Switzerland. — Laing's account of the farming by peasant proprietors in Norway and on the Continent. — The culti- vation of the small farms in Flanders. — Mr. Mill's opinions of the excellent effects of the system of peasant proprietors. 176 IntrodiLction to 6. The Education of the Poor and the Division of the Land tend greatly to Improve the Character of THEIR Houses and of their Villages. — The cottages in Prussia and the Rhine provinces. — Banfield's description of the peasants' farms in the Rhine provinces. — The difference between the state of the town labourers of England and Germany. — Dr. Bruggeman's opinion. — The cottages in Switzerland. — Von Knonau's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Zurich. — Bronner's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Aargau. — Strohmeier's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Soleure. — Pupikofer's description of tlie peasants' houses in the canton of Thurgovie. — Professor VuUie- min's description of tlie peasants' houses in the canton of Vaud. — Im Thurm's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Schaffliausen. — Von Knonau's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Schweitz. — Symon's description of the peasants' houses in the cantons of St. Gall and Appenzell. — Chambers' opinion of the condition of the Swiss peasantry. — Miigge's description of the improvement of the condition of the peasantry in the canton of Vaud since the abolition of the feudal laws. — Sismondi's description of the social condition of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland. — Laing's description of the social condition of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland. — Nicholls' description of the houses and social condition of the small proprietors of Belgium. — Reichensperger's opinion of the effect of the subdivision of land upon the peasants of Prussia. — The difference between the state of the houses of the peasants in those parts of Germany where the land is divided, and in those parts where it is not divided. — The causes of the miserable condition of the houses of the peasantry in countries where the land is \\\ the hands of a few persons. 8. One generally true Index of the Condition of the Poorer Classes of any Country is the Character of THEIR Amusements. . . . The respect for property, and the absence of enclosures, enable the townspeople in Germany to enjoy walks through the fields. — The little respect shown for landed property in our manufacturing districts. 9. The Education of the Poor and the Subdivision of Land tend very materially to Improve the Health and Social Comforts of the Poorer Classes. — The food of the German poor. — Reichensperger's opinion. — The increase in the consumption of bread by the Prussians, as shown by Banfield's statistics. — The increase in the consumption of meat by the Prussians since the division of the lands. — The increase Appendix. 177 in the general consumption of the Prussians since the subdivision of the land, as shown by the Report of the Prussian Minister of Statistics. — Opinions of tiie Minister. — Reichensperger's opinion of the improvement of the social condition of the people of the Rhine province. — Von Knonau's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Zurich. — Pupikofer's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Tluirgovie. — Im Thurm's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Schafifliausen. — Professor Vulliemin's account of the food of tlie poor of the canton of Vaud. 10. The Education of the Peasants and the Division of THE Land tend to Render the Peasants very Con- servative IN FEELING. — The peasant proprietors of France — of Germany — of Switzerland. — Their conduct during tlie late political revolutions. — What would be the effects of free trade in land in Ireland. 12. The Freedom of the Land from the old Feudal Re- strictions ENABLES the SMALL SHOPKEEPERS TO ACQUIRE Land. — The great advantage of making it possible for our shopkeepers to acquire land. 13. The Division of Landed Property reduces that Intense Competition for Wealth which distinguishes English Life. — The results of the great Property System in Ireland. — The present Condition of Ireland. — The Causes of that Condition. — The Remedy for Irish Misery. — The intense competition of the different classes in England reacts very unfavourably upon the poor. 14. The Opinions of great Writers on the Results of the Division of Landed Property in France. — Mill. — Napoleon and his Ministers. —t Reichensperger. — Sismondi. — Troplong. — Cliaptal. — Giraud de Barante. — De Carne. — Buret. — Chevalier. — De Dombasle. — C. Dupin. — Gasparin. — Vil- leneuve Bargemont. — Passy. — De la Farelle. — Report of the Central Agricultural Congress. — Berlin. — Puints upon which all travellers in France are agreed. M I 78 PrzLdential Habits of the Poor 2. The pr7idcntial habits of the peasant proprietors. — The general diffusion of ediccaiion, combined with the sub- division of the land, tends very reinarkably to increase the prt{dence,forethotight, and econoiny of the poor. A poor man in Germany, France, Holland, and Switzerland, is, from his education, intelligent enough to be able to calculate his chances. He knows, when he begins his life, that if he defers his marriage for some years, he will be able to save, and to acquire land. He knows that if he marries early in life, he cannot hope to save enough to enable him to buy a farm or a garden of his own, and that if he does not buy one, he will occupy a lower and less comfortable social position than his neighbours. The fact of so many of his friends possessing small estates of their own, and the pleasure of owning one him- self, stimulates him with double ardour to seek to obtain a small plot of land also, and to consent to present self-denial for the sake of attaining this strongly desired end. The consequence is, that the poor of these countries do not marry nearly so early in life as the English poor, and do not consequently rear such large families. In some parts of Switzerland, as m the canton of Argovie for instance, a peasant never marries before he attains the age of twenty-five years, and generally much later in life ; and in that canton the women very seldom marry before they have attained the age of thirty. Indeed, so strongly do the people of Switzerland understand from experience the expe- diency of their sons and daughters postponing the time of their marriages, that the councils of state of four or five of the most democratic of the cantons, elected, be it remembered, by uni- versal suffrage, have passed laws by which all young persons, who marry before they have proved to the magistrate of their district that they are able to support a family, are rendered liable to a heavy fine. In Lucerne, Argovie, Unterwalden, and, I believe, St. Gall, Schweitz, and Uri, laws of this character have been in force for many years ; but I mention them rather as symptoms, than as causes of the prudence and self-denial of the peasantry. Nor do the division of land and the cheapness of the mode of conveying it from one man to another encourage the providence of the labourers of the rural districts only. They act in the same manner, though, perhnps, in a less degree, upon tlie labourers of the smaller towns. In the smaller provincial towns, it is customary for a labourer to own a small plot of ill Foreign Coinitries. i 79 ground outside the town. This plot he cultivates in the evenings as his kitchen-garden. He raises in it vegetables and fruits for the use of his family during the winter. After his day's work is over, he and his family repair to the garden for a short time, which they spend in planting, sowing, weeding, or preparing for sowing or harvest, according to the season. The desire to be- come possessed of one of these gardens operates very strongly in strengthening prudential habits, and in restraining improvi- dent marriages. Some of the manufacturers in the canton of Argovie told me that a townsman was seldom contented until he had bought a garden, or a garden and house, and that the town-labourers generally deferred their marriages for some years, in order to save enough to purchase either one or both of these luxuries. I have no doubt in my own mind that the effect of the sub- division of land, after it has proceeded to such a length that the smallest of the estates is sufficient to support a peasant's family in comfort, but not large enough to support two average-sized families (and beyond this the subdivision will not proceed, as I shall show hereafter), is to retard the too rapid increase of population more than any scheme that could be invented, and to retard it in a thoroughly healthy manner. Among our middle classes a young man will not generally marry as soon as he becomes his own master, if he perceives, that, by waiting, he will be able to secure for his wife and for himself a higher and more comfortable position in society. The hope of getting a larger or a more certain income operates among the middle classes in the majority of instances, by making a young man remain unmarried a few years, and some- times many years, longer than he otherwise would do. But among our lower classes no such thought interferes with marriage. As soon as a young peasant can earn his miserable pittance of from seven to nine shillings a week he marries, and thereby increases his own sufferings, and involves his poor young wife and his family in the same pauperism with himself. What good, in the present state of our laws, would a peasant gain if he deferred his marriage ? None which is perceptible to his understanding. He knows that, if he could save, he would not be able to make use of his little capital. He knows that all avenues of rising in the world in his own native village are closed to him. He knows that he must die in the same position in which it pleased God he should be born. Having therefore no incentive to self-denial, he practises none. He iSo Prudential Habits of the Poor marries as soon as he can, and generally by so doing doubles his own difficulties and miseries, and soon increases the poor- rates of his parish. But, abroad, the peasants know, that if they wait a few years and save, they and their future wives and families will be happier, more respected among their neighbours, and in a more comfortable position in the world, and that they will realise their day-dream, and call a small farm their own. It is not surprising, then, that the peasants do not marry so young in foreign countries as they do here and in Ireland. Counsellor Reichensperger, writing in the midst of the small proprietors of Prussia, says : ^ — " The desire to found a family is so strong an actuating principle in man's nature, that none but the most powerful considerations, such as the possibility of supporting a wife and children, can restrain the rapid increase of population. These considerations have a very different significance, according to the ^circumstances of the persons affected by them. Whilst the day labourer or operative considers a future family provided for, and therefore marries, when he can only reckon upon annual wages to the amount of from 80 to 100 thalers ; the man in a better social position will see a hundred comforts and necessaries beyond what would have satisfied the poorer man, and without which he considers it impossible to secure a suitable income for himself and for his family. If he cannot see a certainty of securing such an income, and if he cannot calculate with certainty upon providing his children with a social position in life equal to his own, he will, as daily experience shows, forbear, at least for a time, to marry, or, at least, such considerations will not remain without influence upon the future greatness of his family. " The egotistical v/ish of persons desirous of marrying not to sink into a lower social position, and the desire of parents to support their children respectably, form the most influential and the most legitimate obstacle to the ever-threatening danger of over-population. These natural and honourable feelings almost always influence those, who have themselves experienced the value of possessions and of a social position, so as to protect them against too early marriages and against too numerous families. " The day labourer and operative, who have no possessions of their own except their own capability of working, are not affected by the healthy check which I have mentioned above. Every such person leaves his children, however many he may 1 Die Agrarfrage. ill Forcini Cotint7'ies. i8i '£> have, in a position similar to his own, and he therefore feels no moral impediment to the founding or increasing of his family, although in reality, owing to the increasing competition of the labourers, the future wages will be lessened. " It is these labourers, entirely without possessions, whether they live in the towns or in the country districts, — whether they are found in the factories or behind the plough, — who are the really dangerous members of society ; since the increase in their numbers is restrained, not by the sufficiency or insufficiency of the means of subsistence, but only by the extent of their phy- sical powers. The real ground of their dangerous character lies in their freedom from any moral restraint, caused by the hope- lessness and poverty of their social position. The evils, with which the position of these classes threaten society, can only be avoided by removing the helplessness and destitution of their social position. " The simplest, most efficacious, and most legitimate means, by which to attain this great end, is to free landed property from all restrictions preventing its sale, and gradually, and by means of the natural sale of the lands, to enable the labourers to acquire property." A. Thaer, in his " Englischen Landwirthschaft," p. 104, says, " The population will grow more rapidly on great estates than on small ones, because day labourers are more thoughtless about their future than independent peasant proprietors, and, therefore, bring up larger families in the hope of being able to get them supported upon the estate." Speaking of Geneva, Mr. Chadwick says : ^ — " It is proved in a report of M. Edward Mallet, one of the most able that have been made from the registries of the city of Geneva, that the increase of the population of that city has been followed by an increase in the probable duration of life. "The probabilities of the continuance of life in Geneva were to every person born, — Towards the end of the i6th century In the 17th century . 1701— 1750 . 1751 — 1800 . 1801 — 1813 . 1814— 1833 . Yrs. Mths. Davs. 8 7 26 13 16 27 9 13 31 •^ 5 40 8 45 29 1 Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, p. 175. lS2 Small Estates check the " The progression of the population, and the increased dura- tion of life, had been nttended by a progression in happiness. As prosperity advanced, nuwriages became fe^ver aiui later ; the proportion of births were reduced ; but greater numbers of the infants born Were preserved, and the proportion of the popula- tion in manhood became greater. " It is the practice in Geneva for female servants to delay marriage until they have saved enough to furnish a house, &c. In illustration of this state of things, it Is stated that, in 290 out of 956 marriages, the female was at the time of marriage older than the male. In the early and barbarous periods, the exces- sive mortality was accompanied by a prodigious fecundity. In the few last years of the seventeenth century a marriage still pro- duced 5 children and more, the probable duration of life attained was not 20 years, and Geneva had scarcely 17,000 inhabitants. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, there were scarcely 3 children to a mnrriage, and the probabilities of life exceeded 32 years. At the present time, a marriage only produces 2| children, the probability of life is 45 years, and Geneva, which exceeds 27,000 in population, has arrived at a high degree of civilisation and of ' prospdrltd mat^rielle.' In 1836 the popula- tion appeared to have attained its summit : the births rarely replaced the deaths!'' Professor Vulliemin, in his statistical account of the canton of Vaud, where all the land is divided into small estates, says, that the mean ages of the persons married in the canton of Vaud from 1837 to 1841, were as follows : — Years. 1837 1838 1839 1840 184I Men . Women \ Men . ( Women \ Men . ( Women Men . Women Men . Women Yrs. Mths. Days 30 10 12 27 II 9 32 I 8 28 2 29 30 9 14 28 4 12 31 6 10 28 17 31 6 2 27 3 24 As the peasants of this canton arc better educated and more prosperous than those of almost any other country in the world, the advanced age at which they marry is peculiarly slgnilicant. Increase of Population. 183 One of the manufacturers of Argovie, in speaking to me of the effects of the subdivision of property upon the prudential habits- of the town and country poor, said, " The men never marry before the age of twenty-five, and often later ; and it is a curious fact that they generally choose for their wives, women who have attained the age of thirty, in preference to younger ones, because they imagine the women of thirty will be more thrifty and better managers." In 1843, 4680 marriages were celebrated in Prussia, between persons, of whom, either the man or the woman was more than 45 years old. In the same year, 26,836 marriages were cele- brated, where the man was more than 45 and the woman less than 45 years of age, or where the woman was more than 30 and the man less than 60; 21,138 men were married, each of whom was more than 30 and less than 35 years of age, and 25,123 women, each of whom was more than 30 years of age. Of all the persons married in Prussia in 1843, there were — 131,737 men under 45 years of age. 7273 men between 45 and 60 years of age. 1444 men above 60 years of age. 111,396 women under 30 years of age. 25,123 women between 30 and 45 years of age. 3935 w'omen above 45 years of age. We are not told the ages of the men who married under 45 years of age, but it appears that the majority of them married later in life than their ancestors used to do, and that the customary age for marriage is gradually becoming later than it was formerly. I believe I am about right, when I state 35 to be the average age of marriage in Prussia. In England, where there is so little intelligence, and, there- fore, so little prudence or foresight, and so much misery among the labourers, and where there are so few reasons to induce the peasants to postpone their marriage, the state of things is singularly different. In England, in 1846, out of 24,356 men married to 24,356 women, — 596 men were under 20 years of age. 1 1,790 men were just 20 years of age. 6467 men were just 25 years of age. , 2464 men were just 30 years of age. 1 84 Small Estates check the 1 1 So men were just 35 years of age. 708 men were just 40 3'ears of age. 455 men were just 45 years of age. 696 men were more than 45 years of age. 2S12 women were under 20 years of age. 12,470 women were just 20 years of age. 5079 women were just 25 years of age. 1849 women were just 30 years of age. 897 women were just 35 years of age. 596 women were just 40 years of age. 328 women were just 45 years of age. 425 women were more than 45 years of age. These statistics show, that in Prussia, one man in every sixteen who marry, is 45 years old, while in England, only one man in every twenty-one who marry, is 45 years old, and nearly half of all the men married every year are not older than 20 years. We thus see how much later the age of marriage is in Prussia than in England. This alone is an unanswerable proof of the greater prudence and prosperity of the people of Prussia ; for it is always found, that the greater the ignorance of the people, and the less the chance of their improving their condition by present self-denial, the earlier will be the age at which they will enter into the married life. Counsellor Reichensperger, writing in the midst of peasant proprietors, and comparing the results of the two systems,^the English system of great estates in few hands, with laws tending to prevent the peasants and small shopkeepers from obtaining land, and the German system of subdivision of land, and its freedom from all restraints upon its sale — says : ^ — " By the latter system it is possible for each person to obtain a plot of land of a size corresponding to his ability ; and under it, the position of even a day labourer is by no means one without hope or capability of improvement ; but it is rather one which leads to the acquirement of property and independ- ence, since the labourer, by economy and credit, may easily, under this system, manage to work his way to prosperity and comfort. Where the land is free from all shackles preventing its sale, this result may be seen daily ; and it is by means of this system, that an approximate realisation is obtained, by 1 Die Agrarfrage, 315. Increase of rop^datioii. i S 5 indirect means, of the socialist idea of the division of goods according to the skill and deserts of the individual. " The possibility of increasing the size of their little properties stimulates in the highest degree the activity and the progress of the prosperity of the peasants ; for the landowner knows no more enviable possession than that of land, and no stroti^ey- inducement to economy than the hope to piircliase another acre and to increase his farm ; for he feels that the savings, which are put out at interest, are much less secure than those invested in land. " But, for the peasant and day-labourer, this possibility of purchasing land, and of thus acquiring independence, is the only possible inducement in his case to exertion and economy ; and this inducement urges him on much more surely, than all the alms and poor-rates of Great Britain can ever do. . . . "The contrary system of restriction of the subdivision of land renders the condition of the peasant labourers a hopeless one, while it destroys the natural freedom of both owners and peasants. The freedom of the land from these restrictions, and the industrious spirit which it stimulates, raise the moral character of the people, and, by so doing, exercise the most beneficial influence upon their health, their manners, and their whole mental habits. . . . Where the land is divided into great estates, and kept out of the market by intricate settle- ments, we never see the prosperous and growing little proprie- tors, but only day-labourers, or, at best, small tenants at will, who never can feel any real or positive interest in -the progressive improvement of the land, or in the prosperity of the state, but who dislike all labour which does not promise to themselves some immediate recompense. The hope, by industry and economy, and by the exercise of all their powers, to prepare a future independence for themselves and their families — this powerful inducement to the improvement of their own and of the public well-being — is unknown to the peasants, where the lands are consolidated in the hands of a few great proprietors, because they see no hope of ever acquiring an acre, or, by so doing, of making a step towards an independent position, which they might afterwards hope gradually to improve by adding bit by bit to the first acquired possession. " A population condemned in this way to eternal poverty and dependence on others, and deprived of all hope of a happier 1 86 Small Estates check the future, will know scarcely any other happiness than to devote to mere animal gratifications some few passing moments of their unhappy lifetime ; and, by means of spirituous drinks, to forget the gnawing cares of the coming days, from the impending misery of which they cannot, by the greatest industry, save themselves. . . . These peasants are degraded in mind by their utter dependence upon the landlords. . . . They are uncivi- lised, and scarcely capable of receiving any mental improvement, because this only goes hand in hand with the improvement of their physical condition ; their bodies exhibit the effects of privations, and of the too frequent resort to their only solace of drinking, of which fact Ireland, and many parts of Great Britain, afford most lamentable instances. " This peasant class, on account of its great poverty, is deprived of all comforts, and as it consumes very few and very common articles of manufacture, offers no encouragement to the industry of the towns, and scarcely any market for their products." Nor does the habit of marrying at a later period of life seem to necessarily increase the amount of immorality among the peasants. The statistics collected by the governments of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and France, show, that fewer illegitimate children are born in Prussia than in any other of the European countries. From the statistics published by Mr. Porter, and by Herr Dieterici, it appears that there is, — Illegitimate Legitimate Births. Births. I to every . . 9§ in Denmark. I I I I I while there is only i 8 in Austria. 4 in Bavaria. 9 in Mecklenburgh. 7 in Saxony. 7yV in Wurtemburg. 13 in Prussia. There may be, doubtless, much immorality which these statistics do not show ; but there is no sign which discloses its existence, to any great extent, to a traveller in the country. The carefulness and eagerness to amass of the Swiss peasantry has become proverbial throughout Europe. Englishmen accuse them of sordid penuriousness, yet this is but the natural and healthy effect of that subdivision of land, which renders it pos- Increase of Population. 187 si'ole for a saving and prudent peasant to make himself a proprietor. The gains of a Swiss, French, Prussian, Saxon, and Dutch labourer, instead of being expended in the alehouse, are added to the stock, which is one day to purchase the garden or the farm. Mr. Mill says : ^— " It is not to the intelligence alone, that the situation of a peasant proprietor is full of improving influ- ences. It is no less propiiiotes to the moral virtues of prudence, teviperance, aud self-control. The labourer who possesses pro- perty, whether he can read and write or not, has, as Mr. Laing remarks,^ 'an educated mind ; he \\-\'s, forethought^ cautio/i, and reflection guiding every action ; he knows the value of restraint, and is in the constant habitual exercise of it.' It is remarkable how this general proposition is borne out, by the character of the rural population in almost every civilised country, where peasant properties are frequent. Day-labourers, where the labouring class mainly consists of them, are usually improvi- dent ; they spend carelessly to the full extent of their means, and let the future shift for itself. This is so notorious, that many persons, otherwise well affected to the labouring classes, hold it as a fixed opinion that an increase of wages would do them little good, unless accompanied by at least a correspond- ing improvement in their tastes and habits. The tendency of peasant proprietors, and of those who hope to become pro- prietors, is to the contrary extreme, — to take even too much thought for the morrow. They are oftener accused of penu- riousness than of prodigality. They deny themselves reasonable indulgences, and live wretchedly in order to economise. In Switzerland almost every one saves, who has any means of sav- ing. The case of the Flemish farmers I have already mentioned. Among the French, though a pleasure-loving and reputed to be a self-indulgent people, the spirit of thrift is diffused through the rural population in a manner most gratifying as a whole, and which, in individual instances, errs rather on the side of excess than defect. Among those who, from the hovels in which they live, and the herbs and roots which constitute their diet, are mistaken by travellers for proofs and specimens of general indigence, there are numbers, who have hoards in leather bags, consisting of sums in five-franc pieces, which they keep by them a whole generation, unless brought out to be 1 Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 332. ■^ Residence in Norw.iy, p. 20. iSS Small Estates check the expended in their most cherished gratification — the purchase of land. If there is a moral inconvenience attached to a state of society in which the peasantry have land, it is the danger of their being too careful of their pecuniary concerns, — of its making them crafty and 'calculating' in the objectionable sense. .... But some excess in this direction is a small and a pass- ing evil, compared with recklessness and improvidence in the labouring classes, and a cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of the virtue of self-dependence, as the general character- istic of a people, — a virtue which is one of the first conditions of excellence in a human character — the stock on which, if the other virtues are not grafted, they have seldom any firm root — a quality indispensable, in the case of a labouring class, even to any tolerable degree of physical comfort, and by which the peasantry of France and of most European countries of peasant proprietors are distinguished beyond any other labouring population. " Is it likely that a state of economical relations, so con- ducive to frugality and prudence in every other respect, should be prejudicial to it in the cardinal point of increase of popula- tion ? . . . . The true question is, supposing a peasantry to possess land not insufficient, but sufficient for their comfortable support, are they more or less likely to fall from this state of comfort through improvident multiplication, than if they were living in an equally comfortable manner as hired labourers ? All a priori considerations are in favour of their being less likely. The dependence of wages on population is a matter of speculation and discussion. That wages would fall if popula- tion were much increased, is often a matter of real doubt, and. always a thing which requires some exercise of the reflecting faculty for its intelligent recognition. But every peasant can satisfy himself, from evidence which he can fully appreciate, whether his piece of land can be made to support several families in the same comfort in which it supports one. Few people like to leave to their children a worse lot in life than their own. The parent, who has land to leave, is perfectly able to judge whether the children can live upon it or not; but people who are supported by wages see no reason why their sons should be unable to support themselves in the same way, and trust accordingly to chance, ' In even the most useful and necessary arts and manufactures,' says Mr. Laing,i' the demand 1 Notes of a Traveller, p. 46. Increase of Popzdation. 189 for labourers is not a seen, known, steady, and appreciable demand ; but it is so in husbandry,' under small properties. * The labour to be done, the subsistence which that labour will produce out of his portion of land, are seen and known elements in man's calculations upon his means of subsistence. Can his squr.re of land, or can it not, subsist a family? can he marry or can he not .'' are questions which every man can answer without delay, doubt, or speculation.'"' It is the having no hope and no opportunity of rising in the world, however provident and self-denying a man may be, — it is the feeling that saving can do no good whatever, and that the workhouse will keep them from actual starvation, which is demoralising and pauperising our peasants, which is increasing the numbers of our population so considerably, and which is laying such a heavy poor-rate upon the backs of the already too heavily taxed middle classes. No writer has ever been more keenly sensible of the injurious effects of over-population upon the labouring classes than Sis- mondi. It is one of the grounds of his earnest advocacy of peasant properties. He had ample opportunities, in more countries than one, for judging of their effect on population. Let us see his testimony :'- — " In the countries in which cultiva- tion by small proprietors still continues, population increases regularly and rapidly, until it has attained its natural limits ; that is to say, inheritances continue to be divided and sub- divided among several sons, as long as by an increase of labour each family can extract an equal income from an equal portion of land. A father who possessed a vast extent of natural pas- ture, divides it among his sons, and they turn it into fields and meadovv'S ; his sons divide it among their sons, who abolish fallows. Each improvement in agricultural knowledge admits of another step in the subdivision of property. But there is no danger lest the proprietor should bring up his children to make beggars of them. He knows exactly what inheritance he has to leave them ; he sees the limit beyond which this division would make them descend from the rank which he has himself filled ; and a just family pride, common to the peasant (pro- prietor) and to the nobleman, makes him abstain from sum- moning into life children for whom he cannot provide. If more are born, at least they do not marry, or they agree among them- selves which of several brothers shall perpetuate the family. It 1 Mill's Political Economy, vol. i., p. 336. 2 Ibid., vol. i., p. 338. IQO Small Estates check the is not found that, in the Swiss cantons, the patrimonies of the peasants are ever so divided as to reduce them below what will afford an honourable competence, although the habit of foreign service, by opening to the children a career indefinite and incalculable, sometimes calls forth a superabundant popula- tion." ^ Mr. Laing's testimony respecting the peasant proprietors of Norway is to the same effect. Though there is no law or custom of primogeniture in this country, and no manufactures to take off a surplus population, the subdivision of property is not carried to an injurious extent, and consequently the growth of population, beyond the number which the subdivided land will maintain, is checked. "'The division of the land among children,' says Mr. Laing,^ 'appears, during the thousand years it has been in operation, not to have had the effect of reducing the landed properties to the minimum size that will barely sup- port human existence. I have counted from five-and-twenty to forty cows upon farms, and that in a country in which the farmer must, for at least seven months in the year, have winter provender, and houses provided for all the cattle. It is evident that some cause or other, operating on the aggregation of landed property, counteracts the dividing effects of partition among children. That cause can be no other than what I have long conjectured would be effective in such a social arrangement, viz., that in a country where land is held, not in tenancy iii\txt\\\ as in Ireland, but in full ownership, its aggregation, by the death of co-heirs, and by the marriage of female heirs among the body of landholders, will balance its subdivision by the equal succession of children. The whole mass of property will, I conceive, be found in such a state of society, to consist of as many estates of the class of ^looo, as many of ^loo, as many of^ioa year at one period as at another.' That this should happen, supposes diffused through society a very efficacious prudential check to population ; and it is reasonable to give part of the credit of this prudential restraint to the peculiar adaptation of the peasant proprietary system for fostering it. " But the experience, which most decidedly contradicts the asserted tendency of peasant-proprietorship to produce excess of population, is the case of Prance. In that country the experiment is not tried in the most favourable circumstances, 1 Sismondi, Nouv. Princ, book iii., ch. iii. 2 Residence in Norway, p. i8, quuled by Mr. Mill. Increase of Population. 1 9 1 a large proportion of the properties being too small." (In France, the law compulsorily divides the greatest part of the estate of each proprietor at the time of his death. In the greatest part of Germany, I believe, the law simply prevents the proprietor entailing or tying up his property after his death, or making any disposition of it which would prevent its being sold after his own death. The difference between these two systems is worthy of note.) "The number of landed proprietors in France is not exactly ascertained, but on no estimate' does it fall much short of five millions ; which, on the lowest calculation of the number of persons to a family (and for France it ought to be a low cal- culation), shows much more than half the population as either possessing, or entitled to inherit, landed property. A majority of the properties are so small as not to afford a subsistence to the proprietors, of whom, according to some computations, as many as three millions are obliged to eke out their means of support, either by working for hire, or by taking additional land, generally on metayer tenure. When the property possessed is not sufficient to relieve the possessor from dependence on wages, the condition of a proprietor loses much of its characteristic efficacy as a check to over-population ; and if the prediction, so often made in England, had been realised, and France had become a 'pauper warren,' the experiment would even then have proved nothing against the tendencies of the same system of agricultural economy in other circumstances. But what is the fact ? That the rate of increase of the French poptilatioti is the slowest ill Etnvpe." During the thirty years which immediately followed the'divi- sion of the enormous estates of the old French noblesse among the people, a great increase of population took place. But the rapidity of that increase was soon lessened, and a generation has now grown up which, having been born in improved cir- cumstances, has acquired the habits and tastes of prosperity, and upon them the spirit of thrift operates most conspicuously, in keeping the increase of population luithiti the increase of national wealth. In the following tables, extracted from the work of Mr. Mill, from which I have been quoting, the rate of annual increase of population in several countries is given. The first table is that taken from Professor Rau's work on the agriculture of the Palatinate. 192 Small Estates check the Years. Per Cent. United States •• 1820-30 2.92 H ungary (according to Rohrer) 2.40 England . i8n-2i 1.78 Ditto . . . . 1821-31 1.60 Austria (Rohrer) 130 Prussia . . 1816-27 1-54 This was immediately after the system of peasant proprietors was first introduced into Prussia. Ditto . . 1820-30 1-37) These two numbers show that Ditto . . 1821-31 1.27! the annual rate of increase began to diminish as soon as the subdivision of land had proceeded so far as to enable the peasants to acquire land. Netherlands . 1821-28 1.28 Scotland . 1821-31 1.30 Saxony . . 1815-30 J-I5 Baden . . 1820-30 1. 13 Bavaria . . 1814-28 1.08 Naples . . 1814-24 0.83 France . . 1817-27 0.63 According to Mathien. 0.55 According to Moreau de Jonnes. The very slow rate of increase in France so early as 181 7, i.e., only about seventeen years after the French peasants had begun to acquire land, is very remarkable. The second table is given by M. Quetelet,^ and differs, as Mr. Mill observes, in soine items, from the preceding, probably from the author's having taken in those cases an average of different years. Ireland Hungary Spain England Rhenish Russia Austria Bavaria Netherlands . Naples France Sweden Lombardy Increase of Population. Per Cent. 2.4s 2.40 1.66 1.65 1-33 1.30 1.08 0.94 0.83 0.63 0.58 0.45 Here all the land is divided among the peasants. 1 Sur I'Homme et le Developpement de ses Facultes, tome i. c. 7. Increase of Populatio7i. 193 The third table is from ]M. Legoyt,^ nnd brings up the results for France to the census of the year 1846. Increase of Population. Per Cent. Great Britain (exclusive of Ireland) . . 1.95 Prussia 1.84 Saxony ■ 1.45 Norway 1.36 Sardinia 1.08 Holland 0.90 Austria 0.85 Sweden 0.83 France 0.68 Wurtemburg . O.OI It will be seen, in all these tables, that France, where the law not only allows, but actually to a certain extent y^r^^j-, the sub- division of property, the increase of population is slotver than that of almost every other country in Etirope. Nor is this result caused by any excess of deaths in France, for in another table, given by M. Legoyt, it is shown, that the excess per cent, of births over deaths is annually twice as great i?i Great Britain, even exclusive of Ireland, as it is in France! Mr. Mill says, " I am not aware of a single authentic instance which supports the assertion, that rapid multiplication is pro- moted by peasant properties." ^ Wherever I travelled in North Germany and Switzerland, I was assured by all, that the desire to obtain land, which was felt by all the peasants, was acting as the strongest possible check upon the undue increase of population. " In England," as Mr. Mill most truly observes, "where the labourer has no investment for his savings but the savings bank, and no position to which he can rise by any exercise of economy, except, perhaps, that of a petty shopkeeper, with its chances of bankruptcy, there is nothing at all resemblmg the intense spirit of thrift, which takes possession of one who, being a day-labourer, can raise himself, by saving, to the condition of a landed proprietor." .... The hope of buying a piece of kind, he continues to observe, " is the most powerful of inducements, to those who are without land, to practise the industry, frugality, and self-restraint, on which their success in this object of rational 1 Journal des Econom'stes, for May 1847. ^ Principles of Economy, vol. i. N 1 94 Small Estates check the ambition is dependent. In Flanders, according to Mr. Fauch^, the British consul at Ostend, 'farmers' sons, and those who have the means to become farmers, will delay their marriage until they get possession of a farm.' Once a farmer, the next object is to become a proprietor. ' The first thing a Dane does with his savings,' says Mr. Browne, the consul at Copenhagen, *is to purchase a clock, then a horse and cow, wliich he hires out, and which pay good interest. Then his ambition is to become a petty proprietor ; and this class of persons ts better off than any in Dentnark. Indeed, I know no people in any country, who have more easily within their reach, all that is really necessary for life than this class, which is very large in comparison with that of labourers.' "As the 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 betiejicial an effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and prudence of the population, nor tends, ott the whole, so much to discourage an improvident increase of their members; and that no other, therefore, is, on the whole, so favourable, in the present state of their education, both to their moral and their physical welfare." ^ It was by introducing the system of small properties, that the great ministers of Prussia, Stein and Hardenburg, raised the peasants of Prussia and Prussian Poland, from a state precisely analogous to that of the Irish peasantry in the present day, to their present happy and flourishing condition. It is this system which, as I have before shown, has raised the condition of the Saxon peasants so much above tliat of their neighbours, the Bohemians ; which has raised the French peasants from that wretched condition in which all writers of the time of Louis XV. declare them to have been then sunk, to their present prosper- ous, tranquil, and conservative status in society ; and which has made the Dutch and Swiss Protestant peasants what all writers represent them now to be, viz., intensely industrious, self-denying, and prosperous. It is the existence of a precisely opposite system, which is the principal cause of the miseries, 1 Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 346. Increase of Population. 195 turbulence, and bad cultivation of Ireland ; and, in the opinion of all continental thinkers, it is to the repeal of all laws prevent- ing the sale and division of land in Ireland, that we can alone look for any radical improvement in the condition of the peas- ants of that country. The character of a people is dependent only upon surrounding institutions and circumstances. No people are naturally depraved. If we wish to raise the character of Irishmen, we must change, and that radically, the institutions of Ireland. The description of the parish of Montreux, near Vevay, on the Lake of Geneva, given by Mr. Laing,i is a fair illustration of the manner in which small farms and diffused intelligence tend to foster the prudential habits of the peasants of Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. That intelligent writer says, "The parish of Montreux is divided into three communes or adminis- trations. In that in which I am lodged, Veytaux, there is not a single pauper, altliough there is an accumulated poor-fund ; and the village thinks itself sufficiently important to have its post-office, its fire-engine, and its watchman ; and it has a landed population around. . . . "The parish is one of the best-cultivated and most produc- tive vineyards in Europe, and is divided in very small portions among a great body of small proprietors. What is too high up the hill for vines is in orchard, hay, and pasture-land. There is no manufacture, and no chance work going on in the parish. These small proprietors, with their sons and daughters, work on their own land, know exactly what it produces, what it costs them to live, and whether the land can support two families or not. Their standard of living is high, as they are proprietors. They are well lodged, their houses well furnished, and they live well, although they are working men. I lived with one of them two summers successively. This class of the inhabitants would no inore tJiink of marrying without means to live in a decent way, than any gentleman's sons or daughters in England ; and indeed less, because there is no variety of means of living as in England. It must be altogether out of the land. The class below them, again, the mere labourers or village tradesmen, are under a similar economical restraint, — which it is an abuse of words to call a moral restraint. The quantity of work, which each of the small proprietors must hire, is a known and filled-iip demand, not very variable. There is no corn-farming, little or 1 See his Notes of a Traveller. 196 Small Estates cJieck the no horse-\vork, and the number of labourers and tradesmen, who can live by the work and custom of the other class, is as fixed and known as the means of living of the landowners themselves. There is no chance living — no room for an additional house, even, for this class, because the land is too valuable and minutely divided to be planted with a labourer's house, if his labour be not necessary. All that is wanted, is supplied ; and until a vacancy naturally opens, in which a labourer and his wife could find work and house-room, he cannot marry. The economical restraint is thus quite as strong among the labourers, as among the class of proprietors. Their standard of living, also, is necessarily raised by living and working all day along with a higher class. They are clad as well, females and males, as the peasant proprietors. The costume of the canton is used by all. This very parish might be cited as an instance of the restraining powers of property, and of the habits, tastes, and standard of living which attend a wide dift'usion of property among a people, on their own over- multiplication. It is a proof that a division of property by a law of succession different in principle from the feudal, is the true check iipon ove7'-pop2ilaiio7i." This is a fair picture of three-fourths of the parishes of Hol- land, Prussia, Saxony, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. There can be no doubt whatever, that the great intelligence of the lower orders, joined to the system of small estates, which puts it within the power of a peasant, who can exercise present self-denial, to become a proprietor, conduce in forming the strongest of all possible checks upon improvident marriages, and upon the too rapid growth of population. The following account of the Belgian peasant farmers, by Mr. Nicholls, late one of the Poor Law Commissioners, and now one of the two secretaries of the Poor Law Board, applies with equal truth to the educated peasant farmers of Holland, Switzerland, and Germany. "Tlie labour of the field, the management of the cattle, the preparation of manure, the regulating the rotation of crops, and the necessity of carrying a certain portion of the produce to market, call for the constant exercise of industry, skill, and foresight among the Belgian peasant farmers ; and to these qualities they add a rigid economy, habitual sobriety, and a contented spirit, which finds its chief gratification beneath the domestic roof, from which the father of the family rarely wanders in search of excitement abroad. It was most gratify- Increase of Population. 1 9 7 ing to~observetlic comfort displayed in the whole economy of the households of these small cultivators, and the respectability in which they lived. As far as I could learn, there was no tendency to the subdivision of the small holdin;_;s. I heard of none under five acres held by the class of peasant farmers ; and six, seven, or eight acres is the more common size. The providetit habits of these small fa?'7ners enable tlieni to maintain a high stafidard of comfort, a?id ai'e fiecessa7'ily opposed to such subdivision. Their marriages are not contracted so early as in Ireland, and the consequent struggle for subsistence among their offspring does not exist. The proprietors of the soil retain the free and unrestricted disposal of their property, whether divided into smaller or larger holdings."^ The effects of this system are also visible in the small number of beggars to be seen in most parts of North Germany, and of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. In Saxony and the Protestant provinces of Prussia this is particularly remarkable. It is very rarely indeed that a traveller in these countries ever sees a badly clothed person, or is ever accosted by a mendicant. Even Mr. M'CuIloch, the able and decided opponent of the system of peas:int proprietors, in speaking of the state of the poor of Switzerland, says,^ " In most instances the communes have poor-funds administered independently of the cantonal government " {i.e., funds which are generally the collections of private charity) ; " but if these are not sufficient a poor-rate is levied. 7'his rate is always limited, being, in Zurich, no more than 2^^. a year from each individual. The number of poor appears to be on the decrease ; and it is only in Uri, Tessin, Valais, and one or two other cantons that pauperism is at all cofjtmon." In the canton of Berne, about ^250,000 -^ was paid in the year 1840 in relief of the poorer classes ; but this sum included all that the canton disbursed in the same year m the cantonal hospitals, in some of the schools for poor children, and in grants to assist those peasants who had lost property by inundations and sudden accidents. When this is deducted, it is apparent that no great sum was expended in that year in the relief of actual pauperism, even in the canton of Berne with its 400,000 inhabitants. The following facts will give some further idea of 1 Inquiry into the Condiuon of the Poor in HoI!and and Ee'gium, p. i66. * Geog. Diet., title Switzerland. 3 I believe this is about the average yearly expenditure in this canton. 198 Difference behueen Tenants-at-Will the small nmount of pauperism in those parts of Switzerland, where the land is sulsdivided, and where the people are well educated, as compared with the amount of pauperism in England. In 1834 the population of the canton of Vaud was about 180,000. In that year about \s. 3^'. a head, upon the whole population of the canton, was e.xpended in the reUef of the poor, whilst in England, in the same year, without reckoning all the enormous sums expended in the same way from private sources, more than ^6,000,000, raised by the poor rates, were expended in relieving the poor, or about ()s. a-head on the whole popula- tion ! In that year, therefore, in a given number of people, tliere was about seven times more pauperism in England than in the same number of people in the canton of Vaud. In 1834, in the canton of Vaud, each person in the receipt of public funds received upon the average ;^i. In five parishes of the canton, there wns no person in receipt of public assistance. More than half of the families, who were assisted, received less than 13^-. each, so that, as Professor VuUiemin says, these families, with a very small increase of earnings, or with a very small decrease of expenditure, were able to support themselves. Herr Pupikofer, in speaking of pauperism in the canton of Thurgovie, says : ^ — " One finds scarcely anywhere in this canton great poverty. The number of paupers is very small. Whoever will work may find employment. The wages of labourers rise. The occupations and industry of the people increase. Agriculture is becoming more productive and pro- fitable. The people are well clothed. They build better houses. They have more food and drink than they require." In the canton of Argau, in 1839, the funds expended in the relief of paupers amounted to about eighipence per head, on the whole population of the canton. In 1841, in England, when there was less pauperism than in almost any preceding year, the expenditure per head in Wiltshire, Berkshire, Buckingham- shire, Sussex, Essex, and Dorsetshire, amounted to between 9J. dd. and 10^. per head upon the population of those counties ; while the expenditure of the kingdom upon pauperism, in 1841, amounted to bs. 2d. per head upon the whole population, and this, be it remembered, exclusive of all the immense sums expended by private charity, for the relief of the destitution of our labourers. In truth, there is no country in Europe which 1 Gemalde dei Scliweitz. Thurgau. and Peasant Proprietor's. 199 expends a tithe of the enormous sums which are sunk by the unions and by private charity in England, in the vain endeavour to stop the increase of a pauperism which our own legislation is fostering'. 5. The Education of the Peasants and the Division of the Land tetid very greatly to Improve the Ciiltivation of tlie Land. It is a common error in England to confound small tenants- at-will, holding litile biis of land under and at the will of a landlord, who can turn them out when it pleases him, with owners of small estates. When any one in England talks of peasant proprietors being always prosperous wherever they are to be found, people point to Ireland, and say, " Well, but look at the wretched state of the poor tenants in Ireland ! " But the poor Irish are wof. proprietors. There is the greatest possible difference between the social and moral effects of small estates, beIo7iging to the persons dwelling upon them, and of small pieces of land held by tenants at the will of a landlord. The peasant proprietor knows that every penny of his family's earnings which he expends upon his land is safely invested. He is not scared from laying out money on improvements, by the fear lest a landlord — or the agent or bailiff of a landlord — should step in and turn him out of possession, before he has reaped the return for his expenditure. On the contrary, he knows that his land is his own, until he chooses to sell it, and that, consequently, every hour's labour, and every extra penny spent upon his little plot of land, will benefit either himself or his children. This is the great distinction between peasants like the Irish, renting small plots of land as tenants, dependent upon the will of a landlord, or, still oftener, of the sub-agent of a landlord, and uncertain how lon^ ihev will be allowed to hold the land and small proprietors like the German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swiss, and Fi^ench peasantry, who own their little plots, who are certain of coniinumg in possession and enjoyment of them, as long as they live, or until they choose to sell them, and who know that either they themselves or their children will derive the benefits and returns of every improvement and outlay which they make upon their estates. 200 Difference between Tenants-at- Will The Irish tenant is not willing to spend time or money in the improvement of his holding, for he does not feel sure that he will derive the benefit of such improvement. • He is not much interested in the good cultivation of his land, for he knows that it is quite uncertain how long he will be allowed to retain it in his possession. The land is not his own, and does not inspire him with that interest in its improvement which the feeling of ozunership always conveys. He does not know how soon the rent may be raised so as to compel him to abandon his possession. If the present agent is a kind and just man, the peasant lessee does not know how soon another agent may be appointed in his place of a different character, who would compel him to desert his improvements and outlay by unfairness or exaction. The Irish peasant's feeling is : The land is not mine ; it may not be in my possession long ; it is quite uncertain how soon some unforeseen accident may deprive me of it ; I do not care to improve it and take care of it for the sake of my landlord ; I feel no further interest in it than just to get every pennyworth out of it I can, at the smallest outlay possible. A small prop7-ietors situation is altogether different. He feels the same kind of interest in his little property which a gentleman does in his park, but in a higher degree, because the peasant proprietor feels more acutely than the other that the subsistence of himself and his family depends entirely upon the produce of the land. He is urged to improve the condition of his farm to the uttermost, because he knows that the more he improves it, the better will be his means of supporting his family, and the greater the comfort, happiness, and respecta- bility of his wife and children. He knows that he or his chil- dren are certain to reap the benefit of every extra hour's labour, and of every extra pound spent u;)on the farm. He feels, too, a kind of pride in making his land look better than, or at least as well cultivated as, his neighbour's, and in thus showing off his own skill and science. He is better acquainted with every square yard of his estate, and with all its wants and require- ments, than a great proprietor is with each field on his estate. He turns every square yard to some use or other, knowing that the greater his produce the more comfortable will be his position. While the great proprietor would laugh at being so particular as to grumble at the waste of square yards of territory, as the rich man laughs at the economy of a penny, the peasant pro- and Peasant Proprietors. 201 prietor endeavours to turn every morsel of his property to some account. He looks with interest on each little portion of his estate, and devotes to its cultivation as much energy and care as is spread, so to speak, over a tenfold greater surface by the great proprietor. This is one of the reasons why, as I shall show in the sequel, the gross produce of a piece of land cul- tivated by a number of peasant proprietors is found to be always much greater than the gross produce of an equal quantity of land cultivated by one great proprietor. Reichensperger, in his " Die Agrarfrage," has devoted a great part of one chapter to explain the great difference between the situations of the Irish labourer and the German peasant pro- prietor. He shows very powerfully, that while the latter has every possible motive for exercising economy, and for deferring his marriage, in order first to save funds for the purchase of his farm, and afterwards to save time and funds for its cultiva- tion ; while he is intensely interested in the improvement of the farm which belongs to himself, and does not hesitate to expend his savings and labour upon it ; while his dress, food, and house are all good and improving ; and while his position is one of comfort, independence, and security ; the Irish labourer is entirely dependent upon the will of an agent or a landlord ; that he feels no temptation to save, or to expend his savings upon his land, as he does not know how long it may be in his possession ; that he has no inducement to defer marriage, as he knows that he cannot attain a better social position by so doing, as all he can hope for is to become the tenant-at-will of some small plot of ground ; that his house, his dress, and his manner of living, are utterly wretched and barbarous, owing almost entirely to that demoralising sense of the hopelessness of his situation, which has reduced him to this condition ; that he lives on the lowest and poorest kind of food ; and that the next step below him is famine and death ! Kraus, another German writer on the subject of agriculture, says,^ ''The small proprietor, who knows intimately every spot and corner of his little estate, who regards it with all that interest which property in land, and especially in a small piece of land, always inspires, and who finds an actual pleasure and enjoyment in not only cultivating but in beautifying it ; he it is, who of all farmers and landowners, is the most industrious, 1 Quoted by Reichensperger in his "Die Agrarfrage," p. 79. 202 Small Estates tend to the most intelligent, and the most successful in improving the cultivation of his estate." I do not wish to insinuate by anything that I say in this work, that great estates are necessarily evils, and the effects of bad legislation. Nothing could be further from my thoughts. What I hope to prove is ; ist, that it is a very great evil that the small shopkeepers and peasants of any country should be j)7'evented by the laws from acquiring land; and that such is the result of our legislation in Great Britain and Ireland ; and 2dly, that to free land from all regulations preventing its sale or transmission from man to man, is to enable the peasants and small shopkeepers to acquire land, and by enabling them to do this, to stimulate their habits of prudence and economy, to strengthen their conservative feelings, to m;ike their life more hopeful and healthy, to reduce very considerably tlie amount of pauperism and immorality among the lower classes of society, a7id to increase ve?y considerably the producti'ueness of the land itself. To prevent the upper classes of society acquiring more than a certain fixed quantity of land, or wealth of any kind, would be to destroy one of the most powerful inducements to energy, industry, intelligence, and conservative circumspection, and to introduce a system of fraud and chicanery, — for any such attempt would be often evaded by one of these latter methods. But although this is true, still it must be confessed, that there is a mean, between the extreme measure of preventing the upper classes acquiring more than a certain quantity of land, and the other extreme, of preventing the small shopkeepers and peasants acquiring any land at all. It is this mean which I am going to consider, such as it exists in Germany. I do not deny that a greater amount of produce may be obtained, in proportion to the capital and labour employed in production, upon a large than upon a small leasehold iixrva. But there can be no doubt that five acres, the property of an intelligent peasant, who farms it himself, in a country where the peasants have learnt to farm, will always produce much more per acre, than an equal number of acres will do when farmed by a mere leaseliold \.&xi2iX\i. In the case of the peasant proprietor, the increased activity and energy of the farmer, and the deep interest he feels in the improvement of his land, which are always caused by the fact of ownership, more than compensate the advantage arismg from the fact, that the capital required Improve Agrictiltttre. 203 to work the large farm is less in proportion to the quantity of land cultivated, than the capital required to work the small farm. In the cases of a large farm and of a small farm, the occupiers of which are buth tenants of another person, and not owners themselves, it may be true, that the produce of the large farm will be greater in proportion to the capital employed in culti- vation, than that of the small farm ; and that, therefore, the farming of the larger farm w ill be the most economical, and will render the largest rent to the landlord. But even in this case, viz., where the occupiers nre both tenants and not owners, it is too often forgotten that the want of small farms deprives the peasants of all hope of improving their condition in life, cuts away the next step in the social ladder, deprives them of all inducement to exercise self-denial, habits of saving and foresight, or active exertion, exceedingly pauperises and demoralises them, very greatly increases the local poor-rates and the county-rates, and in this way very often deprives the farmers of more than all the extra gains, which they would otherwise derive from the more economical system of large farms. So that, even in the case of tenant farmers, I am certain, — and the reports upon Flemish husbandry bear me out in this assertion,— that the system of small farming is the most moral and civilising, if it is not also the most economical system, for a country to pursue. 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 freeholds in land. He expresses a very decided opinion, that not only are the gi'oss products of any given number of acres, held and cultivated by small or peasant pro- prietors, 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 thinks that this result is to be attri- buted to the following causes : — I. The extraordinary interest which the small proprietor feels in his little estate. It is this which makes himself and every member of his family not only willing, but desirous, to devote every leisure moment, and every hour of daylight, to the im- provement and cultivation of his plot of ground, and which urges 204 Small Estates tend to him to avail himself of every little circumstance which can by any possibility increase the productiveness of his land, and which, in minute care, in cleanliness, in economy of ground, and of contrivances, and in beauty of appearance, raises his farming to the perfection of garden cultivation. 2. The extraordinary pains which are always taken by peasant proprietors to collect, prepare, and employ manures. 3. The much greater quantity of small products, such as eggs, butter, milk, lioney, vegetables, and fruit, which are obtained from a given quantity of land cultivated by small proprietors, than from an equal quantity of land cultivated by large pro- prietors, or by the tenants of such proprietors. 4. That while, on the estates of great proprietors, acres of land oftjn lie totally unemployed and uncultivated from want of capital, or from neglect, or from wasteful farming ; not a single square yard of ground is neglected or uncultivated upon the estate of the small proprietor, but every smallest piece of ground is turned to some account, and, if capable of any culti- vation, is forced to produce all that industry can possibly win from it. 5. That even tlie hedges and the sides of the public roads are made available for the purposes of production, and are planted thickly with fruit trees, which richly requite the labours of the farmers ; while in countries where the land is in the hands of few and great proprietors — our own for example — the thousands and millions of hedgerows are filled with useless brambles and underwood, and are made the breeding-places of quantities of destructive vermin. 6. To the above-mentioned causes, enumerated by Reichen- sperger, may be added another : — That the particular kind of tillage, viz., spade-labour, often pursued by peasant proprietors, of itself greatly increases the productiveness of the ground. The spade breaks and pulverises the soil much more hnely than the plough and harrow do, and mixes the manure or lime with it much better. Fewer seeds are, therefore, choked or smothered, the grain shoots better and grows stronger, and tlie produce of any given number of acres is very considerably increased. After having enumerated the above-mentioned advantages of the subdivision of land among the cultivators themselves, Reichensperger says,^ — " The beautiful valley of the Rhine, with 1 Die Agrarfr.ige, p. 46. Improve Agriculture. 205 the greatest part of its neighbouring provinces, is there, fully to bear out and prove what I have said. Wurtemburg, Switzer- land, Belgium, Lombardy, and, above all, the luxuriant fields of Tuscany and Lucca, all show that the above description of the blessings and happiness resulting from a wise and intelligent system of small proprietors is far behind the prosperous reality." 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 land which is divided into small properties in the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. He and Professor Ran both say that this rise in the price of the small estates would have ruined the more recent purchasers, unless the productive- ness 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 land, when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre, of land when farmed by great proprietors. 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 o{ land is greater, when farmed by small proprietors, than when farmed by great proprietors or their tenants. He says, " Where real industry and moderate means are found among small pro- prietors, and where these latter are not fettered by unwise legis- lation or overburdened with taxation, there the land cultivated by the hands or under the immediate supervision of the small proprietor himself, will not only produce more, as every one is willing to concede, but will also yield ^greater net p7-oJit, than land cultivated by great proprietors or their tenants." This opinion of Thaer is all the more remarkable, as during 1 Grundsiitze der rationellen Landwirthschaft. 2o6 Small Estates tend to the early part of his hfe he was very strongly in favour of the English system of great estates and great farms. But whether the net produce of land cultivated by peasant proprietors be greater than its net produce when cultivated by great proprietors, or not, all accounts agree in showing that the cultivation and productiveness of the land has very much im- proved, and is in a state of progressive improvement, wherever trade in land has been rendered free, and wherever the peasants have been enabled to acquire. The peasant farming of Prussia, Saxony, Holland, and Swit- zerland is the most perfect and economical farming I have ever witnessed in any country. No pains, no means, are spared to make the pjround produce as much as possible. Not a square yard of land is uncultivated or unused. No stones are left mingled with the soil. The ground is cleared of weeds and rubbish, and the lumps of earth are broken up with as much care as in an English garden. If it is meadow land, it is cleaned of noxious herbs and weeds. Only the sweet grasses, which are good for the cattle, are allowed to grow. All the manure from the house, farm, and yard is carefully collected and scientifically prepared. The liquid manure is then carried in hand-carts like our road watering carts into the fields, and is watered over the meadows in equal proportions. The solid manures are broken up, cleared of stones and rubbish, and are then properly mixed and spread over the lands which recpiire them. No room is lost in hedges or ditches, and no breeding- places are left for the vermin which in many parts of England do so much injury to the farmers' crops. The character of the soil of each district is carefully examined, and a suitable rotation of crops is chosen, so as to obtain the greatest possible return without injuring the land ; and the cattle are well housed, are kept beautifully clean, and are groomed and tended like the horses of our huntsmen. All authorities upon the subject of agriculture in Prussia agree, that the cultivation of the land, before the creation of the peasant proprietor class, was very much inferior in its results to its state at the present day. Much more is obtained from the land now than formerly, and the land is less impover- ished, owing to the more skilful rotation of the crops. Before the Prussian Government was induced to try the great experiment of enabling the peasants to obtain land, and of creating a great class of peasant proprietors, it endeavoured to Improve Agriculture. 207 improve the condition of ngriculture throughout the Tvingdomby advancing great sums of money to the great landed proprietors, with the view of enabling them to introduce better systems of farming upon their lands. Reichensperger says,^ — " Frederic II. gave away very considerable sums of money for the encour- agement of agriculture. According to the minister, Von Stertz- berg, between the years 1763 to 1786, the sums advanced in this manner amounted to 24,399,838 thnlers. The province of Pomerania alone re.cei\nsd 5.500,000 thalers; and the aristocracy of that province alone received 4, 500,000 thalers. 'And yet these sums of money given by Frederic to the Pomeranian nobles, to enable them to improve the cultivation of their lands, have in reality done no good ; but have often, indeed, been most inju- rious in their effects.'"^ Professor and Regierungsrath Dr. Shubert, in his admirable work,^ says, — "Prussia has excited throughout all her provinces a singular and increasing interest in agriculture, and in the breeding of cattle ; and if in some localities, on account of peculiar circumstances, or of a less degree of inteIHgence, certain branches of the science of agriculture are less devel- oped than in other localities, it is, nevertheless, undeniable, that an almost universal progress has been made in the culti- vation of the soil and in the breeding of cattle. No one can any longer, as was the custom thirty years ago, describe the Prussian system of agriculture by the single appellation of the three-year-course system ; no one can, as formerly, confine his enumeration of richly-cultivated districts to a few localities. In the present day there is no district of Prussia in which intelli- gence, persevering energy, and an ungrudged expenditure of capital has not immensely improved a considerable part of the country for the purposes of agriculture and of the breeding of cattle." Dr. Shubert shows what is being done at the present day to improve the system of agriculture still more. Several large agricultural colleges, and a great number of agricultural schools, have been founded and endowed in different parts of Prussia, where the sons of the farmers study the sciences of agriculture and of agricultural chemistry. A great number of agricultural societies have been formed also ; and by means of the funds of 1 Die Agrarfrage, p. 306. 2 Vgl. Moglin'she Jahrbiicher der Landwirthschaft von A. Thaer. 3 Handbuch der Allgemeinen Staatskunde des Preussischen Staats, vol. ii. p. 5. 2o8 Sinall Estates tend to these societies, lecturers and practical farmers are retained to travel about the country, to give lectures in farming, and to aid the farmers with information and advice. It appears from Dr. Dieterici's "Statistics of Prussia," that the arable land of Prussia Produced in 1805 . • . 44,000,000 schefFels of grain, ,, in 183 1 . • . 55,000,000 ,, in 1S41 . . . 68,000,000 ,, This alone proves that the land of Prussia has produced much more since a great part of it has been divided among the peas- ants, than it did when it was all held by a few great proprietors ; and this fact is still more significant, when we consider that the increase in the amount of grain produced by the land is much greater than the increase in the numbers of the population. The increase in the numbers of the Prussian population, since 1805, may be thus re[)resented — Years 1805 1831 1843 Population ..... i ixV ^\ while the increase in the quantity of grain produced in Prussia, since 1805, may be thus represented — Years 1805 1831 1841 Grain produced .... I li i| from which it is evident that the increase, since 1805, in the quantity of grain produced in Prussia is much greater, than the increase during the same period in the numbers of the population. Professor Rau, of Heidelberg, has published a small work on the agriculture and on the social condition of the peasant pro- prietors of that part of Germany which lies upon the Rhine and Neckar, and which we know by the name of the Palatinate. I would strongly advise every one to read this little book. It contains a striking corroboration of the account which I am giving of the German peasants. Professor Rau says, that the land of the Palatinate is so much subdivided, that many of the plots are not more than one acre, while the majority of the little estates vary between twenty acres and one acre in size. Yet, with this excessive subdivision, how does he describe the state of agriculture and the condition of the people ? Imp I rove Agriciilture. 209 After saying,'' thnt this part of Germany has long been cele- brated for its skilful and scientific farming, he continues tliiis : "Whoever travels hastily through this part of the country must have been agreeably surprised with tiie luxuriant vegetation of the fields, with the orchards and vineyards which cover the hillsides, with the size of tlie villages, with the breadth of their streets, with the beauty of their official buildings, with the cleanliness and stateliness of their houses, with the crood cloth- ing in which the people appear at their festivities, and with the univers.il proofs of a prosperity, which has been caused by industry and skill, and which has survived all the political changes of the times." " There can be no doubt of the excellence of the system of agriculture pursued there." "Of the labour bestowed upon the land, it may be said, that it is generally expended witli a high degree of industry and skill. The unwearied assiduity of the peasants, — who are to be seen actively employed the whole of every year and of every day, and who are never idle, because they understand how to arrange, their work, and how to set apart for every time and season its appropriate duties, — is as remarkable, as their eagerness to avail themselves of every circumstance and of every new inven- tion which can aid them and their ingenuity in improving their resources are praiseworthy. It is easy to perceive that the peasant of this district really understands his business. He can give reasons for the occasional failures of his oper.itions ; he knows and remembers clearly his pecuniary resources ; he arranges his choice of fruits according to their prices ; and he makes his calculations by the general signs and tidings of the weather." According to Professor Ran, the position of even the daily labourers has improved since 1817, as the price of the neces- saries of life has, since that time, fallen more than the wages of the laljourers. He says, that even the labourers live more comfortably, take better care of their children, and are better able to save than they were formerly ; that they eat more meat and puddings and more cheese than they did forty years ago ; and that their manner of living is generally much better than it was then. He gives a curious and minute account of the way in which the peasants collect the dung of the stables, cowsheds, and 1 Landwii thschaft der Rheinpfalz. o 2 1 o Small Estates tend to houses; nnd he shows how scientifically they prepare the different kinds of manures, and apply them to the different descriptions of lands. Speaking of their economical manner of collecting and pre- paring manure, Professor Rau says, "As the cows are not generally fed in the meadows, but in the sheds, none of their dung is lost." " The bedding of the cattle generally lies under them from one to two days, but not longer. It is then carried out to the dung-heap, and, after lying there about six weeks, is carried out upon the lands." These peasant proprietors know exactly how much manure each acre of their land requires for its good cultivation. They know also how much manure they can obtain annually from each head of cattle. If the number of cattle, which one of the small farmers possesses, is not large enough to furnish sufficient manure for the whole of his land, he reckons how much he shall require, and purchases so much from those of his neigh- bours who have more than they require. All the waste water of the house, the stables, the cowsheds, the pigsties, and the farmyards is collected in conduits made on purpose upon every farm, and is carried along these conduits, sometimes to a well made on purpose to receive it, and some- times to the dung-heap. It is, however, generally, and in Switzerland always, collected in a well which is made in the farmyard for its reception. A small pump is put down into this well, and by its means the liquid manure is pumped up into small watering-carts, and is carried in these on to the land, and regularly scattered over the well-broken soil. In England and Wales millions of pounds' worth of manure are lost every year in our farmyards, from the lack of science among our farmers, and from the little interest which the oreater part of even our greater leasehold farmers feel in agricultural improvements. One objection, which has been always urged with great eagerness and apparent force against the system of subdivision of land and small farms, is that the small farmers are too poor to possess themselves of the expensive machines which science has invented and will invent, and which enable their possessors to economise labour and time, to carry out great agricultural im- provements at a small expense, and to perform many important agricultural operations which cannot be performed without them. Imp rove Az^'icidtiire. 211 ' This objection, however, is more specious than true. The more intelligence advances among the small proprietors, by means of the agricultural colleges and of the schools of agri- cultural chemistry, which are being founded throughout Ger- many, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland, for the express purpose of training the children of the peasant farmers in the science of agriculture, and which are raising up a class of small proprietor farmers, who, for the knowledge of agriculture, put to shame the majority of our large tenant farmers— the more, I repeat, intelligence advances by these means among the small proprietors, the better will they understand how to combine among themselves, so as to help one another to carry out those particular operations which require an accumulation of capital for their successful prosecution. As Counsellor Reichensperger says, ''There is nothing to pre- vent small proprietors availing themselves of the more costly agri- cultural machines, if several of them unite in the purchase of them, and keep them for common use. It is always a very easy matter, so to arrange the agricultural operations of several farms, that one machine may perform them all without putting any of the proprietors to any inconvenience." This opinion of Reichensperger is worthy of all the more con- sideration, as he is living among a nation of small proprietors, and as he has devoted a considerable period of time to the study of their condition and of its capabilities of improvement. He further says, that the parts of Europe where the most extensive and costly plans for watering the meadows and lands have been carried out in the greatest perfection, are those where the lands are very much subdivided, and are in the hands of small proprietors. He instances the plain round Valencia, several of the southern departments of France, particularly those of Vaucluse and Bouches du Rhone, Lombardy, Tuscany, the districts of Siena, Lucca, and Bergamo, Piedmont, many parts of Germany, and the district of Siegenshen, in all which parts of Europe the land is very much subdivided among small proprietors. In all these parts great and expensive systems and plans of general irrigation have been carried out, and are now being supported by the small proprietors themselves : thus showing how they are able to accomplish, by means of com- bination, work requiring the expenditure of great quantities of capital. The following interesting account of the character of farm- 2 1 2 Small Estates tend to ing in the Prussian Rhine Provinces is given bv Mr. Ban- field :i— " The first study of every good farmer in Germany is the locnl part of his task, the influence of soil and chmate. In the up- lands of Cloves the climate is dry, and the sun hot in summer ; the soil is strongly charged with limestone ; cow-dung is found to answer better for winter crops, or at least cow-dung mixed with horse-dung better than the latter alone : for this reason, oxen are kept as draught cattle all along the Rhine. The dung- heap in the centre of the farmyard is the point on which the greatest care is concentrated for good farming establishments. It usually lies in a deep sloped pit, enclosed by stone walls on three sides, the bottom rising gradually to the level of the yard on the fourth side, to allow of the approach of the dung-cart. Into this pit the drains from all the offices are led, and waste of all kinds is thrown upon it. The plan of stall-feeding, but especially the care taken to keep the beasts clean (they are rubbed down every day like horses), prevents their being allowed to tread the heap down. Straw is likewise much econo- mised, as it is used to mix with the oats during the winter. The mixture of cow and horse-dung, with the flow of cold moistening matter, prevents the fermentation that would other- wise arise in the heap, and cause much of its value to eva- porate. After the fallow-ploughing, the manure is only just ploughed in sufficiently deep to cover it. Top-dressings are a good deal in use amongst good farmers for grain crops. "At Goch, as well as in other well-managed farms in this district, compost heaps are to be seen in all yards ; the sub- stances used for one resembled a mixture we have seen in some parts of Ireland. A heap of quicklime is covered all over with turf-ashes, or with wood-ashes, from the house-stoves. Water is tlirown over the heap, and, after a few days, the lime, in fermenting, shows itself through the ashes ; the heap is then turned over, again covered with ashes, and watered ; and this process is repeated until the lime is thoroughly slaked ; the mass is then mixed with sand or earth, or other compost heaps, and forms an excellent top-dressing. . . . . " The number of stock kept is large, even on those uplands where there is little grazing. One horse for twenty acres is the proportion of the best farmers ; but then fifteen to twenty-five oxen and cows would be the smallest inmiber of 1 i^griculiurc on the Rhine, p. i6. Imp rove AgriciiltiiTe. 2 1 3 horned cattle on one hundred acres, with one to two hundred sheep. On 3. pcasajifs farm of fifty acres, ive liave fotiiid four horses, fifteen Jiead of horned cattle, and seventy to eiglity sheep. " In following the use to which the farmer puts this manure, we come to the distinguishing feature of Rhenish agriculture. No peculiar crop is here prescribed by legislative enactment, and the climate admits of a sufficient variety to allow the land- owner to draw all the help he can from the nature of his soil. The uplands of Cleves are particularly well suited to grow barley. In the autumn, the land of this description is well ploughed and manured, and in the following spring barley and clover are sown ; the grain obtains the highest price in the Dutch market. It is not unusual to turn the cows on the stubble ; but each is fastened by the stable-chain to an iron stake driven into the ground, to prevent straying, as the lots are small in these parts, and no fences are to be found. . . . " The second year gives a rich clover crop, partly for stall- feeding, in part to be saved as hay, and the third (sometimes the second) cutting gives the seed known in England as Dutch clover seed, from the circumstance of its passing through Hol- Imd on its way to London and Hull. When the seed has ripened and been housed, the clover is broken up, and after several ploughings, wheat is sown, which is followed by rye. Turnips are sown in the rye stubble ; and the fifth year begins the rotation again with potatoes, followed by barley and clover in the highly-manured soil. In soils less peculiarly suited to barley (which recommends itself as a profitable article of exportation), wheat and rye follow potatoes or flax, and are followed by oats. Cabbages and carrots ofien alternate with potatoes as fallow crops, and are richly manured ; and in most large farms the two rotations go on side by side on lands of differing qualities. Perhaps the absence of expensive farming favours the study of the peculiar nature of the soil, which is evidently severely tried by the rotations we have described. Where composts with marl or lime are used as top-dressings, the rotation is usually prolonged, and the rye crop is repeated and followed by oats. It is common to top-dress the barley, after it has germinated, with compost or with liquids. . . . " The land is made to bear the utmost that nature without forcing admits. Horned cattle are used in abundance, but are not forced in fattening, and the average weight of an ox does not exceed forty stone." 2 1 4 Sfuall Estates tend to Again, the same writer says/ " In the great occupation of turning to the best account the soil and climate given to them by Providence, the peasant of the Rhine stands untutored, except by experience. And could the tourist hear these men in their blouses and thick gaiters converse on the subject, he would be surprised at the mass of practical knowledge they possess, and at the caution and yet the keenness with which they study these advantages. Of this all may rest assured, that from the commencement of the offsets of the Eifel, where the village cultivation assumes an individual and strictly local character, good reason can be given for the manner in which every inch of ground is laid out, as for every balm, root, or tree, that covers it." Reichensperger also bears testimony to the great prosperity of the small proprietors of the Rhine Provinces of Bavaria. He says,- "The condition of the agriculture and of the agricultural classes of the Rhine Provinces of Bavaria is in most respects analogous to that of the Rhine Provinces of Prussia, and most strongly attests the good results of the system of small proprie- tors in the former provinces. Even a superficial observation of this populous, flourishing land, which, under the industrious hands of its numerous small proprietors, and under the influence of a system of free trade in land, produces all the products of middle Europe in the richest abundance, proves the truth of this statement." The same writer, residing among the peasant proprietors of the Rhine Provinces of Prussia, describes the state of the farms before the subdivision of the land, and the effect of this subdivi- sion in those provinces, in the following manner.^ This account is worthy the greatest consideration. " If we observe the effect of the subdivision of land in the Rhine Province, a merely hasty glance at the handsome and well-built villages, and the luxuriant orchards and fields, will suffice to show that the new agrarian regulations have by no means, as their opponents have alleged, plunged the land into poverty and suffering, but that they have, on the contrary, exer- cised the most beneficial influence upon the cultivation of the land and upon the condition of the people. " The indivisibility of the estates was never formally estab- lished in this province by any laws or customs ; but large estates became consolidated and tied up either in aristocratic families 1 Agriculture of the Rl ine, p. 8i. 2 Dig Agrarfrage, p. 419. •* Reichensperger, Die Agrarfrage, p. 403. ///// rove Ao-riciiltiire. 2 1 ^> or in spiritual or temporal corporations. These great estates were generally let out for short periods of time to farmers, and ive7'e ahnost luitJumt exxeption luretcJiedly ailthmied. Although the rents of the farms were very small and were seldom in- creased, yet the farmers' families, upon even the largest farms, were scarcely ever in a prosperous condition, but existed in great deprivation of even the necessaries of life, and without being able to lay by anything. They were not able to bear the le:ist adversity ; and it was necessary that even a dead horse should be replaced by the assistance of their landlords, if the farmer was not to be ruined by his loss, as he could not save enough to buy another himself The land was burdened with many dues, partly feudal and partly in form of rents to private individuals, which, together with the tithes, prevented all improvement of the land. " To this miserable, almost stationary state of things, followed, in the beginning of the present century, the subdivision of the land, which was originated by the French Revolution, and was principally caused by the sale of the so-called national property. Out of a single farm, which formerly secured to the farmer only a miserable existence, were formed very quickly, by means of speculation and division, small estates for four or more families, who, notwithstanding that tlie price of the land now much ex- ceeded tlie value of the former farm, as calculated by the rent it paid, attained in a short time a prosperous condition. The handsome dwelling-houses and farm buildings, which arose on all sides on the sites of the old fannhouses— the enlarged vil- lages, and their improved internal arrangement, proved that the succeeding and more numerous proprietors of the land obtained from it much more produce than the prior tenant farmers had been able to do The cattle-breeding was now improved from year to year, and, by means of the great number of small but intelligent and active landowners possessed generally of sufficient capital, the old agricultural system gradually gave place to a clearer, more intelligent, and more rational system of husbandry. A tolerably equally divided prosperity, equally re- moved from the suffering of pauperism and from the superfluity of wealth, was the consequence of these changes ; and if the prosperity of the larger towns has increased still more rapidly, the country districts have experienced the influence of this improvement in the increasing consumption of raw products. . . . The country people of the Rhine Province and the people 2 1 6 Small Estates tend to of the neighbouring provinces, who enjoy a system of free pro- prietorship of land, may, in the face of the world, be proud among their hills and valleys, which they have made so happy in appearance, and in their clean and comfortable villages ; they may point with pride to the men whom they furnish to the yearly military levies ; they may boast themselves of the pro- priety of their social life ; nor need they fear comparison with any other race, if we except the incomparably prosperous in- liabitants of Styria, the Tyrol, and Switzerland " (in all which countries the peasants are proprietors), " who, in activity, hap- ]iiness, and freedom, have no equals. The inhabitants of the Rhine Provinces feel themselves to be the proprietors of the soil which they cultivate. This fact distinguishes them greatly, in every intellectual and physical respect, from the peasant 1 ibourers who possess nothing of their own, and who at this day, in the same manner as hundreds of years ago, cultivate and labour for the great proprietors without any hope of improvement." The inhabitants of the Rhine Province are themselves so convinced of the benefits which they derive from the subdivi- sion of the land among the peasants, that, in 1S41, the repre- sentative assembly of the province rejected, by a majority of 49 to 8 representatives, a proposition made to them by the Prussian government to restrain the subdivision of the land. The same feeling has been manifested throughout Prussia, whenever the government has attempted, as it has done on several occasions, to found a Prussian landed aristocracy, by introducing a plan like that in force in our country, whereby to accumulate great estates, and to retain them for many generations in the same family. The middle and lower classes in Prussia are so con- scious of the benefits they derive from the opposite system, and have therefore always offered so strong an opposition to any hint at a change, that the government, powerful and arbitrary as it was prior to 1848, has not ventured to carry out what it had so much at heart. Some have thought that a country, the land of which is very much subdivided, will not support so many cattle as one the land of which is cultivated in great estates. This, however, is satisfactorily disproved by many statistics, and particularly by the statistics of the numbers of horses, cows, sheep, iSic, sup- ported in Prussia in difi'erent years since the land was first subdivided. Improve Agriculture. 2 [ 7 From these statistics it appears that, notwithstanding that the quantity of grain produced in Prussia has increased so very considerably of late years, the numbers of horses, cows, oxen, and sheep have been also increasing in a very remarkable manner since the land was released from the laws which pre- vented its subdivision. If we compare the statistics published by the Statistical Bureau in Berlin, and quoted by Reichen- sperger, it appears that the numbers of horses, cows and oxen, sheep, and pigs in the whole of Prussia in different years were as follows ; — Years. Horses. Cows and Oxen. Sheep. _ Pigs. 183I . • i,374>594 4,446,368 11,965,675 No leturn 1S37 ■ . 1,472,901 4,838,622 15,338,977 1,936,304 1843 . • 1,564,554 5,042,010 16,235,880 2,115,212 while the increase, since iSi6, in that part of Prussia where the land is subdivided the most, viz., the Rhine Province, has been greater than that of any other part of Prussia. The following table shows what the increase has been since 1816 in the Rhine Province : — Years. Horses. Cows and 0.\en. Sheep. Pigs. 1S16 . . • 94,564 609,960 535,754 195,466 183I . . . 109,642 711,126 490,721 214,870 1843 . . . 122,318 776,453 575,193 277,087 In 1843 the Minister of the Interior of Prussia presented to the king a report upon the condition of agriculture in Prussia, in which it is said, that the system of peasant proprietors, which was introduced into Prussia by Frederic William III., has greatly improved the condition of the peasants both intellectually and socially, and that it has not failed in its expected effect upon tlie material prosperity of the country, but has undeniably increased the activity and enterprise of all people engaged in agriculture, and has been the cause of the visibly growing prosperity of the people.^ " The wonderful progress which Prussian agriculture has made, since the laws of Frederic William III. were issued, and owing to them, in the province of Brandenburg, was forcibly described at the third meeting of the German Agricultural Association at Potsdam, in 1839, by Herr Koppe, a member of 1 Reichensperger, Die Agrarfrage, p. 397. 2 1 8 Small Estates tend to the National Economical Association, and one thoroughly well acquainted with the state of agriculture in that province."^ Herr Koppe says, that the new system has produced greater results upon the large estates of Brandenburg than upon the small ones. As the results on the larger estates of freeing the land from all restraints upon its sale and transmission from a man of little capital and intelligence, to a man of more capital and intelligence, he enumerates the following : — The abandon- ment of the old and unscientific customs ; the diffusion of a knowledge of the science of agriculture ; the increasing obser- vance of the results of experience ; better arrangement of the land ; employment of better agricultural implements and machines ; a more scientific management and employment of manures ; an increase in the amount of manure; better cultiva- tion of the meadows ; perceptible improvement in the breeding, feeding, and management of the cattle ; introduction of new and useful agricultural methods ; and, as a consequence of all this, higher rents and higher price of land. The speech of Herr Koppe is too long for insertion in this work ; it may be found in Reichensperger's work. Counsellor Doenniges expresses his conviction of the happy results of this system in the most decided manner. He says, that the so often opposed divisibility of the land has led to happy results, and has formed, so to speak, a ladder by which the peasants and small proprietors may rise m the social scale, and increase the size of their estates.''^ The Geh. Ob. Reg. Rath. Lette bears his testimony in like manner to the same effect. He said, at the seventh meeting of the German Agricultural Association, that they had all been reconciled to the new system of agrarian regulations ; and that their admirable results had carried conviction to the minds of all.3 A ministerial paper, laid before the provincial assembly of the Rhine Province, bears witness to the same effect. It says that the new agrarian regulations have removed all impediments to the progress of agriculture, and that they have tended to improve the cuUivation of the land so much, as to have, in 1843, raised the marketable value of the land, since 1828, about 75 per cent.* Geh. Ob. Reg. Raths. Bethe, who, in 1836, made a report to 1 Reichensperger, Die Agrarfrage, p. 397. - Die Agrarfrage, p. 400. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. p. 409. Improve Agriculture. 2 1 9 the government upon the condition of the Rhine Province, confirms by his testimony the truth of the former accounts. He says that the division of the land in that province has been the cause of improvement and progress. This official reporter mentions one place, the district surrounding the town of Duren, which IS divided into very small parcels, and in the neighbour- hood of which there are some large manufactories, and he says of it, that the prosperity of this district has increased to such a degree that no change of the present system can possibly be desired.! In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland not a foot of waste land is to be seen. Wherever anything will grow, something useful is made to grow. It is curious to see the singular pains bestowed upon the lands. The men are often assisted by their whole households in cultivation. From early in the morning until late in the evening the peasants labour on their farms. The workmen of the towns, who possess plots, turn out in the evenings after their dny's labour is over, when they maybe seen weeding, digging, cleaning, and watering with all the zest and eagerness of competitors for a prize. In many of the Swiss towns the greater part of the workmen who are forty years of age possess plots of land, which they have purchased with the savings laid by before marriage. In Saxony it is a notorious fact, that during the last thirty years, and since the peasants became the proprietors of the land, which they formerly held as the Irish hold their little leaseholds, viz., from and at the will of owners of great estates, there has been a rapid and continual improvement in the con- dition 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-Switzer- land 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 of that part of Saxony. There, as in the cantons of Berne, Vaud, and Zurich, and in the Rhine Provinces, the farms are singularly flourishing. They are kept in beautiful condition, and are always neat and well-managed. The ground is cleaned, as if it were a garden. No hedges or brushwood encumber it. Scarcely a rush or thistle or a bit of rank grass is to be seen. 1 Die Agrarfrage, p. 412. 2 2 o Small Est a tes ten d to The meadows are well watered every spring with liquid manure, saved from the drainings of the farmyards. The grass is so free from weeds that the Saxon meadows reminded me more of English lawns, than of anything else I had seen. The little plots of land belonging to the peasantry lie side by side, undivided by hedge or ditch or any other kind of separation. The peasants endeavour to outstrip one another in the quantity and quality of the produce, in the preparation of the ground, and in the general cultivation of their respective portions; and this very rivalry tends to improve all the more the system of tillage and the value of the crops. All the little proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the greatest results ; they diligently seek after improvements ; they send their children to the agricultural schools in order to fit them to assist their fathers ; and each proprietor soon adopts a new improvement introduced by any of his neighbours. A proprietor of a small plot of land does this because he feels that any improvement which he makes, is so much gain for himself and his family. A lessee of a small plot of land acts otherwise, because he knows that it is uncertain whether he or his landlord will reap the benefit of his improvements ; because he knows that his improvements will, sooner or later, be taken possession of by the landlord ; and because he cannot feel the same interest in improving the condition of a plot belonging to another, as he would if the plot belonged to himself. If any one has travelled in the mountainous parts of Scotland and Wales, where the farmers are only under-lessees of great landlords, without security of tenure, and liable to be turned out of possession with half-a-year's notice, and where the peas- ants are only labourers without any land of their own, and generally without even the use of a garden ; if he has travelled in the mountainous parts of Switzerland, Saxony, and the hilly parts of the Prussian Rhine Provinces, where most of the farmers and peasants possess, or can, by economy and industry, ol)tain, land of their own ; and if he has paid any serious attention to the condition of the farms, peasants, and children of these several countries, he cannot fail to have observed the astonishing superiority of the condition of the peasants, children, and farms in the last-mentioned countries. The miserable cultivation, the undrained and rush-covered Imp ibrove Ao-ricnltiire. 221 valleys, the great number of sides of hills, terraces on the rocks, sides of streams, and other places capable of the richest cultivation, but wholly disused, even for game preserves ; the vast tracts of the richest lands lying in moors and bogs and swamps, and used only for the breeding-places of game, and deer, and vermin, while the poor peasants are starving beside them ; the miserable huts of cottages, with their one story, their two low rooms, their wretched and undrained floors, and their dilapidated roofs ; and the crowds of miserable, half-clad, ragged, dirty, uncombed, and unwashed children, never blessed with any education, never trained in cleanliness, or morality, and never taught any pure reli:^ion, are as astounding on the one hand, as the happy condition of the peasants in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in the Tyrol, in Saxony, and in the mountainous parts of the Prussian Rhine Provinces, is pleasing upon the other, where every plot of land thnt can bear anything is brought into the most beautiful state of cultivation ; where the valleys are richly and scientifically farmed ; where the manures are collected with the greatest care ; where the houses are generally large, roomy, well-built, and in excellent repair, and are improving every day ; where the children are beautifully clean, comfortably dressed, and attending excellent schools ; and where the condition of the people is one of hope, industry, and progress. There can be no doubt that, if the mountainous parts of Wales and Scotland were subjected to a system of laws similar to those of Norway, Germany, France, and Switzerland ; and if the peasants of Wales and Scotland were able to purchase land, that the mountainous parts of the latter countries would yield at least six times as great a produce as they do at present, while the character of the people w^ouki, in the course of two generations, be greatly improved. Those who have not travelled in hill-countries inhabited by peasant proprietors, can have no idea how mountains may be cultivated. Mr. Gleig,^ when speaking of Saxony, says, " There is, perhaps, no country in the world where more is made of the land than in Saxony. Every spot of earth which seems capable of giving a return is cultivated, and the meadows are mowed twice or thrice in the course of each summer. You never meet with such a thing as a common or a waste, while the forests are all guarded with a strictness proportionate to their value." 1 Germany, i. 237. 2 2 2 Small Estates tend to And even Mr. ]\I'CulIoch himself says, " Landed properties are rather of hmited size ; but in all the rural districts the people appear to be contented, and, on the whole, comfortable : pau- perism is rare." ^ The same writer, although so earnest an advocate of the system of great estates, in speaking of the famous Prussian edict of 1811, which enabled the peasants of Prussia to become proprietors, and which broke up the old great-estate system, says, " // has given a ivo7iderfiil stimulus to imp7-ovement. The peasantry, relieved from the burdens and services to which they were previously subjected, and placed, in respect of political privileges, on a level with their lords, have begun to display a spirit of enterprise and industry that was formerly unknown. Formerly, also, there were in Prussia— as there have been in England and in most other countries — a great extent of land belonging to towns and villages, and occupied in common by the inhabitants. While under this tenure, these lands rarely produced a third or a fourth of what they would produce were they divided into separate properties and assigned to individuals, each reapino- all the advantages resulting from superior industry and exertion. The Prussian government, being aware of this, has succeeded in effecting the division of a vast nuniber of common properties, and has thus totally changed the appearance of a large extent of country, and created several thousand new proprietors. The want of capital, and the force of old habits, rendered the influ- ence of these changes in the outset less striking than many anticipated ; but these retarding circumstances have daily diminished in power, and it may be safely affirmed that the country has made a greater progress since 181 5, than it did during the preceding hundred yearsP Once enable the peasants to purchase land, nnd you triumph over sterility. The vast arid prairie plains of Prussia, with a deep sandy soil, bare of hedges, and almost bare of trees, excepting where the forests grow for the supply of fuel, have been thus forced to yield their increase. From the railways as you pass along the surface of these prairies, your eye meets cultivation everywhere. Flourishing villages, of houses as lan'-e as those occupied by our farmers, divide the plains between them ; no trees overshadow the cornlands ; no old tenures prevent the farmers cutting down all which either impede the course of the plough or the rays of the sun, or which take up 1 Ge g. Diet, title Saxony. Improve Agriadtitrc. 223 ground better employed in other ways than in growinjij wood. The farmer, in tine, is free to do whatever will secure him the largest return from his land. In Saxony and Switzerland it is very curious to observe how, under the influence of the division of the land and its release from the feudal tenures, cultivation, and that, too, of the most scientific kind, has forced its way up the mountainsides on to every little ledge where a meadow could be made, into the glades of the forests, upon the little corners of land left by the streams and rivers, and over every bog and moor. You find meadows, pasturages, and gardens where in Wales, Westmoreland, Ireland, or Scotland, there would be only a bleak hillside or a barren moor. A traveller in these countries will not find common lands left waste or useless ; or great patches left uncultivated from want of drain- age ; or meadows where the grass grows rank and mixed with weeds from the want of an embankment to turn off the waters of a passing stream ; or great strips wasted and encumbered by broad and vermin-filled hedges, with wide and useless ditches on each side. Wherever there is soil there is also cultivation ; and where there is no soil the peasants often bring some. It is singular to see the odd places where meadows of the most beautiful grass are laid out in Switzerland. You may ascend the mountains for a whole day, and often, after having left behind you belt after belt of forest, growing for the supply of fuel, up above them all, as high as soil is found, you will still see green pastures, which have been brought into cultiva- tion by the indefatigable industry of the peasants. Up, too, upon the rocky ledges, whence you would imagine it would be difficult to let down the produce, grass is grown for winter con- sumption in the valleys. No difficulties deter the peasant if he can make the spot his own, and if he can win anything from it by any amount of labour. Waste lands and badly cultivated spots cannot exist long where the possessors of land are not trammelled by a system of tenures like our own, but where they are at liberty to dispose of their lands, whenever they feel it for their interest to do so, and where the peasants can, by prudence and self-denial, make themselves proprietors. In Saxon Switzerland, the government of Saxony possessed a number of barren heath-clad hills, which had never been brought into cultivation, and which, by many persons, wer supposed to be quite unfit for cultivation. The government 2 2 4 Small Estates tend to gave notice, a few years ago, that it would grant portions of the sides of these hills to any peasant, who would cultivate them, on the following conditions : — For three years no rent was to be paid for the land ; afterwards the cultivator might either purchase it at a certain rate fixed and specified, or he might rent it from government at a small annual payment, the amount of which was to bear a certain fixed proportion to the produce obtained from the land. The scheme has succeeded admirably. Whole hillsides have been taken by the peasants, and brought into cultivation. The moorlands have been drained ; the stones have been carried away ; the land has been well trenched, and has become very valuable. This shows how enterprising an intelligent peasantry will prove, v,-hen their efforts are not impeded by legislation or by old feudal prejudices. Were we to enable the Irish peasant to make himself a proprietor, we should in twenty years alter the character of Ireland. The peasants would become conservative, orderly, and industrious ; the moor and waste lands would dis- appear ; cultivation would spread its green carpet over the bogs and mountains ; and that now unhappy island would become a powerful arm of Great Britain. But so long as we subject the Irish peasantry to the present under-lessee system, so long will they be a turbulent, idle, and disaftected people, and so long will Ireland be a drain upon the imperial treasury, and a cause of weakness to the empire. It would astonish the English people to see how intensely the peasants of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland labour on their fields. The whole of the farmer's family assists. It is not an unwilling drudgery, but a toil in which they feel pleasure ; for they know that the harder they labour, the greater will be their profits, and the better will be their means of sub- sistence. There is always something to be done. When they can work on their fields, they are opening drains, breaking up lumps of earth, spreading manures, digging, cleaning, weeding, sowino-, or gathering in the harvest. When they cannot work in their fields, they are putting their farmyards and farm-build- ings into order, whitewashing (this they are very fond of doing), repairing walls, mixing or preparing manures, or doing some- thing in preparation for sojne of their outdoor operations. They do all this, be it remembered, for themselves ; and they take real pleasure in their work, and do it ten times better and ten times mure expeditiously than the poor, hired, and ignorant hnprovc Agriculture. 225 peasants of England, who have nothing to look forward to, but to remain peasants for ever, without any interest in the soil ; or even than the farmers of England who farm the land of another, having often no lease of it, and scarcely any security for any expenditure upon it, and who seldom care anything about either their land or their buildings, except to get as much out of them, and with as small an outlay as possible. The governments of Western Europe are doing a great deal to enable the peasant proprietors to acquire a knowledge of the best systems of agriculture and management of cattle. The cantonal governments of Switzerland have been earnestly engaged for several years in establishing, in various parts of the country, great schools, v/here the children of the farmers may be educated, at a very trifling expense, in the science of agriculture. I went over several, in company with M. de Fellenberg and M. Vehrli. I have described them more fully in the chapter on Swiss education. To each of these institutions are attached a large farm, barns, cowsheds, farmyards, orchards, a plentiful supply of the best farm implements, a laboratory, and class-rooms. The greatest portion of the expense of maintaining them is defrayed by the cantonal governments. Many of the sons of the peasant farmers enter these institutions after leaving the primary schools. They remain in them from one to three years. They learn there, agri- cultural chemistry and practical farming. They are taught how to analyse earths ; how to mix and manure them, so as to make them as fertile as possible; how to prepare and collect manures ; how to drain land ; how to tend and fatten cattle ; how to manage the dairy ; how to breed cattle, so as best to improve the stock ; how to vary the succession of crops, so as to make the most of particular soils ; how to prune fruit-trees ; and, iu fact, the whole science of farming. Is it surprising that farmers educated in such a manner should be much more skilful, and should make much more out of their lands, than the farmers of our country ? Similar colleges are being established through- out Germany. But this is not all that is being done in foreign countries, in order to secure a scientific system of farming among the peasant proprietors. All the teachers of the village schools, as I shall hereafter show, are prepared for their duties in the villages, by a long and very careful preparation in the Normal colleges. P 2 26 Small Estates tend to Among other things which they learn in many of these col- leges, are botany, the art of pruning, and the art of gardening ; and in some of them, as in the Bernese Normal College, they are taught and practised in farming. This is done for two purposes ; first, in order to strengthen their sympathies for the peasants, among whom they have in after-life to labour, by accustoming them to all the habits of the peasants ; and, secondly, in order to enable them to give the children in the village schools a rudimentary knowledge of pruning, gardening, and farming, so as to insure their being taught, at least, the first principles of these arts, and so as to stimulate their interest in them, and to teach them that there is a right and a wrong way of conducting them. Boys who have received these ideas in early life will not afterwards scoff at instruction, but will always be ready, not only to receive, but to seek out, advice and assistance. Science is welcomed among the small farmers of foreign countries. Each is so anxious to emulate and surpass his neighbours, that any new invention which benefits one, is eagerly sought out and adopted by the others. The system of agriculture, therefore, good as it is among these intelligent peasant proprietors, is not at a standstill, but is making rapid progress. The governments, poor as they are, have ample funds to devote to the best possible education of all classes. No one who has travelled through the Rhine Provinces of Germany, through Prussia, Saxony, Holland, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and some of the Catholic cantons, as Soleure, Zug, and the upper part of the valley of the Rhone, can possibly deny the excellence, or the progressive improvement of the cultivation of the soil. The small farms round Berne, and in Saxon Switzerland, are so beautifully managed, that a traveller is tempted to believe them to be the property of rich men, who keep them up for their own amusement, and do not mind spending upon them in order to make them neat and good-looking. Not that there is really much expended on mere beautifying, but that everything is carefully kept in order, as by proprietors who feel an interest and a pride in their little properties. In some parts of Switzerland the farm-buildings are much plainer and much poorer than in others, as, for instance, in the Ober Vallais ; but in most parts the same careful and beautiful Improve Agriculture. 227 cultivation is to be seen, and the same degree of interest is dis- played by the proprietors in the condition of their little estates. Among these intelligent peasants who labour on their own lands, there is no need to get up ploughing matches, to offer premiums for the best crops, for the largest turnips, or for the finest potatoes ; or to get up cattle shows and prize exhibitions, in order to promote a good system of farming. The peasant farmers feel themselves too immediately interested in the state of their farms to need such inducements to exertion as these ; as they know that all they expend upon their little estates is a safe investment, and will be returned tenfold to themselves or to their children. This feeling stimulates the peasant proprie- tors of Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and France to spend their earnings upon their lands, to adopt every discoverable means of improving their systems of tillage, to send their chil- dren to the agricultural schools, and to bring them up in habits of industry and economy. I have spent a great deal of time among the peasant pro- prietors in different parts of Europe. I have resided or tra- velled about among them in North, South, and West Prussia, in North and South Holland, in Belgium, in the valleys of Switzerland, Styria, and the Tyrol, in Saxony, Bavaria, and upon the banks of the Rhine. In all these countries the same evidences of progress and im- provement may be seen among the peasants ; viz., a laboriously careful tillage of the fields, and cultivation of the gardens ; large, good, and substantial houses for the peasantry ; orderly and clean villages ; and great industry. I was assured, in the Rhine Provinces and in Saxony, that the face of the country had quite changed, since the laws tending to prevent the sale and division of the landed property had been altered ; and that the system of farming, the character of the houses, and the condition of the peasants, had progressively improved and were still improving Certainly, the appearance of the villages, houses, farms, and peasantry was singularly satisfactory. The cultivation of the land was as beautiful and perfect as I have ever seen. The careful manner in which the sods were broken up upon the ploughed fields, and the way in which all the weeds, stones, and rubbish were removed from the ground, in which every disposable bit of ground was brought under cultivation, and in which the land was drained of all superabundant moisture and manured, filled me with surprise at what Professor Rau most 2 28 Small Estates tend to truly calls, the " superhuman industry," " das iibermenschliche fleisz," of the peasants.^ Owing to the care with which the peasants constantly water their meadows with the liquid manures, which they collect and prepare in the farmyards, and which they carry out to their lands in small hand watering-carts, and spread over the lands in equal proportions, and owing also to the care with which they clear the ground of stones, rubbish, and noxious grasses, the meadows attain a remarkable luxuriance of verdure, and yield a peculiarly rich and innocuous hay, for the food of the well-stalled cattle during the winter months. During the summer months, in the valleys of Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Styria, as the snow gradually melts off the mountains, the cattle are driven higher and higher, to eat up the sweet grass of the mountain pasturages, while that of the valley meadows grows for the winter store of hay. The cattle leave the villages towards the end of spring, followed by two or three families, who accompany them from pasturage to pasturage as the snow melts, and who change their residence from one clidlet or log-hut to another, as the cattle get higher into the mountains. Those who attend the cattle, milk them, make the milk into butter and cheese in the mountain chalets, and send it down to the villages by the young men who carry up, at regular intervals, from the village, provisions for the consumption of the guardians of the cattle. In this way the cattle and their guardians gradually ascend the mountains, from pasturage to pasturage, until the middle of August ; and then, in the same manner, when the snow begins to descend in the higher pasturages, they gradually descend, and re-enter the village about the end of the month of September, when the cattle are housed for the winter. The day of the return of the cattle and their guardians is a grand gala- day in the villages, and is celebrated with great rejoicings. The 1 I only wish I could persuade my readers to go and stay in Saxon Switzerland, and examine for themselves the state of the peasant proprietors of that country. If a man wishes to ascertain the effect of a country's institutions, and the condition of a people, it is ridiculous for him to satisfy himself with merely passing through the country. I met, in 1848, at a tal'U d'hote at Ostend, an English traveller, who had just returned from Saxony ; I asked him what he thought of the condition of the peasants there. "Oh," he replied, "they're a miserable and wretched people, ground to the earth Iiy their rulers." "I am surprised," I ventured to observe, "to hear you express such an opinion of them, as I have spent some time in two several years among them, and I certainly thought I had never seen so happy or so flourish- ing a peasantry." " Oh very likely, very likely," he eagerly replied, " I don't know much about them. I stayed only three days there, and I don't speak the language." Imp7^ove Agrictilhire. 229 cattle are driven in from the mountains garlanded with flowers, and with bells hung round their necks ; the peasants assemble in their gayest attire ; and processions are formed to welcome back again the young people who have been so long absent, and the cattle, which are one great source of the prosperity of the village. In speaking of peasant proprietors, Sismondi, in his " Etudes sur I'Economie Politic|ue," says, " Wherever are found peasant proprietors, are also found that ease, that security, that inde- pendence, and that confidence in the future, which insure at the same time happiness and virtue. The peasant, who, with his family, does all the work on his little inheritance, who neither pays rent to any one above him, nor wages to any one below him, who regulates his production by his consumption, who eats his own corn, drinks his own wine, and is clothed with his own flax and wool, cares little about knowing the price of the market ; for he has little to sell and little to buy, and is never ruined by the revolutions of commerce. Far from fearing for the future, it is embellished by his hopes ; for he puts out to profit, for his children, or for ages to come, every instant which is not required by the labour of the year. Only a few moments, stolen from otherwise lost time, are required to put into the ground the nut, which in a hundred years will become a large tree ; to hollow cut the aqueduct, which will drain his field for ever ; to form the conduit, which will bring him a spring of water ; to improve, by many little labours and attentions bestowed in spare moments, all the kinds of animals and vegetables by which he is sur- rounded. This little patrimony is a true savings-bank, always ready to receive his little profits, and usefully to employ his leisure moments. The ever-acting powers of nature make his labours fruitful, and return him a hundredfold. The peasant has a strong sense of the happiness attached to the condition ot proprietor. Thus he is always eager to purchase land at any price. He pays for it more than it is worth ; but what reason he has to esteem at a high price the advantage of thenceforward always employing his labour advantageously, without being obliged to offer it cheap ; and of always finding his bread when he wants it, without being obliged to buy it dear ! '•' The peasant proprietor is, of all cultivators, the one who obtains most from the soil ; for it is he who thinks most of the future, as it is he who is the most enlightened by experience ; it is he also who makes the greatest profit of human labour. . . . 230 Small Estates tend to Of all cultivators he is the happiest. Moreover, on a given space land never produces so much food, or employs so many inhabi- tants without being exhausted, as when they are proprietors. Lastly, of all cultivators, the peasant proprietor is the one who gives most encouragement to commerce and industry ; for he is the richest." The same author says again,^ " When one travels through the whole of Switzerland, and through several parts of France, Italy, and Germany, it is not necessary to inquire, when looking at a piece of land, whether it belongs to a peasant proprietor, or to a farmer holding it under a landlord. The land of the peasant proprietors is marked out by the care bestowed upon it, by the growth of the vegetables and fruits useful to a peasant's family, and by the neatness and perfection of the cultivation." ]\Ir. NichoUs, in speaking of the small farms of Belgium, says,^ " In the farms of six acres, we found no plough, horse, or cart ; the only agricultural implement, besides the spade, fork, and wheelbarrow, which we observed, was a light wooden harrow which might be dragged by hand. The farmer had no assistance besides that of his wife and children, excepting sometimes in harvest, when we found he occasionally obtained the aid of a neighbour, or hired a labourer at a franc per day. The whole of the land is dug with the spade, and trenched very deep, but as the soil is light, the labour of digging is not great. The stock on the small farms, which we examined, consisted of a couple of cows, a calf or two, one or two pigs, sometimes a goat or two, and some poultry. The cows are altogether stall fed, on straw, turnips, clover, rye, vetches, carrots, potatoes, and a kind of soup made by boiling up potatoes, peas, beans, bran, cut Iray, (Sic, into one mass, and which, being given warm, is said to be very wholesome, and to promote the secretion of milk. . . . The small farmer collects in his stable, in a fosse lined with brick, the dung and urine of his cattle. He buys sufficient lime to mingle with the scouring of his ditches, and with the decayed leaves, potato-tops, &c., which he is careful to collect, in order to enrich his compost, which is dug over two or three times in the course of the winter. No portion of the farm is allowed to lie fallow, but it is divided into six or seven small plots, on each of which a system of rotation is adopted; and thus, with the aid of manure, the powers of the soil are main- 1 Noiiveaux Principes d'Economie Politique, lib. iii. ch. 3. • Inquiry into the Condition of the Labouring Classes in Holland and Belgium. Imp7^ove Agriculture. 231 tained unexhausted in a state of constant activity. . . . The labour of the field, the management of the cattle, the preparation of manure, the regulating the rotation of crops, and the necessity of carrying a certain portion of the produce to market, call for the constant exercise of industry, skill, and foresight among the Belgian peasant farmers ; and to these quahties they add a rigid economy, habitual sobriety, and a contented spirit, which finds its chief gratification beneath the domestic roof, from which the father of the family rarely wanders in search of excitement abroad." Reichensperger, speaking of Belgium, says,^ — "The small estates of this country carry away the palm for beautiful cultivation. ... In the districts of Fermonde and St. Nicholas, where the soil is rich, light, and moist, the land is divided into very small estates of a few acres in size. The cultivation of these little properties, — which is greatly assisted by the neighbour- hood of the towns and by the abundance of manure, — exhibits wonders of labour and industry, and nourishes a large and flourishing population by two, and even three, harvests a year. The beautiful cultivation of these little estates offers to every unprejudiced mind the clearest proof, that their greater rryoss product is not by any means totally consumed by the producers themselves, but that it yields a rich supply of products to the markets, while it nourishes the great population of the numerous towns of that country in the most excellent manner with all the necessaries of life." In speaking of the Palatinate, Mr. Howitt, whose habit it is, as Mr. Mill says,* " to see all English objects and English socialities e7i beau, and who, in treating of the Rhenish peasantry, certainly does not underrate the rudeness of their implements and the inferiority of their ploughing, nevertheless shows, that, under the invigorating influence of the feelings of proprietorship, they make up for the imperfections of their apparatus by the intensity of their application." Hesays,^ "The peasant harrows and clears his land till it is in the nicest order, and it is admir- able to see the crops which he obtains." The peasants are the great and ever-present object of country life. TJiey are the great population of the coiintyy, because they themselves are the possessors. This country is, in fact, for the most part, in 1 Die Agrarfrage, p. 126. 2 Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. ' Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, p. 27 ; Mill's Political Economy, vol. i. P- 313- 232 Small Estates tend to 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, and 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 corn-plot, his plot for mangel- 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, which is still greater. The Germans, indeed, are not so active and lively as the English ; you never see them in a bustle, or as though they meant to knock off a vast deal in a little time. . . . They are, on the contrary, slow, but for ever doing. They plod on from day to day, and from year to year, the most patient, untirable, and persevering of animals. 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 great proprietors, and becomes in consequence spiritless, purposeless. . . . The German bauer, on the contrary, looks on the country as made for him and his fellovvmen. 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." This latter observation is singularly correct. The manners of the peasants in Germany and Switzerland form, as I have already said, a very singular contrast to the manners of our peasants. They are polite but independent. The manner of salutation encourages this feeling. If a German gentleman ad- dresses a peasant, he raises his hat before the poor man, as we do before ladies. The peasant replies by a polite " Pray be covered, sir," and then, in good German, answers the questions put to him. Among all the men below the age of thirty-five, the Improve Agriadture. 233 good education given to them in the schools and in the army has tended to diminish, and, in some parts, altogether to get rid of, provincial dialects ; so that, in almost every case, a traveller who knows German, can easily understand a German or Swiss peasant ; and he will constantly hear them speak in the purest accent of the metropolis. This adds greatly to the pleasure of travelling about among the German and Swiss villages, as a tourist can almost always make companions of the peasants. The poorer classes of these countries so strongly feel that their situation in life depends on their own conduct, and that the richer men are only richer because they, or their immediate ancestors, have acted in life more prudently, that the mere fact of a man's having a better coat on his back and more polished manners than themselves, neither creates in their minds jealousy, nor renders the intercourse with such a person embarrassing to them. The fact of their being proprietors, or of their being able to make themselves proprietors, begets a certain gentlemanly and independent bearing in a Swiss and German peasant, which one seldom sees in any part of our own country. Mr. Howitt continues to describe the German peasants and their industry as follows : — " He has no ambition to be other than he is ; he wears the costume which his fathers wore, — the long coat and cocked or hollow-sided hat, the bauer's costume, — and he turns everything about him to account. . . . Nothing that can be possibly made use of is lost. The children maybe seen standing in the stream in the villages carefully washing weeds before they are given to the cattle. As we meet them and the women, with large bundles of grass on their heads tied in large cloths, one cannot but call to mind the immense quantities by our highway sides and great green lanes in England, and by wood sides, which grow and wither, but which might support many a poor man's cow. But with the German peasant it is not merely grass, it is everything, which is collected and appropriated. The cuttings of his vines are dried and trussed for winter fodder ; the very tops and refuse of his hemp are saved for the bedding of his cattle ; nay, the rough stalks of his poppies, after the heads are gathered, serve the same purpose, and are all converted into manure. When these are not sufficient, the children gather moss in the woods ; and, in summer, you constantly meet them coming down out of the hills with their great bundles of it. In autumn they gather the very fungi out of the woods to sell for poisoning 234 Small Estates tend to flies, and the stalks of a tall species of grass to sell for cleaning out their long pipes. Nothing is lost ; the leaves in the woods are raked up as they fall, and are brought home before winter for bedding cattle. The fir cones, which with us lie all scattered in the forest, are carefully collected to light their fires, or are carried in sacks and sold in the cities for that purpose. The slop from their yards and stables is all preserved, and carried to the fields in water-carts to irrigate their crops. The economy and care of the German peasant afford a striking lesson to all Europe. Time is as carefully economised as everything else. The peasants are early risers, and thus obtain hours of the day's beauty and freshness which others lose." In Germany and Switzerland the peasants rise a little before five. They then take a cup of coffee and go out. The Romanist churches and cathedrals are all open, and services are performed at five. Most of the Romanist peasants go in to prayers before going to their labour. It is a curious sight to see the women deposit their milk-pails, and the men their farming-tools, at the doors of the Romanist churches, go in to prayers, remain there about a quarter of an hour, and then, taking up their pails and tools, start for the fields and cattle. The priests of the canton of Friburg, in Switzerland, told me that they were all obliged by turn to rise between four and five in summer, in order to perform the early matins at five for the peasants. At about eight the peasants return home for breakfast. Before going out, they do not take more than a little coffee and a piece of bread. Mr. Howitt, in another part of his work on Germany, with reference to the same subject, says,'^ " There is not an hour of the year in which they do not find unceasing occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather permits them by any means to get out of doors, they are always finding something to do. They carry out their manure to their lands, while the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy cleaning ditches, and felling old fruit-trees, or such as do not bear well. Such of them as are too poor to lay in a sufficient stock of wood, find plenty of work in ascending into the mountainous woods, and bringing thence fuel. It would astonish the English common people to see the intense labour with which the Ger- mans earn their firewood. In the depth of frost and snow, go into any of their hills and woods, and there you find them 1 Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, p. 44. Improve Agriculttu^e. 235 hacking up stumps, cutting off branches, and gathering, by all means which the official wood police will allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of wood, which they convey home with the most incredible toil and patience." After a description of their careful and laborious vineyard culture, he continues :^ — "In England, with its great quantity of grass lands, and its large farms, so soon as the grain is in, and the fields are shut up for hay grass, the country seems in a comparative state of rest and quiet. But here, they are everywhere and for ever hoeing and mowing, planting and cutting, weeding and gathering. They have a succession of crops, like a market-gardener. They have their carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, saintfoin, lucerne, rape, cole- wort, cabbage, rotabaga, black turnips, Swedish and white turnips, teazles, Jerusalem artichokes, mangel-wurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, field beans and peas, vetches, Indian corn, buck- wheat madder for the manufacturer, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet — all or the greater part under the family management, in their own family allotments. They have had these things first to sow, many of them to transplant, to hoe, to weed, to clear of insects, to top ; many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. They have their water-meadows — ■ of which kind almost all their meadows are — to flood, to mow, and reflood ; watercourses to re-open and to make anew ; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market, with their green crops of vegetables ; their cattle, sheep, calves, fowls (most of them prisoners), and poultry to look after ; their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the leaves when they are too thick ; and any one may imagme what a scene of incessant labour it is." Mr. Mill,- in commenting on these remarks of Mr. Howitt's, says : — "This interesting sketch, to the general truth of which any observant traveller in that highly-cultivated and populous region can bear witness, accords with the more elaborate de- lineation by a distinguished inhabitant, Professor Rau, in his little treatise on ' The Agriculture of the Palatinate.' " ^ I have already shown* what decisive testimony this able writer bears to the industry, skill, and intelligence of the peasant proprietors of these provinces ; as well as to their scientific pre- ■ 1 Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, p. 50. 2 Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. p. 15. 3 Uber die Landwirthschaft der Rheinpfalz und insbesondere in der Heidelberger Gegend. Von D. Karl Heiiirich Rau, Heidelberg, 1830. , * Supra, pp. I22j 123, 236 Small Estates tend to paration and economy of manure ; their excellent rotation of crops ; the progressive improvement of their agriculture for generations past, and the spirit of further improvement which is still active ; the indefatigableness of the country-people ; their careful study of the seasons ; their excellent distribution of their labours ; and their zeal in turning to use every circum- stance which presents itself, in seizing upon every useful novelty which offers, and even in searching out new and advantageous methods. The writers on the state and progress of the Swiss cantons bear similar testimony to the happy results of releasing the land in those cantons from the old feudal laws of tenure, settlement, and devises, and of enabling the peasants to acquire land. Herr Strohmeier, in describing the progress which agriculture has made in the canton of Solothurn, since the peasants were freed from the feudal burdens, and became the proprietors of the land, says,i — " In the time of the old aristocracy, the peasant behind the plough was prized scarcely any higher than the cattle before the same. He was cramped and injured in his rights. He was weighed down by taxes, tithes, and payments. The fruit of his industry was consumed by idle priests and landlords, who kept him in dark ignorance and in wretched superstition. What was there in those times to urge the peasant or the farmer to industry and activity, or to a better cultivation of the land ? " Herr Strohmeier then says, that since the peasants have been enabled to purchase their lands, and make themselves pro- prietors, and since the intellect of the people has been raised and enlightened by means of the schools and the teachers, the system of agriculture, the agricultural implements, the cultiva- tion of the meadows, their irrigation and manuring, the cultiva- tion of the gardens, and the industry of the people, have, with few exceptions, greatly improved. He says, that the example of the Bernese has stimulated the people of Soleure very greatly, and that the cultivation of the greatest part of the canton has attained a very high degree of perfection. Several of the writers on the different cantons of Switzerland, are of opinion that the subdivision in some parts is extreme, and that it is in such cases injurious to scientific and econo- mical farming, when compared to the farming of the freehold estates of from 20 to 50 acres ; but they all agree that, even 1 Gemiilde der Schweitz, vol. x. p 8i. Improve AgnctUtii7'e. 237 in the cases of the smaller farms, the industry and unwearied perseverance of the owners is quite wonderful, and none of these writers ever think of comparing the cultivation of lease- hold estates to that of estates cultivated by the owners them- selves. Thus Professor VuUiemin, in describing the progress of agri- culture in the canton of Vaud, after saying that the subdivision is excessive, and that a landowner who possesses fifteen acres is considered to be well off (wohlhabend), writes thus : ' — " From this great subdivision of the land spring both good and evil. The land, which is cultivated by occupiers who are themselves the owners of the soil, is farmed with extraordinary (unge- wohnlichen) care and industry, although often with more un- scientific hands, and at greater cost than that of the larger proprietor farmers." Professor Vulliemin says, however, that this great subdivision is lessening, and that the smallest of the estates are being united again. As the peasants get better educated, they learn to cal- culate better what quantity of land will best repay one man's or one family's labours ; and they acquire a desn-e to take a higher and more comfortable position in society than that of the smallest proprietors. They are not content to settle down upon the smallest farms. They defer their marriages until they can purchase larger farms, and more respectable positions among their neighbours. The more education advances, the more will the excessive subdivision diminish. But even where the subdivision is too great for the most economical farming, still even there all the authorities concur in asserting that the condition of the peasantry is most pros- perous, that it has been steadily and continuously improving, and that the industry of the small farmers is quite wonderful. Herr von Knonau, in speaking of the agriculture of the canton of Zurich, says :' — '"With few exceptions the land is very much subdivided, one may almost say, split up. There are very few estates of lOO acres, and scarcely five of more than 200 acres in size. . . . The canton of Zurich shows what industry is able to win from the ground. The Zurich peasant has cultivated his little plot of ground with such intense in- dustry that his field agriculture, in many parts of the canton, and especially on the borders of the lake, resembles the cultivation of a garden. There, too, you may find the most valuable deposits 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, vol. xix. p. 305. 2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 243. 238 Srnall Estates tend to of manure, beautiful meadows, the finest orchards, and the most productive vineyard cultivation," Herr von Knonau says, in another part of the same report, that since the government has sold to the peasants lands which formerly belonged to the state, and has in this manner created a gi-eat number of new small peas- ants' properties, very often a third or a fourth of the land which formerly belonged to the state, and was let out to farmers, pro- duces at present as much corn, and supports as jnany head of cattle, as the whole estate formej'ly did when it was ctiltivated by leasehold tenants} To the same effect is the testimony of Herr Pupikofer, mem- ber of the Council of Education of the canton of Thurgovie, in his account of this canton. He says,^ "The division of the great tracts of land belonging to the government, and the creation of small peasant-properties out of them have had this effect, that often a third or a fourth of the original estate produces now as much corn, ajid supports as many cattle, as the whole of the original estate did when it was cultivated by lessees P Herr Pupikofer, however, agrees with several of the Swiss writers in thinking, that, although the division of the land among the peasants improves the productiveness of the land and the moral character of the peasants, it is injurious to the former when subdivided in portions of less than an acre in size ; and he suggests that a minimum ought to be defined by law, and that no plots of land should be allowed to be sold which are in size below this minimum. Herr von Knonau gives also a long and very interesting account of the exceeding great care bestowed by the peasant- farmers of the canton of Zurich in managing their cattle, and in collecting and preparing the manure for their lands.^ I shall give the substance of this account, as it is another proof of the industry, intelligence, and scientific economy and management, which always distinguish peasant proprietors. Let my readers compare the following facts, with the waste which they must have observed in most of our English farms : — The length of the shippen depends upon the number of cattle kept by the farmer. It is divided into stalls. Along the bottom of these stalls a space of about four or five feet is left open as a passage. Between the stalls and the passage an open stone- gutter is made, to carry off the drainings of the stalls. These 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, vol. i. p. 245. 2 ibid., vol. xvii. p. 73. 2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 249. Improve Agrictilture. 239 latter slope verj' gently down to the gutter. Thefloor of the upper part of the stall is generally boarded, and upon the boards is spread some gravel or sand, in order that the cattle may find a good hold for their fore feet, and may be able to raise themselves easily from the ground. The oxen and horses are fastened in the stalls nearest, and the cows in those furthest from the door, as these latter are not so often taken out of the shippens as the former. A fresh bed is laid down under each cow, at least twice a day, generally in the mornings and in the evenings, before milking. Whoever has sufficient straw, changes the bedding three or four times a day. Every morning, at an early hour, each stall is cleaned out, and all the dung and old bedding are turned out into the well prepared for them in the farmyard. Into this well, the gutter, which runs down the shippen at the bottom of the stalls, is made to empty itself, so that the liquid manure may run into the dung and old bedding, and mix with them. The con- tents of the well are taken out several times a week, and are thrown upon the dung-heap. The liquid manure, which remains in the well, is then mixed with water, and is carried out upon the fields and spread over them by means of hand watering- carts. All the manure from the house is also preserved and mixed with the rest upon the dung-heap. In the towns, also, the manure is carefully preserved, and is sold out to those farmers who cannot obtain a sufficient quantity from their own farmyards. In different parts of the canton, the manure obtained from the farmyards, in the manner I have above narrated, is mixed with various ingredients, in order to make it suitable for the peculiar character of the land for which it is intended. In Switzerland, the size of the estates varies generally from one acre to one hundred and fifty. Some few estates of greater size are to be found, but they are very rare. Mo3t of the married peasants, and most of the inhabitants of the smaller towns, possess as their own property either a farm or at least a garden. Herr von Knonau, the keeper of the archives of the canton of Zurich,^ says, that formerly many of the houses were thatched ; but that of late years the custom of thatching houses has been given up, partly because the science of agriculture has been so much improved, that the people are not willing to expend upon 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, vol. i. p. 235. 240 Small Estates tend to the covering of the houses straw and other materials which are useful in making good manures. These pictures of unwearied assiduity, and what may be called affectionate interest in the land, are borne out in regard to the more intelligent cantons of Switzerland, by English observers. " In walking anywhere in the neighbourhood of Zurich," says Mr. Inglis,^ "in looking to the right or to the left, one is struck with the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants ; and if we learn that a proprietor here has a return of ten per cent., we are inclined to say, ' he deserves it.' I speak at present of country labour ; though I believe that in every kind of trade, also, the people of Zurich are remarkable for their assiduity ; but in the industry they show in the cultivation of their land, I may safely say they are unrivalled. When I used to open my casement between four and five in the morning, to look out upon the lake and the distant Alps, I saw the labourer in the fields; and when I returned from an evening walk, long after sunset, as late per- haps as half-past eight, there was the labourer mowing his grass, or tying up his vines. ... It is impossible to look at a field, a garden, a hedging, scarcely even a tree, a flower, or a vegetable, without perceiving proofs of the extreme care and industry that are bestowed upon the cultivation of the soil. If, for example, a path runs through, or by the side of a field of grain, the corn is not, as in England, permitted to hang over the path, exposed to be pulled or trodden down by every passer ; it is everywhere bounded by a fence ; stakes are placed at intervals of about a yard, and about two or three feet from the ground, boughs of trees are passed longitudinally along. If you look into afield towards evening, where there are large beds of cauliflower or cabbage, you will find that every single plant has been watered. In the gardens, which around Zurich are extremely large, the most punctilious care is evinced in every production that grows. The vegetables are planted with seemingly mathematical accuracy ; not a single weed is to be seen, not a single stone. Plants are not earthed up as with us ; but are planted each in a small hollow, into which a little manure is put, and each plant is watered daily. Where seeds are sown, the earth directly above is broken into the finest powder ; every shrub, every flower, is tied to a stake ; and where there is wall-fruit, a trellis is erected against a wall, to which the boughs are fastened ; and there is not a single thing that has not its appropriate resting-place." 1 Quoted by Mr. Mill in his Political Economy, vol. i. p. 304. , Impj^ove Agriculture. 241 Of one of the remote valleys of the High Alps, the same writer thus expresses himself : — " In the whole of the Engadine, the land belongs to the peasantry, who, like the inhabitants of every other place where this state of things exists, vary greatly in the extent of their possessions. . . . Generally speaking, an Engadine peasant lives entirely upon the produce of his land, with the exception of the few articles of foreign growth required in his family, such as coffee, sugar, and wine. Flax is grown, prepared, spun, and woven, without ever leaving his house. He has his own wool which is converted into a blue coat, with- out passing through the hands of either the dyer or the tailor. 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 can 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. Wherever grass will grow, there it is ; where- ever a rock will bear a blade, verdure is seen upon it ; wherever an ear of rye will ripen, there it is to be found. Barley and oats have also their appropriate spots : and wherever it is possible to ripen a little patch of wheat, the cultivation of it is attempted. In no country in 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." One of the countries, in which peasant proprietors are of oldest date and most numerous in proportion to the population, is Norway. Of the social and economical condition of that country a very interesting account has been given by Mr. Laing. He describes the effects of the subdivision of land in that country as being most satisfactory in every respect. I shall quote a few passages : ^ — " If small proprietors are not good farmers, it is not from the same cause here, which we are told makes them so in Scotland — indolence and want of exertion. The extent to which irrigation is carried on in these glens and valleys, shows a spirit of exei'tion and co-ope7'aiio7i, to which the latter can show nothing snnilar. Hay being the principal winter support of live stock, and both it and corn, as well as potatoes, being liable, from th-: shallow soil and powerful reflection of sunshine from the rocks, to be burnt and withered up, the greatest exertions are made to bring 1 Quoted in Mi.l's Political Economy, vol. i. 242 Small Estates tend to water from the head of each glen, along such a level, as will give the command of it to each farmer at the head of his fields. This is done by leading it in wooden troughs (the half of a tree roughly- scooped) from the highest perennial stream among the hills, through woods, across ravines, and along the rocky, often per- pendicular, sides of the glens ; and by giving from this main trough a lateral one to each farmer in passing the head of his farm. He distributes this supply by movable troughs among his fields ; and at this season waters each rig successively with scoops, like those used by bleachers in watering cloth, laying his trough between every two rigs. One would not believe, without seeing it, how very large an extent of land is traversed expedi- tiously by these artificial showers. The extent of the main troughs is very great. In one glen I walked ten miles, and found it iroughed on both sides ; on one, the chain is continued down the main valley for forty miles. Those may be bad farmers who do such things ; but they are not indolent, nor ignorant of the principle of working in concert, and keeping up establishments for common benefit. They are, undoubtedly, in these respects, far in advance of any community of cotters in our Highland glens. They feel as proprietors who receive the advantage of their own exertions. The excellent state of the roads and bridges is another proof that the country is inhabited by people who have a common interest to keep it under repair. There are no tolls." On the admirable effects of peasant proprietorship in other parts of Europe, the same writer expresses himself as follows; ' — " If we listen to the large farmer, the scientific agriculturist, the (English) political economist, good farming must perish with large farms ; the very idea that good farming can exist, unless on large farms cultivated with great capital, they hold to be absurd. Draining, manuring, economical arrangement, cleaning the land, regular rotations, valuable stock and imple- ments, all belong exclusively to large farms, worked by large capital and by hired labour. This reads very well ; but if we laise our eyes from their books to their fields, and coolly com- pare what we see in the best districts farmed in large farms, and what we see in the best districts farmed in small farms, we see, and there is no blinking the fact, better crops on the ground in Flanders, East Friesland, Holstein, in short, on the whole line of the arable land of equal quality of the Continent, froni the Sound to Calais, than we see on the line of British coast, 1 Quoted ia Mill's Pulitical Economy, vol. u hup rove Agrictiltiire. 243 opposite to this line nnd in the same latitudes, from the Firth of Forth all round to Dover. Minute labour on small portions of arable ground gives evidently, in equal soils and climate, a superior productiveness, where these small portions belong- in properly, as in Flanders, Holland, Friesland, and Ditmarsh in Holstein, to the farmer. It is not pretended, by our agricultural writers, that our large farmers, even in Berwickshire, Roxburgh- shire, 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 tlie small farmers of Flanders or their system. In the best-farmed parish in Scotland or England, more land is wasted in the corners and borders of the fields of lar^e farms : in the roads through them, unnecessarily wide because they are bad, and bad because they are wide; in neglected com- mons, waste spots, useless belts and clumps of sorry trees, and such unproductive areas ; than would maintain the poor of the parish, if they were all laid together and cultivated. But large capital applied to farming is, of course, only applied to the very- best of the soils of a country. It cannot touch the small unpro- ductive spots, which require more time and labour to fertilise them, than is consistent with a quick return of capital. But, although hired time and labour cannot be applied beneficially to such cultivation, the owner's own time and labour may. He is working for no higher retur-ns, at first, from his land than a bare living. But, in the course of generations, fertility and value are produced ; a better living, and even very improved processes of husbandry, are attained. Furrow draining, stall feeding all summer, liquid manures, are universal in the hus- bandry of the small farms of Flanders, Lombardy, and Switzer- land. Our most improving districts, under large farms, are but beginning to adopt them. Dairy husbandry even, and the manufacture of the largest cheeses, by the co-operation of many small farmers — the mutual assurance of property against fire and hailstorms, by the co-operation of small farmers — the most scientific and expensive of all agricultural operations in modern times, the manufacture of beetroot sugar — the supply of the European markets with flax and hemp, by the husbandry of small farmers — the abundance of legumes, fruits, poultry, in the usual diet even of the lowest classes abroad, and the total want of such variety at the tables even of our middle classes, and this variety and abundance essentially connected with the 244 Small Estates tend to husbandry of small farmers — all these are features in the occu- pation of a country by small proprietor farmers, which must make the inquirer pause before he admits the dogma of our land doctors at home, that large farms worked by hired labour and great capital can alone bring out the greatest productiveness of the soil, and furnish the greatest supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life to the inhabitants of a country." The scientific and economical manner in which the Swiss peasant proprietors combine to carry on cheese-making by their united capital, deserves to be noted. ^ " Ench parish in Switzerland hires a man, generally from the district of Gruyire, in the Canton of Friburg, to take care of the herd and make the cheese. One cheeseman, one pressman or assistant, and one cowherd, are considered necessary for every forty cows. The owners of the cows get credit, each of them, in a book daily, for the quantity of milk given by each cow. The cheese- man and his assistants milk the cows, put the milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the end of the season each owner receives the weight of cheese, proportionate to the quantity of milk his cows have delivered. By this co-operative plan, instead of the small-sized unmarketable cheeses only, which each could produce out of his three or four cows' milk, he has the same weight in large marketable cheese, superior in quality, because made by people who attend to no other business. The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so much per head of the cows, in money or in cheese ; or sometimes they hire the cows, and pay the owners in money or cheese." A similar system exists in the French Jura. One of the most remarkable points in this .interesting case of combination of labour, is the con- fidence, which it supposes, and which experience must justify, in the integrity of the persons employed. The admirable and scientific character of the system of f:irm- ing pursued by the small farmers and peasant-proprietors of Holland, is attested by the writer of a carefully-prepared, sys- tematic treatise on Flemish husbandry, in the Farmer's Series of the Society for the Dift'usion of Useful Knowledo-e. He observes, that the Flemish agriculturist- "seems to want nothing but a space to work upon. Whatever be the qunlity or texture of the soil, in time he will make it produce something. 1 Notes of a Traveller, p. 351 ; Mill's Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. _ 2 Geographical Dictionary, art. " Bel-ium," pp. 4. 11 ; Mill's Principles of Poli- tical Eco.aomy, vol. i. p. 316. Imp rove Agriculitire. ' 245 The sands in ihe Campine can be compared to nothing but the sand on the seashore, which they probably were originally. It is highly interesting to follow, step by step, the progress of improvement. Here you see a cottage and rude cowshed erected on a spot of the most unpromising aspect. The loose white sand blown into irregular mounds, is only kept together by the roots of the heath ; a small spot only is levelled and surrounded by a ditch; part of this is covered with young broom, part is planted with potatoes, and perhaps a small patch of diminutive clover may show itself ; but manures, both solid and liquid, are collecting, and this is the nucleus from which, in a few years, a little farm will spread around. ... If there is no manure at hand, the only thing that can be sown on pure sand, at first, is broom : this grows in the most barren soils ; in three years it is fit to cut, and produces some return in fnggots for the bakers and brickmakers. The leaves which have fallen have somewhat enriched the soil, and the fibres of the roots have given a certain degree of compactness. It may now be sown with buckwheat, or even with rye, without manure. By the time this is reaped, some manure may have been collected, and a regular course of cropping may begin. As soon as clover and potatoes enable the farmer to keep cows and make manure, the improvement goes on rapidly ; in a few years the soil undergoes a complete change ; it becomes mellow and retentive of moisture, and enriched by the vegetable matter afforded by the decomposition of the roots of clover and other plants. . . . After the land has been gradually brought into a good state, and is cultivated in a regular manner, there appears much less difference between the soils which have been origi- nally good, and those which have been made so by labour and industry — at least, the crops in both appear more nearly alike at harvest than is the case m soils of different qualities in other countries. This is a great proof of the excellency of the Flemish system ; for it shows that the land is in a constant state of improvement, and that the deficiency of the soil is compensated by greater attention to tillage and manuring, especially the latter." Mr. Mill, in reasoning on the preceding account of Flemish husbandry, says : ^ — "The people, who labour thus intensely, because labouring fo)' tJiemselves, have practised for centuries those principles of rotation of crops and economy of manures, 1 See Piiiiciples of Political Economy, vol. i. 246 Small Estates tend to which in England are counted among modern discoveries ; and even now, the superiority of their agriculture, as a whole, to that of England, is admitted by competent judges. ' The cultivation of a poor light soil, or a moderate soil,' says the writer last quoted,^ 'is generally superior in Flanders to that of the most improved farms of the same kind in Britain. We surpass the Flemish farmer greatly in capital, in varied imple- ments of tillage, in the choice and breeding of cattle and sheep' (though, according to the same authority,^ they are much 'before us in the feeding of their cows'), 'and the British farmer is in general a man of superior education to the Flemish peasant. But in the minute attention to the qualities of the soil, in the management and application of manures of different kinds, in the judicious succession of crops, and especially in the economy of land, so that every part of it shall be in a con- stant state of production, we have still something to learn from the Flemings,' and not from an instructed and enterprising Fleming here and there, but from the general practice. " Much of the most highly cultivated part of the country consists of peasant properties, managed by the proprietors, always either wholly or partly by spade husbandry.^ ' When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land, and entirely fed on artificial grasses or roots. This mode of cultivation is principally adopted in the Waes district, where properties are very small. All the labour is done by the different members of the family;' children soon beginning 'to assist in various minute operations, according to their age and strength, such as weeding, hoeing, feeding the cows. If they can raise rye and wheat enough to make their bread, and potatoes, turnips, carrots, and clover for the cows, they do well ; and the produce of the sale of their rape-seed, their flax, their hemp, and their butter, after deducting the expense of manure purchased, which is always considerable, gives them a very good profit. Supposing the whole extent of the land to be six acres, which is not an uncommon occupation, and which one man can manage,' then (after describing the cultivation) ' if a man with his wife and three young children are considered as equal to three and a half grown up men, the family will require thirty-nine bushels of grain, forty-nine bushels of potatoes, a fat hog, and the butter and milk of one cow. An acre and a half of land will 1 Fkmish Husbaridry, p. 3. * Ibid., p. 13. ' Ibid., pp. 73, ct sco. Improve Agricidttire. 247 produce the grain and potatoes, and allow some corn to finish the fattening of the hog, which has the extra buttermilk ; another acre in clover, carrots, and potatoes, together with the stubble turnips, will more than feed the cow ; consequently two acres and a half of land are sufficient to feed this family, and the produce of the other three and a half may be sold to pay the rent or the interest of purchase-money, wear and tear of implements, extra manure, and clothes for the family. But these acres are the most profitable in the farm, for the hemp, flax, and colza are included ; and by having another acre in clover and roots, a second cow can be kept, and its produce sold. We have, therefore, a solution of the problem, 'How a family can live and thrive on six acres of moderate land.' After show- ing by calculation that this extent of land can be cultivated in the most perfect manner by the family, without any aid from hired labour, the writer continues, ' In a farm of ten acres, entirely cultivated by the spade, the addition of a man and a woman to the members of the family will render all the opera- tions more easy ; and, with a horse and cart to carry out the manure, and bring home the produce, and occasionally draw the harrows, fifteen acres may be very well cultivated. . . . Thus it will be seen' (this is the result of some pages of details and calculations^) 'that by spade husbandry, an industrious man with a small capital, occupying only 15 acres of good light land, may not only live and bring up a isLmxly, payi)ig a good re7it,\iy\1 may accumulate a considerable sum in the course of his life.' But the indefatigable industry by which he accom- plishes this, and of which so large a portion is expended, not in the mere cultivation, but in the improvement, for a distant return, of the soil itself — has that industry no connection with not paying the rent ? Could it exist without presupposing, at least, a virtually permanent tenure ? "As to their mode of living, ' 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.' It is on this kind of evidence that English travellers, as they hurry through Europe, pronounce the peasantry of every Con- tinental country poor and miserable ; its agricultural and social system a failure ; and the English the only regime under which labourers are well off. It is, truly enough, the only regime 1 Flemiih Husbandry, p. 8i. 248 Small Estates tend to under which labourers, whether well off or not, never attempt to be bettei'. So little are English observers accustomed to consider ic possible that a labourer should not spend all he earns, that they habitually mistake the signs of economy for those oi poverty. Observe the true interpretation of the phenomena. " ' Accordingly, 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 the competition, that land pays little more than two per cent, interest for the purchase-money. Large properties gradually disappear, and are divided into small por- tions, which sell at a high rate. But the wealth and industry of the population is continuaUy increasing, being rather diffused through the masses, than accumulated in individuals.' " With facts like these known and accessible,^ it is not a little surprising to find the case of Flanders referred to, not in recommendation of peasant properties, but as a warning against them, on no better ground than a presumptive excess of popula- tion, inferred from the distress which existed among the peasantry of Brabant and East Flanders, in the disastrous years 1S46, 1847. The evidence, which I have cited from a writer conversant with the subject, and having no economical theory to support, shows that the distress, whatever may have been its severity, arose from no insufficiency in these little properties to supply abundantly, in any ordinary circumstances, the wants of all whom they have to maintain. It arose from the essential condition, to which those are subject who employ land of their own in growing their own food, namely, that the vicissitudes of the seasons must be borne by themselves, and cannot, as in the case of large farmers, be shifted from them to the consumer. When we remember the season of 1846, a partial failure of all kinds of grain, and an almost total one of the potatoes, it is no wonder that in so unusual a calamity, the produce of six acres, half of them sown with flax, hemp, or oil seeds, should fall short of a year's provision for a family. But we are not to contrast the distressed Flemish peasant with an English capitalist who farms several hundred acres of land. If the peasant were an English- man, he would not be a capitalist, but a day-labourer under a capitalist ; and is there no distress in times of dearth among day-labourers.'' Was there none that year, in countries where small proprietors and small farmers are unknown "i Is there 1 Mr. Mill's Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. p. 32J. Improve AgnciUbLve. 249 any reason whatever to believe that the distress was greater in Belgium, than corresponds to the proportional extent of the failure of crops compared with other countries ? " It is from France, however, that impressions unfavourable to peasant properties are generally drawn ; it is in P'rance thnt the system is so often asserted to have brou<^ht forth its fruit, in the most wretched possible agriculture, and to be rapidly reducing, if not to have already reduced, the peasantry, by subdivision of land, to the verge of starvation. // is diffiiiclt to account for the general prevalence of itnpressions so much the reverse of the tneth. I'he agriculture of France was wretched, and the peasantry in great indigence, before the Revolution. At that time they were not, generally speaking, landed proprietors. There were, however, considerable districts of France, where the land even then was, to a great extent, the property of the peas- antry, and among these, were many of the most conspicuous exceptions to the general bad agriculture and to the general poverty. An authority on this point not to be disputed, is Arthur Young, the inveterate enemy of small farms, the Coryphceus of the modern English school of agriculturists, who, nevertheless, while travelling over nearly the whole of France in 17S7, 17S8, and 1789, when he finds remarkable excellence of cultivation, NEVER HESITATES TO ASCRIBE IT TO PEASANT PROPERTY. ' Leaving Sauve,' says he,^ ' I was much struck with a large tract of land, seemingly nothing but huge rocks ; yet most of it enclosed and planted with the most industrious attention. Every man has an olive, a mulberry, an almond, or a peach tree, and vines scattered among them ; so that the whole ground is covered with the oddest mixture of these plants and bulging rocks that can be conceived. The inhabitants of this village deserve encouragement for their industry ; and if I were a French minister they should have it. They would soon turn all the deserts around them into gardens. Such a knot of active husbandmen, who turn their rocks into scenes of fertility, because I suppose their own, would do the sa>ne by the wastes^ if animated by the same omnipotent principle.' Again,^ 'Walk to Rossendal' (near Dunkirk), ' where M. le Brun has an improvement on the dunes, which he very obligingly showed me. Between the town and that place is a great number of neat little houses, built each with its garden, and one or two fields enclosed, of most wretched, blowing, dtcne sand, naturally as 1 Arthur Young's Travels in France, vol. i. p. 50. 2 Ibid., p. £8. 250 Small Estates tend to white as snow, but improved by industry. The magic of property turns sand to gold' And again/ ' Going out of Gange, I was surprised to find by far the greatest exertion in irrigation which I had yet seen in France ; and then passed by some steep mountains highly cultivated in terraces. Much watering at St. Lawrence. The scenery very interesting to a farmer. From Gauge to the mountain of rougli ground, which I crossed, the ride has been the most interesting which I have taken in France ; the efforts of industry the most vigorous ; the animatioti the most lively. An activity has been he?-e that has swept away all diffictdties before it, and has clothed the very rocks with verdu7-e. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause ; the enjoy nietit of property must have done it. 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 his description of the country at the foot of the Western Pyrenees, he says,- ' I took the road to Moneng, and came presently to a scene, which was so new to me in France, that I could hardly believe my own eyes. A succession of many well- built, tight, and comfortable farming cottages, built of stones and covered with tiles ; each having its little garden, enclosed by dipt thorn-hedges, with plenty of peach and other fruit trees, some fine oaks scattered in the hedges, and young trees nursed up with so much care, that nothing but the fostering attention of the owner could effect anything like it. To every house belongs a farm perfectly well enclosed, with grass borders mown and neatly kept around the cornfields, with gates to pass from one enclosure to another. There are some parts of England (where small yeomen still remain) that resemble this country of Bdarn ; but we have very little that is equal to what I have seen in this ride of twelve miles from Pau to Moneng. It is all in the hands of little proprietors, without the farms being so small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. An air of neatness, warmth, and comfort, breathes over the whole. It is visible in their new-built houses and stables ; in their little gardens ; in their hedges ; in the courts before their doors ; even in the coops for their poultry, and the sties for their hogs. A peasant does not think of rendering his pig comfortable, if his own happiness hang by a thread of a nine years' lease. We are now in Be'arn, within a few miles of the cradle of Henry IV. i Young, vol. i. p. 51. 2 Ibld.jpp 322-324. rove AgriailUire. 2 5 1 Imp) Do they inlicrit these blessings from that good prince ? The benignant genius of that good monarch seems to reign still over the country ; each peasant has the fowl in the poi.'' He fre- quently notices the excellence of the agriculture of French Flanders where the farms ^ are all small, aiidmiicli in tJie /lands of little propi-ietorsH ^ In the Pays de Caux, also a country of small proprietors, the agriculture was miserable ; of which his explanation was, that it ' is a manufacturing country, and farm- ing is but a secondary pursuit to the cotton fabric, which spreads over the whole of it.'^ Tlie same district is still a seat of manufactures, and a country of small proprietors ; and is now, wJictlicr wc judge from the appearance of the crops or from the official returns, one of the best citltii'ated in France. In ' Flanders, Alsace, and part of Artois, as well as on the banks of the Garonne, France possesses a husbandry equal to our own.'^ These countries, and a considerable part of Meecy, arc cultivated mo7-e like gardens, from the smallness of proper- ties!^ In those districts the admirable rotation of crops, so long practised in Italy, but at that time generally neglected in France, was already universal. ' The rapid succession of crops, the harvest of one being but the signal for sowing immediately for a second' (the same fact wliich must strike all observers in the valley of the Rhine) ' can scarcely be carried to greater per- fection ; and this is a point perhaps of all others the most essential to good husbandry, when such crops are so justly distributed as we generally find them in the provinces ; cleaning and ameliorating ones being made the preparation for such as foul and exhaust.' " It must not, however, be supposed that Arthur Young's testimony on the subject of peasant properties is uniformly favourable. In Lorrame, Champagne, and elsewhere, he finds the agriculture bad, and the small proprietors very miserable, in consequence, as he says, of the extreme subdivision of the land. His opinion is thus summed up :® — 'Before I travelled, I conceived that small farms in property were very susceptible of good cultivation, and that the occupier of such, having no rent to pay, might be sufficiently at his ease to work improve- ments, and carry on a vigorous husbandry ; but what I have seen in France has greatly lessened my good opinion of them. In Flanders, I saw excellent husbandry on properties of tliiriy 1 Yuung, vol. i. pp. 322-324. 2 Ibid., p. 325. 3 Ibid., p. 357. * Ibid., p. 364. ^ Ibid., p. 412. 252 Small Estates tend to to one hundred acres ; but we seldom find here such small patches of property as are common in other provinces. In Alsace and on the Garonne, that is, on soils of such exuberant fertility as to demand no exertions, some small properties also are well cultivated. In Bdarn, I passed through a region of little farmers, whose appearance, neatness, ease, and happiness charmed me ; it was what property alone could, on a small scale, effect ; but these were by no means contemptibly small : they are, as I judged from the distance from house to house, from 40 to 80 acres. Except these, and a very few other instances, I saw nothing respectable on small properties, except a most unremitting industry. Indeed, 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 could 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, and this truth is of such force and extent, that I know no way so sure of carrying tillage to a mountain top, as by permitting the adjoining villagers to acquire it in property ; in fact, we see, that in the mountains of Languedoc, &c., they have conveyed earth in baskets on their backs, to form a soil where nature had denied it.' "The experience, therefore," Mr. Mill goes on to say, "of this celebrated agriculturist and apostle of la grande culture may be said to be, that the effect of small properties, cultivated by peasant proprietors, is admirable, when they are not too small ; so small, namely, as not to fully occupy the time and attentiojt of the family : for he often complains, with great apparent reason, of the quantity of idle time which the peasantry had on their hands when the land was in very small portions, notwith- standing the ardour with which they toiled to improve their little patrimony, in every way which their knowledge or ingenuity could suggest. He recommends, accordingly, that a Innit of subdivision should be fixed by law ; and this is by no means an indefensible proposition in countries, if such thire are, where the niorcellement, having already gone further tlian the state of capital and the nature of the staple articles of cultivation render advisable, still continues progressive. That each peasant should tave a pntch of land, even in full property, if it is not sufficient to support him in comfort, is a system with all the disadvantages, Improve the Houses and Villages. 253 and scarcely any of the benefits, of small properties ; since he must either live in indigence on the produce of his land, or depend as habitually, as if he had no landed possessions, on the wages of hired labour ; which besides, if all the lands surround- ing him are held in a similar manner, he has little opportunity of finding. The benefits of peasant properties are conditional upon their not being too much subdivided ; that is, upon 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 condi- tion of the labouring classes, into one of population — Are small properties a stimulus to undue multiplication, or a check to it ?" It has been already shown, in a previous section of this chapter, and by indisputable statistics, that small properties do form one of the strongest possible checks upon the undue increase of population. That there is no need to fear that a repeal of the entail and settlement laws would lead to great subdivision of land, will be shown in the last section of this chapter, from the fact, that even in France, luhere the law actually attonpts to FORCE it, the subdivision is actually divn'nishiiig, and the average size of the estates is progressively increasing. From the authorities, facts, and statistics given in this present section, it is then clear, that independently of the vast moral benefits accruing from a system of small estates, the economical advantages arising from it are great and numerous, as it leads to a more economical use of tlie land ; it prevents any waste of portions of it ; it tends to improve its tillage, weeding, and cleaning ; it provides better systems of farming, better rotations of crops, and more economical and scientitic management of manures ; and by these means it vastly increases the total produce of the land, while it stimulates in an extra- ordinary manner the science, industry, intelligence, virtue, prosperity, and happiness of the farmers and peasant classes of the.country. 6. The education of the poor, and the division of the la fid, tetid greatly to improve the character of their houses and of their villages. Every one with whom I conversed in Germany and Switzer- land, concurred in assuring me that a great and visible improve- 254 ^-^^^ Division of the Land tends to ment hnd taken place in the condition of the houses of the poor since 1816, when the lands were divided, and when the educa- tion of the people was commenced. The children are accustomed for so many years to the clean, well-ventilated, and comfortable school-rooms, and the young men, after leaving the schools, are so long accustomed to the clean and roomy barracks, that by the time they have attained the age of twenty-one, when they return to their homes, they are as unable as our shopkeepers would be to live in such filthy cellars and hovels, as those in which the Irish and many of our own poor vcL^etate. A good roomy house becomes a positive necessity to them, just as a comfortable parlour is a necessary luxury to an English shopkeeper. Until a peasant of these countries can afford a comfortable house and a plot of land, he defers his marriage, in the majority of instances. The villages of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland show the truth of these assertions. The houses of the peasantry in those parts of these countries, where the peasants Tix^ proprietors^ are remarkably good. They are always at least two, and often three, storeys high. They are very substantially built. The windows are large, and numerous, and the rooms are lofty and commodious. The villages in those parts of Prussia where the land is divided, look like groups of houses belonging to sub- stantial farmers. Accustomed as my eye had always been to the low-roofed, one-storied, and poorly built cottages of English labourers, 1 often found it really difficult to believe that the substantial homesteads of these parts of Germany belonged to the peasants. The peasant proprietors are very fond of frequently white- washing, and are very particular about keeping the streets or roads near their houses clean. This conduces to give the villages a very orderly and neat appearance. The villagers do everything for themselves, and feel interested in improve- ments, as their houses are their own property, and not that of a landlord. The injuries occasioned by time's defacing hand are carefully repaired, and neighbours vie with one another in the comfort, neatness, and respectability of their homes. In the Rhine Provinces the exteriors of the houses are not always quite so prepossessing as in other parts of Germany. They are often built with wooden frame-works, filled up between the beams with a dirty-looking cement, as it is frequently very Improve the Peasants Dwelling. 255 difficult to obtain brick or stone. This cement makes a very good wall ; but, if unwhitewashed, loolcs poor. Travellers should not, however, judge the interiors of these houses from the look of their exteriors ; their interiors are generally roomy, constantly whitewashed, well furnished, and beautifully clean. In some parts of Prussia however, where the land is not subdivided, and where the peasants are only the day labourers upon the great estates of the rich landowners, as in some parts of the province of Posen, the condition of the peasants' cottages is very wretched. It is said by German writers, that in travel- ling through Prussia and other parts of Germany, a traveller can always tell wlicther the peasants are proprietors, by the state of the cottages, as those of the proprietors are always so much superior to those of the mere labourers. I am convinced of the truth of this observation ; the difference between the houses and general social condition of the peasant proprietors and those of the labourers on the great estate, is much too remarkable throughout the whole of western Europe to allow of any doubt as to the cause. Mr. Banfield, in speaking of the cottages and farm-buildings of the peasants of the Prussian Rhine Provinces, says,^ — " The size of the offices is a remarkable feature in all German farm- houses, from the cot of the peasant to the largest castle." And again, in another part of the same work, he says,2 — " The houses themselves offer a contrast to the diminutive holdings of which they are the representatives. As we have already observed, they are out of all proportion large. ... In the villages the houses are usually built of wooden frames, whose beams and standards are mortised into each other, and bound and supported by sloping stays, the mortises being fast- ened by pegs throughout ; where that timber abounds, the wood most in use is oak ; near the Rhine, fir and pine wood are used. The wood is usually seven inches square, which conveniently holds a layer of bricks laid breadthwise in each compartment. The bricks are not always burnt, and the compartments are sometimes filled up with strong wickerwork, which is plastered over. When the house is coated with lime or clay and white- washed, the wooden frame is left conspicuous all over, and is often painted in fanciful colours. ''The value of tlie building is indicated by the thickness of the timber shown to be employed in this framework. Formerly, 1 Agriculture of ihe Rhine, p. 12. ^ Ibid., p. 95. 256 The Division of the La7id tends to while timber was abundant and cheap, this style of building was recommended by economy ; now stone (which is almost always to be had) and bricks are less expensive, excepting to the owners of forests. "The house usually contains (on the ground floor) one or two sleeping-rooms, besides a sitting-room and kitchen ; some- times the same number of rooms is found in an upper story." There is almost always a second, and often a third, story in the village houses in Germany. "The roof is invariably lofty, and serves the purpose of storehouse and barn. In its spacious cavity the threshed corn, the hay, and often the vegetable store for winter use, are kept. The housewife dries her clothes in winter on the crossbeams. A cellar is invariably found in better houses ; a7id, in general^ whcii a stranger is told that these are the abodes of people little above the station of cotters, he finds them splendid ; when he hears that these cotters are the land- owners and masters of the soil, he scarcely knows how to esti- mate their position." In Saxony the houses, in the villages were so large, that I constantly inquired of my conductor where the poor of the villages resided. He said that several families often joined in taking or buying one good house, and in sharing the rooms between them. The houses of the peasant proprietors of Saxony are quite as good as, and often better than those of many of our farmers. They generally belong to the inhabitants, who feel a pride in keeping them in good repair, and interested in doing so, from having experienced that it is cheaper to do so than to repair seldom and at long intervals. The peasants of these countries, and, indeed, of most Con- tinental countries, do not live as ours do, scattered over the face of the country, but always collected in large villages. A traveller will seldom find isolated houses. The villages are, therefore, generally much larger than ours ; because they contain all the people who, in England, would live in cottages scattered along the roadsides or in the fields. A German professor, who knows England very well, once remarked to me, that it would be a much more difficult matter for us to educate all the children of our poor than for foreign countries to do so, because so many of our poor live apart from the village where the school would naturally be placed ; whilst abroad, as I have said, the people generally live close around Improve the Peasants Dwellings, 257 the village school, and are, consequently, able to send their youngest children there in almost all weathers. The majority of the German and Swiss villages and towns have scarcely any cellar dweUings, or back alleys and streets, like the foul and degraded haunts of the lowest classes of our town poor. The majority of the German and Swiss poor are too civilised to live in such places. The towns of these countries, in the much better character of their suburbs and back streets, and in the almost total freedom from any class of children in any respect comparable to those which swarm in the gutters and on the door-sills of our back streets and alleys, form a strange contrast to most of the towns of England ; and a still stranger and more affecting contrast to the pauperism-haunted towns of Ireland. Dr. Bruggeman, the Romanist counsellor of the Educational Bureau of Berlin, who had visited London, said to me, " Yoitr countrymen are nnconscious of the extoit of tlieir town pauperism, and will be quite unable to believe you if you tell them the dif- ference between the state of the EnglisJi and of the Prussian poor^ And so it is. I am unable to convey a clear idea ; but I advise my readers to spend a few hours in any of our back streets and alleys, those nurseries of vice and feeders of the gaols ; and to assure himself that children of the same class as those he will see in haunts — dirty, rude, boisterous, playing in the mud with uncombed hair, filthy and torn garments, and skin that looks as if it had not been washed for months — are always, throughout Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and Holland, either in school or in the school playground, clean, well-dressed, polite and civil in their manners, and healthy, intelligent, and happy in their appearance. It is this difference in the early life of the poor of the towns of these countries, which explains the astonishing improvement which has taken place in the state of the back streets and alleys of many of their towns. The majority of their town poor are growing up with tastes which render them unfit to endure such degradation as the filth and misery of our town pauperism. In many parts of Switzerland, as in the cantons of Berne, Zurich, Vaud, Schaffhausen, and others, as also in Saxony, the houses of the small peasant-farmers are pictures of rural prosperity and happiness. In Switzerland the houses are generally built, more or less, in the old quaint style known by us as Swiss cottages, with the great wooden eaves, the high- R t) 258 The Division of the Land tends to pitched roofs, the open galleries outside, running round and forming an exterior passage from room to room, the quaint balustrades, the carved timbers, and the painted sentences or figures covering the walls or ornamenting the entrance. Great settles stand outside the door, on which the family sit in the fine evenings when the field-work is over, and on Sunday after- noons. The perfect neatness of everything connected with many of these houses is very curious. The family mansion, which has, perhaps, been in the hands of the same family for some time, is preserved in the most careful state of repair, and with the fondest veneration. The wooden palings enclosing the yards, the little gardens round the house, and the yards and offices themselves, look as if the family spent every spare minute in keeping them in order. But even supposing it were true, which it most certainly is not, that the peasants were worse fed, worse clothed, and worse lodged in countries, where the land is so divided as to enable them to acquire a part of it, than in a country like ours, where it is in the hands of a few proprietors, still, even under such circumstances, it would be easy to prove that the condition of the peasant proprietors of the one country was a much happier, a much more moral, and a much more satisfactory one con- sidered on grounds of national expedience, than the condition of the dependent and helpless labourers of the other. The consciousness, that they have their fate in their own hands ; that their station in life depends upon their own exertions ; that they can rise in the world, if they will only be patient and laborious enough ; that they can gain an indepen- dent position by industry and economy ; that they are not cut off by an insurmountable barrier from the next step in the social scale ; that it is possible to purchase a house and farm of their own ; and that tiie more industrious and prudent they are, the better will be the position of their families ; gives the labourers of'.those countries, where the land is not tied up in the hands of a few, an elasticity of feeling, a hopefulness, an energy, a pleasure in economy and labour, a distaste for expenditure upon gross sensual enjoyments,— which would only diminish the gradually increasing store,— and an independence of character which the dependent and helpless labourers of the other country can never experience. In short, the life of a peasant in those countries, where the land is not kept from subdividing by the laws, is one of the highest moral education. His unfettered position stimu- Improve the Peasants Dwellings. 259 lates him to better his condition, to economise, to be industrious, to husband his powers, to acquire moral habits, to use foresight, to gain knowledge about agriculture, and to give his children a good education, so that they may improve the patrimony and social position he wiJl bequeath to them. I repeat, then, that even if it were true that peasant pro- prietors were worse lodged, clothed, and fed than dependent day labourers, still there would be much to say in favour of a system which makes the peasants free, which enables the shop- keepers and peasants to acquire land, and which, by so doing, holds out a strong inducement to all the poor classes of the nation to practise self-denial, industry, and economy. But it is not true that peasant proprietors are worse lodged, clothed, and fed than peasant labourers. Most certainly the peasant proprietors of Prussia, Saxony, and Switzerland, are better lodged, better clothed, and better fed than our labourers. Statistical writers tell us that a less quantity of animal food is consumed per head in foreign countries than in England. Even if this be true, it is easily accounted for by the great quantity consumed by our middle classes, and by the difference of climates and of national tastes. Our peasants scarcely ever eat any animal food, but our middle classes eat much more than the middle classes of foreign countries. With our cold humid atmosphere we require a more nourishing diet than they do. In many parts of those countries, and at certain parts of their seasons, it would be very injurious for the inhabitants to eat as much animal food as we do. But, however this may be, even if the peasant proprietors do not get a sufficiency of animal food, it is a very small self-denial in comparison with the immense benefits which they all feel they are deriving fromy>'^6' trade in land. The accounts published in foreign countries fully bear out my descriptions of the houses of the peasant proprietors. Herr Meyer von Knonau, describing the peasants' houses in tiie Canton of Zurich, says ^ — "Almost all the houses are two, few three, but still fewer only one, story in height. On the ground- floor looking towards the south, may be almost universally found the family room, two bedrooms, and the kitchen. The first story is divided into bedrooms. Under the high-peaked roof, there are generally two small lofts above the upper story, where the ccrn and seeds, &c., are laid up. 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, Zurich. 26o The Division of the Land tends to " The rooms are generally from seven to nine feet hii^h, are roomy and light, and are guarded against the lightning of sum- mer by lightning-conductors, and against the cold of winter by double windows or shutters. " There are always tables in the family rooms, and the adjoin- ing chambers also are furnished with tables ; and the floors of all the rooms are boarded ; under the broad and far overhang- ing eaves of the houses, the wood required for the household fuel is piled up. . . . Each family room has a large stove put up in one of the walls of the room, so that it may warm both the family room itself, and also one of the adjoining bedrooms, which is devoted to the use of the husband and wife and of the young children. In many of the family rooms there is a sort of oven, warmed from the stove, and used for drying linen and for baking fruit and other edibles. There are generally from three to four windows in the room, all of them side by side. Benches are placed under the windows, and before the benches stands the old-fashioned solid table. There is also a cupboard full of polished bowls and cups, of milk-cans, crockery of all kinds, books, towels, and brushes ; and upon the cupboard, or in one corner of it, is the large folio family Bible. Over the stove, or the door of the room, hangs the militia musket. On the walls hang the bread-knife, the number of the year, a slate for the family accounts, a calendar, a looking-glass, a cover for soup, a small pair of scales, sentences learned at the time of confirmation, keepsakes and remembrances of deceased relatives and friends, the baptismal certificate of the children, and Scriptural, political, and still oftener illuminated, pictures of all kinds, generally framed and glazed. " In a case on one side stands a carefully-preserved clock. Near the stove are the table and benches where the grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aged friends of the family generally sit. Fastened by a small chain to a leg of the bench which stands under the windows, or hanging on a nail by itself, is the shoehorn ; near it stands the saucer for the cats. On one side is a stool, the cradle, and a chest which can be also used as a seat. Under the stove (the bottom of which is generally at least a foot above the floor), are placed the boots and shoes ; near the window the spinning-wheel, or the straw-plaiting apparatus used by the girls, and near the stove that used by the mother and grandmother. The kitclien, which generally contains a sink where all the washing is done, is beautifully neat and Improve the Peasants Dwellings. 261 clean. The older children and the servants sleep in the cham- bers of the upper floor, two in a bed ; upon the same floor are the clothes chests, and often the fruit and lumber stores, the meal, bran, and snlt-boxes, bundles of yarn, dried sausages, hams, and flitches of bacon. The generally deep cellars con- tain in very different proportions beer, fruits, &c. In the cow- sheds and stables reign great order and cleanliness." The average number of inhabitants in each house in the canton of Zurich is about nine persons ; in some parts of the canton it is only seven, and in some only six persons. In the canton of Argovie, the average is eight persons in each house. Herr Bronner, librarian of the canton of Aargau, describes the houses of the peasant farmers, as follows :^ — " In the villages, the plan of the building of a good peasant house is generally much the same. Under one roof of tiles, or of straw, the following different buildings are united : — i. The dwelling-house of the family. 2. The threshing-floor. 3. The cowshed. 4. The barn. The waggonshed and pigsty are detached from the building. In general, the roof of the house projects some distance over the walls, in order that the over- hanging eaves may afford covering for the farming implements, the plough, &c., and for the store of wood for the fuel. This makes the upper chambers very dark ; but they are accustomed to this, and think that it is fully compensated by the extra warmth and by the shelter afforded by these overhanging eaves. " Connected with these houses there is generally a garden full of flowers and vegetables, a well arranged dung-heap ; and, in many cases, a constantly running fountain with a basin of clear water before it, where the cattle can drink. " Near the house door there is a bench, generally placed against the wall, where the friends and neighbours of the family sit and rest themselves after the day's work is over, and talk over their concerns." Speaking of the same houses, he says: — "Stone steps ornament the entrance. The bright roomy dwelling-room on the ground- floor, with the warm stove, with convenient tables and benches by the walls, with the cupboard full of crockery, &c., and with the clock ; the kitchen next to this room, and the bedrooms, show a no small degree of comfort and prosperity. Such houses are not certainly the most numerous in the villages, but neat 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, Aargau. 262 The Division of the Land tends to stone houses of less size are generally common enough. Even the straw-thatched houses, with their overhanging roofs, have their own peculiar advantages. They are cheaper than the stone houses, and yet very warm, . . . They are not, perhaps, so clean as the others ; but are generally, where the housewife is active, very well taken care of." Herr Bronner says, that many of the houses of the day labourers, who do not possess farms of their own, are much poorer than the houses of peasant farmers. Among the mountains, too, the houses are much meaner and much less commodious than the houses of the valleys and plains ; but all the accounts agree in stating, that since the people were freed from the old feudal burdens and restrictions, and since they have been receiving a good education, the houses have been every- where, and even in the mountain villages, rapidly and steadily improving in size, in appearance, and in comforts. Herr Strohmeier, after describing the old wooden, straw- covered, and badly-built houses, which used some years ago to be built in the canton of Solothurn, saysi^ — "These straw-covered houses lessen in number, or are improved, year by year ; houses are no longer built of wood alone and covered with straw. As the intelligence of the people becomes more and more enlightened, and education is enlightening it, so also do the dwellings of the people become more and more comfortable, commodious, and handsome. Light or dark, well ventilated or close houses have the greatest influence for good or ill upon the character ot a people. At the present time, the houses of the peasants are not built together so closely as formerly, but are situated in healthy and open situations. Great proud buildings of a really stately appearance may be constantly met with in all the villages, and even among the mountains. The building there consists generally of two floors. Adjoining it are two roomy barn-floors, two stalls for cattle, and one or two sheds for carts. Before the dwelling- house there is always a very neat flower-garden. Such dwelling- houses prove the prosperous condition of the free Swiss proprietors. " Of course, in all the cantons there are still houses of a miserable character ; but all the reports agree in representing these to be exceptions, and to be diminishing constantly in numbers. In the canton of Thurgovie, Herr Pupikofer says:- — "Generally 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, vol. x. p. 79. 2 Ibid., vol. xv'i. pp. 62, 63. Improve the Peasants Dzvellings. 26 o speaking, every family dwells in its own house ; very few live in rented houses. It is very seldom that several families are obliged to share the same family room and kitchen. " The old style of houses is progressively giving place to better built, more comfortable, and more roomy dwellings. Even in the end of the last century, it had become common to cover the roofs of the houses with tiles, and to build the walls of wood and composition, or of stone. " The floor of the groundfloor rooms, used as the family room and kitchen, is now often raised some few feet above the ground, in order to leave a greater space for the cellars beneath, where the stores are kept, and to make the groundfloor rooms dryer and healthier." Professor Vulliemin, in describing the houses of the peasants in the canton of Vaud, says:^ — " Everywhere throughout the canton well-built and roomy peasants' houses are rising : and this is the surest proof of the groiving prosperity of the peasants." He says, that the dwelling-houses have cellars, a groundfloor, and a second story where the sleeping-rooms are. The ground- floor, he says, contains the dwelling-room of the family, a kitchen, and a children's bedroom. Over these rooms, which are of good size, are the sleeping-rooms of the rest of the family. Herr Im-Thurm describes the peasants' houses of the canton of Scliaffhausen as large buildings, containing under one roof, dwelling-house, cowshed, and barn. The dwelling-house, he says, is generally two, and sometimes three, storeys high, with cellars beneath the groundfloor. The groundfloor generally consists of a dwelling-room, a kitchen, and a small room for the parents. The upper floor is divided into bedrooms for the children and farm assistants. "Few houses," he says, " have three, or even two, families, as inmates, and in still fewer do two families live together in the same dwelling-room." Herr von Knonau, in his description of the canton of Schweitz, says : ^ — " Four hundred years ago Gessler's anger was excited by Stauffacher's beautiful house. A few years back, jealousy would have been excited in the same way among the inhabitants of a village, if any one had built a beautiful and ornamented house ; they would have thought it too fine. In the canton of Schweitz many such houses have now long existed. There are no houses which are built of stone, and very few which are built 1 Gemalde der Schweitz, vo'. i. p. 303. 2 Ibid., vol. v. p. 106. 264 The Division of the Land tends to altogether of brick. The walls of the groimdfloor, however, are generally constructed of these materials ; while those of the upper floors are formed of wooden frames, filled up with brick and plaster. There are very few slate roofs in the canton (in the whole canton there is only one cowshed which is covered with slates). The houses are roofed with tiles, throughout the canton. The old wooden roofs are becoming more rare every day. " The house rests generally upon a wall, which rises about six feet above the ground," and forms the cellar where the potatoes are kept. " It is customary to build the houses higher than formerly ; so that Jwicses of four ^ and of even more than four ^ storeys in height are )io longer tinconiinon. Some- times the peasant proprietors cover the wooden beams of which the walls of the house are formed, upon the west and north sides of the house, with small panels of oak, in order more effectually to protect the beams from rain and snow." These houses, Herr von Knonau informs us, have a kitchen, a good-sized dwelling or sitting-room, and a small chamber on the groundfloor, and three or four bedrooms on the second floor. Under the groundfloor rooms are cellars, where the potatoes are stored. The bedrooms of the upper story are united by an open and ornamental balcony, which runs round the outside of the house, covered above by the overhanging eaves, and communicating with the bedrooms. Mr. Jellinger Symons, now one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of schools, says,^ — " The cantons of St. Gall and Appenzel, which are, perhaps, among the first of the German manu- facturing cantons, present the most enchanting picture of the happiness of the artizans. . . . The canton of Appenzel pre- sents the maximum of prosperity and contentment among the peasantry of Switzerland, I had a favourable opportunity of examining them, whilst visiting my venerable friend M. Zellweger, to whose eminent philanthropy the canton chiefly owes its superior welfare, and to whom Switzerland is indebted for many of those well-appreciated principles of political economy and social government, which have created the pros- perity which signalises her among the nations of Europe. I visited many of the cottages of the artizans of Appenzel with M. Zellweger, and was invariably delighted by the high degree of ease and peacefulness they exhibited. 1 Quoted by Mr. Chambers in his Tour in Switzerland, p. 86. Improve the Peasants Dzucl lings. 265 " I confidently believe that it would require 30-r. per week in England, in the neighbourhood of any country town, to put a man, his wife, and three children (two of whom shall be above fifteen years of age) in the same condition as, and in all physical respects on a footing with, the average of Swiss artizan peasants, having the same family." Mr. Chambers himself says, — " Switzerland in every quarter presents a spectacle of humble independence and happiness, which is exceedingly pleasing to contemplate. . . . Switzer- land is unquestionably the paradise of the working-man. . . . Both Bowring and Symons are in rapture with the cottage system of the Swiss artizans ; I own it is most attractive, and, as I have said, is doubtless productive of much happiness." Mr. Symons says, again,^ — "The Swiss labourer is, as I have stated, almost universally the proprietor, or the son of a pro- prietor of land, and few householders are there in the whole canton (Argovie) who do not keep a pig, and generally a few sheep. Their cottages are strewed over the hills and dales, and exhibit in the interior every degree of comfort and ease." Herr Miigge, writing of the social condition of the people of the canton of Vaud, says,^ — " The distinctions of rank have been more completely abolished in this canton than in any other ; but the influence of the nobles has not been extinguished without great sacrifices, for Vaud did not, like France, abolish all privileges at a blow. All feudal rights, duties, tithes, and so forth, were purchased from the proprietors, and cost the canton a sum of three millions of dollars ; and this could not, of course, have been done had its affairs not been in a pros- perous condition ; but the freedom of movement thus acquired has been in its turn a cause of greatly-increased prosperity. When we consider the brief period, scarcely half a century, in which it has been in the enjoyment of independence, and that previous to that the Bernese and the Dukes of Savoy had ruled it through satraps, who oppressed and exhausted the country in the most shameful manner, the progress it has already made is really astonishing. " Wooden houses are already giving place to handsome buildings of freestone and marble ; the value of the soil is extraordinarily high ; no canton has more numerous herds of cows, horses, sheep, goats, and pigs ; large quantities of wine 1 Chambers' Tour in Switzerland, p. 86. * Switzerland in 1847, by Theodore Mugge ; translated by Mrs. Percy Sinnett. 266 The Division of the Land tends to are grown, tlie finest liquors are manufactured ; and tlie excel- lent cheese of the Vaud forms, as is well known, an article of considerable trade." Sismondi, in speaking of the Swiss peasants and their houses, says : ^ — " It is Switzerland particularly that must be gone over, that must be studied, to judge of the happiness of peasant proprietors. Switzerland has only to be known to convince us that agriculture, practised by those who enjoy the fruits of it, suffices to procure great comfort to a very numerous population, great independence of character — the fruit of an independent situation, — and great exchange of what is consumed — the con- sequence of the well-being of all the inhabitants, — even in a country where the climate is rude, the soil moderately fertile, and where late frosts and uncertain seasons often destroy the hopes of the labourer. Whether we pass through the cheerful Kmmenthal, or bury ourselves in the most distant valleys of the canton of Berne " {evoi in the heart of the vioutitains, for I have visited the most secluded valleys, and know that even there these remarks gejierally apply), " we cannot see without admiration, without being affected, those wooden houses of the least peasant, so vast, so well constructed, and so covered with carvings. In the interior every detached chamber of the numerous family opens into large corridors ; each room has only one bed, and is abundantly provided with curtains and witli coverings of the whitest linen ; furniture carefully kept surrounds it ; the closets are full of linen ; the dairy is large, well ventilated, and exquisitely neat ; under the same roof are found provisions of corn, of salt-meat, of cheese, and of wood ; in the stables are seen the most beautiful and best managed cattle in Europe ; the garden is planted with flowers ; the men, as well as the women, are warmly and properly clad; and the latter preserve with pride their ancient costume, and bear in their countenances the marks of vigour and of health. . . . Let other nations boast of their opulence, Switzerland may always with pride place its peasantry in opposition to it." Mr. Laing says:^ — "The peculiar feature in the condition of the Swiss population — the great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery^ — is the air of well-being, the neatness, the sense of property imprinted on the people, their dwellings, their plots of land. They have a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry 1 See his Etudes siir I'Economic Politique. 2 Notes of a Traveller, p. 354. Imp7'ove the Peasants Dwellings. 267 about their houses and little properties ; they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, or improving sometiiing about their tenements. The spirit of the proprietor is not to be mis- taken in all that one sees in Switzerland. Some cottages, for instance, are adorned with long texts from Scripture, painted on, or burnt into the wood in front over the door : others, especially in the Simmenthal and the Haslethal, with the pedigree of the builder and owner ; these show sometimes that the property has been held for 200 years by the same family. The modern taste of the proprietor shows itself in new win- dows, or in additions to the old original picturesque dwelling, which, with its immense projecting roof sheltering or shading all these successive little additions, looks like a hen sitting with a brood of chickens under her wings. The little spots of land, each close no bigger than a garden, show the same daily care in the fencing, digging, weeding, and watering." Mr. Nicholls, writing of the small proprietors of Belgium, says :i — "The small farms of from five to ten acres, which abound in many parts of Belgium, closely resemble the small holdings in Ireland; but the small Irish cultivator exists in a state of miserable privation of the common comforts and con- veniences of civilised life, whilst the Belgian peasant farmer enjoys a large portion of those comforts. The houses of the small cultivators in Belgium are generally substantially built, and in good repair ; they have commonly a sleeping-room in the attic, and closets for beds connected with the lower apart- ment, which is convenient in size, a small cellarage for the dairy, and store for the grain, as well as an oven and an out- house for the potatoes, with a roomy cattle-stall, piggery, and poultry-loft. The houses generally contained decent furniture \ the bedding was sufficient in quantity ; and although the scrupulous cleanliness of the Dutch was everywhere observ- able, an air of comfort and propriety pervaded the whole estab- lishment. In the cowhouses, the cattle were supplied with straw for bedding; the dung and urine were carefully collected in the tanks ; the ditches had been scoured to collect materials for manure ; the dry leaves, potato-tops, &c., had been collected in moist ditches, to undergo the process of fermentation, and heaps of compost were in course of preparation. The premises were kept in neat and compact order : and a scrupulous atten- 1 See his Inquiry into the Condilion of the Poor in Holland and Delgiuni, p. 164. 268 The Division of the Land tends to tion to a most rigid economy was everywhere apparent. The family were decently clad ; none of them were ragged or slovenly, even when their dress consisted of the coarsest ma- terials. The men universally wore the blouse ; and wooden shoes were in common use by both sexes. The diet consisted to a large extent of rye bread and milk : the dinner being usually composed of a mess of potatoes and onions, with the occasional addition of some ham or slices of bacon. The quantity of wheaten bread consumed did not appear to be con- siderable. / need not point out the striking contrast of the mode of liviitg here described with the state of the same class of ■persons in Ireland." Reichensperger says, that, since the laws were issued in Prussia, in 1807, which, by enabling every landowner to sell his land and to effect the conveyance at a small expense, enabled the peasants to purchase land, and thus created a large class of small proprietors, the people in Prussia are better dressed, better fed, and better housed than they used to be ; and that this fact is the clearest proof of the excellent effects of freeing land from the trammels of the feudal regulations. I have already mentioned the singular difference between the state of the cottages and the condition of the peasants of Saxony, and of those parts of Prussia where they are educated proprietors of the soil ; and the state of the cottages and the condition of the peasants of Bohemia and Austria, and of those parts of Prussia where the peasants are, like the poor Irish, only the under-lessees of great proprietors, who reside and spend their incomes in a distant capital. This difference is so remarkable as to strike the most casual observer. The cottages of the peasantry in Bohemia, and in other parts of the Austrian empire, and in those parts of Prussia where the land is in the hands of great proprietors, the descendants of the old feudal nobility, are very like the cottages of the peasants in Ireland and many parts of England. They are one low story in height, old and wretched in appearance ; grouped together in straggling, crowded, dirty villages ; looking as if they belonged to proprietors who had no spare income to spend upon the repair of cottages, or upon the improvement of estates ; or as if they were under the care of agents, who were only interested in getting all they could out of the peasantry. The inhabitants of Prussia and Saxony point with pride to the different effects of the great estate and small estate systems, Improve the Peasajits' Dwellings. 269 and to the continually increasing comfort and happiness of the peasant proprietors. The cottages of Austria generally look like the cabins of half-civilised squatters ; those of Saxony, Prussia, and Switzerland, like the homesteads of flourishing and civilised farmers. But why this difference between the results of the two systems .'* Why should the houses of the under-lessees of great landlords be generally so miserable, and those of tenant proprietors be generally so good and comfortable .'' I will endeavour to answer the question. I. In the former case, the land has to support, not merely those who are engaged in its cultivation, but (besides these) the landlord. Now, however expedient it may be that the landlord should have a large income, a splendid mansion, and all con- ceivable luxuries ; yet it is quite clear that the produce of the land, which goes to build and adorn his great house, and pro- vide him with all his pleasures, would, were the land in the hands of small proprietors, be divided among them. It is im- possible to deny that if the owner of land cultivates it himself he receives the whole of the produce ; but that if he does not, all that part of the produce, which is paid to him, and is em- ployed in enhancing his luxuries and comforts, reduces by so much the share of the produce to be divided among the actual cultivators. In Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and France, the houses that are enlarged and ornamented by the extra produce of the land are the cottages and farms of the small proprietors. In England, the houses thus enlarged and ornamented are the man- sions of the large proprietors. Which of these arrangements conduces most to the well-being of society, is a separate ques- tion ; but it is quite clear, from the experience of every country in Europe, that where a large part of the income from the land belongs to great proprietors, their houses will be magnificent, and the cottages of the peasants generally miserable ; and that where the whole income from the land is distributed among the peasants themselves, their cottages will be more comfortable and commodious, and the mansions of great landowners fewer and less magnificent. The spare wealth drawn from the land, after paying the ex- penses of cultivation, can clearly do only the same amount of work under either arrangement of society. It can pay for a certain amount of bricks, of chairs, of tables, of looking-glasses, 2/0 The Division of the Land tends io of books, &c. If it is spent upon the walls of one great house, and upon stocking that one great house with splendid chairs, tables, mirrors, &c., and its great gardens with choice flowers and shrubs, then it can do no more. If, on the other hand, it is spent in building up the small walls of many small houses, and filling them with chairs, tables, crockery, (Sic, and their small gardens with pinks and roses, then it can do no more. In so far as it does one, it cannot do the other. Under the peasant proprietor system, the whole of this spat'e wealth is devoted to the latter purpose. 2. A second cause, why the cottages upon the estates of great proprietors are generally much less good and comfortable than where they and a portion of the land belong to their occupants is, that the means at the command of the tenants on the great estates are dmiinished, not only by the division of the produce of the land between the tenant and the proprietor, but also by the unnaturally high cottage rents, which the great-estate system causes. For, where the land belongs to great proprietors, the cottage rents are always higher than their natural level, because the great landowners, from a fear of increasing the number of tlie miserable labourers (who are almost always the appendants of great estates), and of augmenting, by this means^ the amount of their poor rates, generally keep the number of the cottages much below the number actually required by the population. The population, also, as I have already shown, increases much faster under the great-estate system than under the small-estate system ; so that the competition for the cottages on the great estates is rendered doubly severe, — (i.) by the unnatural diminu- tion in the number of the cottages, and, (2.), by the unnatural increase in the number of the population. This competition for cottages has the effect of raising the rents considerably, as the poor peasants bid against one another, even beyond the value of the cottages, for their possession. Every increase, however, in the rent, diminishes by so much the slender means of the cottagers, and renders them by so much the less able to spend upon the improvement of their cottages ; while the small pro- prietors, who own the houses they inhabit, who work with greater intensity, and therefore produce more than ordinary labourers, and who receive the whole amount of their produc- tion for their own use, are both willing and able to improve. 3. The tenant cottager has but a languid motive to do any- Improve the Peasants' Dwellings. 271 thing himself to better his cottage and to make it weather-proof, roomy, and comfortable, compared with that which excites to exertion the man who feels that his cottage is his ow7i ; that no one can turn him or his children out of it ; that whatever he expends upon it will be so much gain to himself during his life, and to his family afterwards, and who, besides the bare calcula- tion of profit, is animated to do all he can to improve his own home, by the exhilarating and personal interest he feels in the well-being of that which belongs to himself, and which shelters, comforts, and supports his family, and those dearest to him. 4. A fourth reason why the cottages of the peasantry are not so good in countries where the land is divided among a few great proprietors is this : the great proprietor is not generally able, even if he be willing, to spend much upon the cottages of his tenantry ; and even when he is able, he is not interested in spending on such an object more than is absolutely necessary. A great landlord has not, generally, so much to spare in propor- tion to his wealth as a smaller one. Ideas of luxury and the standard of necessary expenditure increase at a greatej- ratio than the means of satisfying those ideas. A great landlord often fancies that he is obliged to keep up a certain appearance in the world, to live as much like his next richer neighbour as possible, and to make as great a display as possible of wealth, in order thereby to increase his influence. Such a man (and how many such are there not .') needs all he has for the fancied requirements of his position. He does as little as possible to his estate and to the houses of his tenantry. He thinks that if he keeps them weather-proof he does his duty, and that if he provides cottages which are just large enough to let a family squeeze into them, it is all that can be expected from one who is obliged to spend his last available farthing in keeping up a certain style in the world ; for he often learns to imagine it a higher duty to do this than to care for his tenants or his labourers. If he hears of the complaints of his tenant at all, it is to be told that it is only his squeamishness ; that the cottage gives his family two rooms ; that the roof keeps out the rain, and that this is all a tenant has a right to expect. Besides, what is such a proprietor to do, if he listens to the whims and fancies of all his tenants. Supposing they were all to ask for houses and farmsteads like those of the German, .Swiss, and Dutch peasants, where would the landlord's income and his lu.\uries 2/2 The Division of the Land tends to be ? The agent, therefore, keeps the cottage in repair ; but he does nothing more ; or when he is forced to build a new cot- tage, he builds it no larger than is absolutely necessary. In this way the peasant gets pinched at both ends. The division of the profits of the land between the landlord and the tenant, the fancy rents, and the uncertain tenure, prevent the peasant doing much for himself, while the landlord's own wants often prevent him improving for the peasant. The consequence is, that partly owing to the above causes, and partly to the neglected education of the people, the peasants in Ireland are living and breeding like pigs, while in England and Wales the cottages of our peasantry are shame- fully inferior to those of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland. I do not mean to say that this picture is universally true, but, unhappily, it is generally so. Why is it that in England an owner of a house takes so much pleasure in improving it, and in keeping it in order 1 Is it not because he feels it is his own ; because he knows that his own family will derive the benefit of all his improve- ments ; because he feels a sort of attachment to the house which he has either received from his ancestors, or purchased with the produce of his own labour ? The improvements which an owner makes on his own house, and the money he spends upon it, he does willingly and as a work of love ; but is it the same with a mere tenant of a house t Does the leasehold tenant, or the tenant from year to year, spend willingly upon improvements ? Does either of these, and especially the latter, make additions to the house, or even repair anything, except what the terms of his lease oblige him to repair 1 Does a tenant, in the higher or middle ranks of life, act in this way ? and if he does not, can it be expected that a poor peasant, who in our country is never anything more than a tenant-at-will, or from year to year, will expend money on improving property in which he has not any certainty of tenure for more than a year at the outside .'' Repeal all the laws which prevent the sale of landed pro- perty in Ireland, and which keep the whole country in the hands of a few men, who are most of them deep in debt, and have not capital wherewith to cultivate their estates ; enable the landlords in all cases to sell the land out and out ; enable the farmers and peasants by these means to purchase, and prevent henceforward any settlement of landed property which a Respect for Property. 273 would prevent its being sold after the death of him who aettled it ; and you would soon change the face of things there, as the great statesmen of Prussia, Stein and Harden- berg, by similar jiieans, renovated the face of Prussia. The Irish, who make such good colonists when they emigrate,^ would, with a system of free trade in land, make equally good citizens at home. The enormous tracts of waste lands would be soon brought into cultivation, as the mountain sides of Saxony and Switzerland, as the sandy plains of Prussia, and as the low lands of Holland have been under the same invigorating system. Capital would make its appear- ance in Ireland from a thousand unexpected sources ; a good class of yeomanry would grow up there, as in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and France ; while, as has been the case in these countries, since the subdivision of the land among the peasants, the habits, manners, dress, appearance, and industry of the people would all revive and improve under the invigorating influence of a sense of owner- ship, and of a consciousness in the labourer's mind that he may be prosperous and happy, if he choose to be patient, self- denying, and industrious. If Stein and Hardenberg had been ministers of England, depend upon it they w'ould have endea- voured long ago to introduce into Ireland, at least, that system which has raised the Prussian, Saxon, and Swiss peasantry from a social condition, analogous to that of the Irish poor, to one which renders them worthy of being regarded as examples for the consideration of the world. 8, The respect for property, and the absence of enclosures, enable the townspeople i?t Germany to enjoy walks through the fields. — The little respect shown for landed property in, our manufacturing districts. The greatest of all advantages, which the peasants of Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland enjoy, in the way of amusement, is their being able, on holidays and Sun- days, to walk through the fields in every direction. The land is scarcely ever enclosed. The plots belonging to the small and greater farmers lie side by side, without any other separa- tion than a path, or a furrow to mark out the boundaries. There are no hedges, no park walls, no palings, and very few 1 That they do, see auihorities collected in Edinburgh Review fur Jan. iSsa S 2 74 ^-^^ Division of the Land fosters enclosed pieces of lands. Along the walks, which are made on the lands to the different farms and plots, any one may ramble, without any chance of interruption, as long as he does not tread upon the cultivated ground. In the neighbourhood of towns, the land is scarcely any more enclosed, except in the cases of the small gardens which surround the houses, than in the more rural districts. Yet this right is seldom abused. The condition of the lands near a German, or Swiss, or Dutch town, is as orderly, as neat, and as undisturbed by trespassers, as in the most secluded and most strictly preserved of our rural districts. All the poor have friends or relations who are themselves proprietors. Every man, however poor, feels that he himself may, some day or other, become a proprietor. All are, consequently, immediately interested in the preservation of property, and in watching over the rights and interests of their neighbours. This freedom from enclosures, and this ability to walk any- where, are of incalculable advantage to all the poor, and more especially to those who live in the towns, and in the manufactur- ing districts. They are thus enabled to enjoy, at least on Sundays, country walks, good air, and healthy recreation. They are never confined in their rambles to dusty roads or lanes, but may walk through the richly-cultivated fields. In our manufacturing districts, and in the neighbourhood of our large towns, the results of a different system of landed tenures may be seen. Where the boys of the towns can get into the fields, there devastation follows. Hedges are de- stroyed, the herbage is killed, and cultivation is trampled down. The land, in the neighbourhood of most of the Lancashire towns, wears a singular aspect of untidiness, tres- pass, and devastation. If a path crosses a field, the passengers do not religiously avoid the grass on each side, as they do in Germany and Switzerland, where the peasants own the lands, but they make three or four parallel tracks on the grass, apparently out of mere wantonness; so that I have seen cases in Lancashire, where proprietors have found it better worth tiieir while to build, at great expense, two long parallel walls, confining the path between them, than to leave it to passers to please themselves whether they keep to the path, or wander over the fields, destroying the herbage. Where the people can get in, the hedges are broken tlirou;4h and through, the trees are stripped for sticks, and the ditches a Respect for Property. 275 are trodden in, by lads practising jumping over them ; and, what is worse, every fruit tree wliicli is not strictly guarded, is soon cleared of its fruit. All this makes the owners of land in Lancashire, and near our larger towns, necessarily and naturally anxious to keep the operatives and lads out of their lands. Enclosures of the strongest kind are therefore becoming more and more numer- ous, and the rural walks are being gradually spoiled by walls ; so that while the population is becoming denser and denser, the labourers are being shut into the high roads and lanes more and more, and the public paths through the fields are being themselves enclosed by fences on either side, from the absolute necessity of protecting the land from the depredations of those who feel no interest whatever in its being kept in good con- dition. One proof, among many others, that a system like that of Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland, would in England produce, in this respect, a result similar to that produced in those countries, may be derived from the fact, that where there are any allotments, even merely rented by the poor, in the neighbourhood of a manufacturing town, however near to the town they lie, and however exposed and unenclosed they may be, they are quite safe, and are undisturbed, showing that the people have a great respect in general for the property which belongs to any of themselves. Instances of this kind may be seen in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, Preston, and some other towns in England. The excelletit education given to the poor of Ge7'many, Switzerland, and Holland, the great subdivision of ike land, and the amnsemenis of the people, tend very materially to improve the health and social comfort of the poorer classes in the towns. Counsellor Reichensperger, in his learned work " Die Agrarfrage," says ^ : — -" In general there can be no doubt that, in those countries where the land is subdivided, and where the subdivision is not extremely small, the people are ivellfed^ well 1 Die Agrarfrage, p. 43. 276 The Iniprovemeiit in the Food of the clothed, highly civilised, both physically and mentally, and comfortably housed ; that under the influence of the small proprietor system, the whole subdivided land exhibits, in every part, the proof of industry and of praiseworthy improvement ; and that, by the happy cliange of different kinds of cultivation, by rich orchards and by products and manufactures of all kinds, it exhibits the significant proof of evenly divided and real prosperity." The remarkable increase in the quantities of bread and meat consumed per head by the people of Prussia, since the division of the land, is one proof among others of the improvement in their social condition. It appears ^ that the increase in the consumption of grain per head of the population, in seven large towns of Prussia, between 1831 and 1841, was as follows : — 1831. I84I. Wheaten Bread. Rye Bread. Total. 1 Wheaten Bread. Rye Bread. 1 Total lbs. oz. lbs. oz. lbs. oz. 1 lbs. oz. lbs. oz. lbs. oz. Berlin . . 84 7 iSo 7 268 14 1 107 2 175 10 2S2 12 Breslau . • 52 10 256 6 309 1 150 12^ 227 I4i 378 II Konigsberg . 61 14 213 3 274 15 ! 60 8i 215 64 275 15 Danzig . . 45 5 220 12 265 15 1 52 14 232 \\ 2S4 I5I Stettin , . lOI 2 249 350 14 1 iio6 14 312 14 419 12 Halberstadt 65 9i 286 2 351 \\V\ 84 II 315 8 400 3 Brandenburg 86 loi 216 7 303 lij 92 iij 266 6 359 i^i The consumption of corn in all the Prussian towns in- creased, between 1805 and 1831, 10 lbs. 12 oz. rye per head, with a diminution of only i lb. 10 oz. per head in wheat, and a very considerable increase per head in the consumption of potatoes ! There are, however, some towns in Prussia, as Magdeburg and Potsdam, where the consumption of bread per head since 183 1 has somewhat lessened. But the consumption of all the great towns taken together, shows a considerable progress since 1831, both in the quantity and in the quality of the food ' See a very interesting paper published by Mr. Banfield, in the eleventh volume of the Journal of the Statistical Society, and founded upon the reports of niy friend, the Prussian Minister of Statistics. People since the Division of the Land. 277 eaten by the people. This increase in the great towns is represented to have been as follows : — Years. Consumption of lbs. per head. Wheaten Bread. Rye Bread. Total. 1831 1841 Increase per from 1 83 1 lbs. oz. 65 s\ 78 144 head of the cons to 1841 . lbs. oz. 240 12^ 237 13^ Limption of bread lbs. oz. 306 2 316 12 10 10 But what is still more remarkable, is, that since the division of tlie land among the peasants, the quantity of 7;z^(3/ consumed per head, by the population of the -whole kingdom, has also greatly increased, notwithstanding the increase in the numbers of the population. In 1S05 the average quantity of meat consumed by each per- son in Prussia was .... 33iTnr lbs. In 1S31 ditto ditto . 34ffj*ij lbs. In 1S42 ditto ditto . ZS\h lbs. Increase per head of the consumption of meat from 1S05 to 1842 ..... I^%% lbs. While in the following towns the increase, in the average quantity of meat eaten by each individual, had increased still more remarkably : — 1S05. ■ 1831. 1842. lbs. oz. lbs. oz. lbs. oz. Berlin 83 6 104 Si 116 13 Breslau . , 94 I 76 12 95 2 Danzig . , 72 31 75 9i 83 3i Magdeburg 63 25 82 8 92 9^ Potsdam . 62 22 84 lOI \7.\ Stettin 88 9 72 104 i3i Erfurt 65 23 71 Hi 75 i3i Halberstadt 51 I 62 13 71 i5i Brandenburg 56 2 51 3 78 14 Neisse 59 26 63 II 62 14^ 2'jS The Improve^nent in the Food of the When it. is considered how very greatly the population of Prussia has increased since 1804, viz., from 10,000,000 in 1804, to 15,000,000 in 1 841, it will be evident to all, that this increase, in the quantity of good wholesome food eaten by the people, is an undeniable proof of the good effects of their social system, and proves incontestably that the social con- dition of the people is progressively improving. A further proof of the improved social condition of the people of Prussia, since the subdivision of the land, is the in- crease, which has taken place since that event, in the general consumption of the whole country. The following table, taken from the able work ^ of the IMinister of Statistics in Berlin, shows what the amount of this improvement in the social con- dition has been. 180S. 1842. Food and Materials. Quantity consumed Quantity consumed (per Head. per Head. Bushels of Wheat, Corn, &c. 4 4 Pounds of Flesh . 33 35 , , Rice F ii ,, Sugar . li 5 ,, Coffee . 2 3 2i Salt . 17 17 ,, Tobacco li 1 Ells of Cloth i I^ ,, Linen 4 5 13 ,, Woollen Stuffs . 1 ,, Silks . i f The Prussian people, therefore, eat more bread, meat, rice, and sugar, as much wheat and corn, drink more coffee, and wear more cloth, linen, woollen stuffs, and silks, than they did before the peasants were enabled to purchase lands. The Prussian Minister of Statistics, after giving these remarkable statistics, says 2 : — " The principal object of agriculture is to obtain bread and meat. As our Prussian agriculture raises so much more meat and bread on the same extent of territory than it used to do, it follows that agricul- ture must have been greatly increased both in science and 1 Der Volkswolilstand im Preuss. Staate ; pp. 28, 218,'and 250. - Ibid., seite 251. People since the Division of the Land. 2 79 industry. There are other facts which confirm the truth of this conchision. The division of estates has, since 1831, proceeded more and more throughout the country. There are now many more small independent proprietors than formerly. Yet, however many complaints of pauperism are heard among the dependent labourers, WE NEVER hear it complained, THAT PAUPERISM IS INCREASING AMONG THE PEASANT PRO- PRIETORS. Nor do we hear that the estates of the peasants in the eastern provinces are becoming too small, or that the system of freedom of disposition leads to too great a division of the father's land mnong the children. Complaints such as these are heard in a few exceptional cases from the western provinces of the kingdom, where there was freedom of disposi- tion before 1806. They are not, therefore, the necessary consequences of the law, which regulates the rights of the possessors of land. Throughout the kingdom, wherever the small proprietor has become the unfettered owner, there agriculture has been delivered from all the fetters which used to impede its improvement. The owner is well acquainted with his small estate. // is an almost tiniversally acknow- ledged fact, that the gross produce of the land, in grain, potatoes, and cattle, is increased, -when the land is cultivated by those luho own small portiojis of it ; and if this had not been the case, it would have been impossible to raise as much of the necessary articles of food, as has been wanted for the in- creasing population. Even on the larger estates, the improve- ment in the system of agriculture is too manifest to admit of any doubt. . . . Industry, and capital, and labour, are expended upon the soil. It is rendered productive by means of manuring and careful tillage. The amount of the produce is increased. . . . The prices of the estates, on account of their increased productiveness, have increased. The great commons, many acres of which used to lie wholly uncultivated, are disappearing, and are being turned into meadows and fields. The culti\%ation of potatoes has increased very con- siderably. Greater plots of lands are now devoted to the ' cultivation of potatoes than ever used to be. . . . The old system of the three-field-system of agriculture, according to which one-third of the field used to be left alwavs fallow, in order to recruit the land, is now scarcely ever to be met with. . . . With respect to the cattle, the farmers now labour to improve the breed. Sheep breeding is rationally and scien- 2 So The Improvement in the Food of the tifically pursued on the great estates. ... A remarkable activity in agricultural pursuits has been raised ; and, as all attempts to improve agriculture are encouraged and assisted by the present government, agricultural colleges are founded, agricultural associations of scientific farmers meet in all provinces, to suggest improvements, to aid in carrying out experiments ; and even the peasant proprietors form such associations among themselves, and establish model farms and institutions for themselves." The accounts of Switzerland agree with the above remark- able extract, and agree in stating that of late years the food of the people has considerably improved. Herr Pupikofer says,^ that, in the canton of Thurgovie, the food of tlie people has considerably improved of late years, — that coffee and potatoes have taken the place of the groat- gruel, which used to be eaten at breakfast ; that the dinner formerly consisted, generally, of soup, dried meat, flour-cakes, and fruit ; but that now fresh meat is often eaten instead of the flour- cakes, that potatoes are exchanged for fruit, that bread is alwavs eaten at dinner, and that this bread is gener- ally made of wheaten flour and potatoes. Herr Im-Thurm says,- that in the canton of Schaffhausen the breakfast consists of coffee, together with milk and bread or potatoes. In some parts of the canton, a soup made of milk and meal or groats is eaten for breakfast. Dinner is eaten in this and in many of the more mountainous cantons at eleven o'clock ; it consists of soup made of milk, meal, bread, or groats, and also frequently of a meat soup. Beef, ham, and bacon are often eaten by the peasants of this canton. Between three and four in the afternoon, the men have some bread and wine, the women some coffee, milk, and bread. Tea is very seldom drunk : it is very expensive throughout Switzerland. About seven or eight o'clock in the evening, a soup made of milk and bread or potatoes is eaten ; and at nine o'clock the people go to bed, so as to be ready for the break of day. "All the people of this canton drink wine at dinner, and often also at supper, and between meals beer is drunk." Professor Vulliemin, in describing the food of the people in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland, says :^ — " Not only is it ^ Gemalde e'er Schweitz, Thurgau. '^ Ibid., Schafi'hausen. •* Ibid., xi.\ Band, i Tlicil. s. 2S3 People since the Division of the Land. 281 true, that there are few lands where the people live on better food than in the canton of Vaud, but it is also 3. fact, that the food of the people is improving year after year. Coarse black bread, milk, and herbs, no longer constitute the food of the people ; but white wheaten bread, mixed sometimes with potatoes, or with fresh or pickled meat. The breakfast (or, as it is called with us, the dinner) consists of coffee, or of a thick porridge, with cheese and whey, and often with potatoes also. At ten o'clock the peasants eat some cheese, and drink with it sometimes a glass of wine. Soup and greens, with bacon, potatoes, cheese, salad, pickled meat, and pancakes, compose the dinner. On Sundays, however, and on holidays, fresh cooked meat is eaten at dinner. " At four o'clock, from Easter to Lent, they take coffee with bread and cheese, and sometimes a spoonful of preserved fruits. The frugal peasant among the vineyards makes his four o'clock meal of bread, cheese, and common red wine. The supper of the peasants consists of soup and cheese. All the peasants drink wine : even the poorest labourer would be discontented if he did not get at least a quart of wine daily. Formerly, the peasants drank wine much less frequently than they do now, but they were accustomed, every eight or fourteen days, to get intoxicated ; now every family keeps its cask of wine or cider for the use of the family. " In the towns, fresh cooked meat, soup, bread, and vegetables are the food of the inhabitants, and often even of the poorest. " Our militia receive daily, during the time of their service, i^lb. of bread, 8 oz. of meat, and vegetables." It has been the habit of English writers to presume that the peasants of Western Europe eat much less meat than our peasants, and that this is one proof of their inferior social condition. The presumption is as untrue as the inference. The peasants of Western Europe do not, it is true, eat meat every day in the week, nor do they eat much meat ; but in most parts of these countries they eat meat once or twice a week at least. Our middle classes eat so much more animal food daily than the middle classes of France, Germany, and Switzerland, that the fact of the amount of meat consumed annually per head in Great Britain being greater than the amount consumed per head in the countries I have mentioned, is quite possible, 282 The Division of the Land without any necessity for resorting to the hypothesis, that our peasants eat even as much animal food as the peasants of Western Europe. Even if the peasants of England, Wales, and Ireland did eat animal food oftener than they really do, it would be but a poor compensation for the loss of all the vast advantages enjoyed by the peasants throughout Western Europe, viz., the freedom of action, and the possibility of improving their con- dition, of acquiring a farm and a house of their own, and of rising, by prudence, self-denial, and exertion, to a higher station in society. But all the inquiries, which have been made in recent yearj, and the careful investigations made by the correspondents of the public journals, and particularly by the writers of the admirable letters on " Labour and the Poor," recently pub- lished in the " Morning Chronicle," prove that the peasants of England seldom obtain any animal food at all. 10. Another of the viaity and great advantages arising from the cultivated intelligence of the peasants of Gerjnany, Switzerland, and Holland, and frojn the subdivision of the land among them, is, that all the peasant pro- prietors of these countries are fiaturally, from their position, adverse to rash and ill-considered political changes, and to political agitation, and are all rendered strongly Conservative in character, so that the majority of the people, instead of the minority, are interested in the cause of order and public tra?i- guillitY. It will be said, "But do not the events of 1848 prove the contrary 1 " I unhesitatingly answer, " No," The govern- ment of Louis Philippe fell, not because the country people rose against it, but because the government had so governed, as to alienate the affection of the peasant proprietors to such an extent, that they would not rise in its defence. Louis Philippe's government refused almost every peasant proprietor in France the right of voting at the elections ; it refused to repeal several taxes, which pressed with peculiar weight upon them ; it had burdened and was burdening them with an ever- renders the Peasants Conservative. 2S3 increasing weight of taxation ; it had annually increased, and was still annually increasing, the public debt and the public expenditure ; it had increased the number of placemen to such an extent, that they were much more numerous than the electors ; it had broken important national alliances, and had run the risk of war for the sake of a mere family connection, in which the people felt not the slightest interest ; and it had continually and unnecessarily infringed the inestimable privilege of the free expression of opinion, whether by word of mouth or by the press. By these means, the government of Louis Philippe had completely estranged the affections of the small landed pro- prietors throughout France. In the hour of necessity, there- fore, although the proprietors did not rise against the govern- ment, they would not rise in its defence, and consequently it fell. Even the shopkeepers of Paris refused to fight for it. One remarkable proof of the feeling of the people with regard to M. Guizot's scheme of government, is, that in the first two Assemblies returned after the erection of the Republic, he has been unable to obtain a seat, notwithstanding all the exertions of his friends, and notwithstanding all that the people have suffered from the excitement and excesses, which necessarily attended the great political change. Since the Revolution, however, the peasant proprietors have uniformly shown themselves the friends of order. In the insurrection of June, 1848, which I witnessed myself, the peasant proprietors flocked to Paris by thousands, and shed their blood in the support of Cavaignac, and for the sake of public tranquillity. M. jMichelet happily and forcibly represented the tranquil and firm attitude of the peasants of France, when he said, that " the whole of the country districts of France, with their millions of peasant proprietors, formed, so to speak, the Mount Ararat of tlie Revolietion." This is the principal cause, why the late Revolution was so different to the one of 1789. 77ie!i there were scarcely any peasant or small proprietors. There were only lords and oppressed tenants. When the former fled, there remained no Conservative body, either in the towns or rural districts, capable of defending or upholding the governments, which successively endeavoured to check those who were interested in turmoil and bloodshed. Nozu, all the inhabitants of the rural districts, 284 The Division of the Land and of the smaller towns, are allied with the shopkeepers and merchants on the side of order. This renders their ultimate triumph certain, however great the changes through which the state may be obliged to pass. Throughout all the excitement of the Revolutions of 1848 the peasant proprietors of France, German)', Holland, and Switzerland, were almost universally found upon the side of order, and opposed to revolutionary excesses. It was only in the provinces, where the land was divided among the nobles, and where the peasants were only serfs, as in the Polish pro- vinces, Bohemia, Austria, and some parts of South Germany, that they showed themselves rebellious. In Prussia they sent deputation after deputation to Frederic William, to assure him of their support ; in one province the peasant proprietors elected his brother as their representative ; and in others they declared, by petition after petition forwarded to the Chamber, and by the results of the elections, how strongly they were opposed to the anarchical party in Berlin. The insurrections which broke out in Germany, broke out in the la)-ge toivjis, among the middle classes, and among those town poor who owned no land, and who were not individually interested in the preservation of public order and tranquillity. Hecker and Struve could find little or no support among the peasant proprietors of South Germany, though they went about from village to village, bribing and intimidating by turns : their adherents were inhabitants of the towns. When we consider what enormous political changes were effected in those countries, within the short space of one year, and with how little bloodshed they were effected, when com- pared to that which our own great Revolution cost us ; when we compare the fierce struggle through which England passed in our Great Rebellion, in obtaining even less results than they have obtained ; when we reflect, that at the beginning of 1848, the Germans had no free press — could not asseinble, even in private houses, to discuss political matters — had no public assemblies which deserved the name of Parliaments — and had no voice or influence in the levying of taxation, in the affairs of the nation, or even in the political regulations which affected their own domestic concerns ; when we remember that the acts and speeches of every individual were watched, and noted down by odious systems of espionage, supported by the governments, and that every attempt to rise renders the Peasants Conservative. 285 against this state of things was crushed in the bud, by enor- mous armies and bodies of police, — we shall plainly see that some strong conservative influence must have been at work, to have kept the people so long quiet, and to have prevented the transition to universal suffrage, and to all the rights of democratic states which has taken place, from plunging those countries into ungovernable licence and confusion. But such an influence was and is at work. That influence is the conservative feeling, or rather the fear of civil discord, which the subdivision of land among the peasantry of any country will invariably produce. A revolution, like the French Revolution of 1789, in either Germany, Switzerland, or France, is now impossible. A great town may now and then rise in insurrection, and may indulge in the excitement of riot and street warfare, but anything like a general bloody revolution is quite impossible. What, I would ask, has induced the governments of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and, indeed, of all the German countries, as well as those of Switzerland and Sardinia, to grant universal suffrage so willingly to their people ? Simply this : — That these governments knew, that the whole of the peasants were strongly conservative, by interest, and disposition ; that they were the steadiest of all the supporters of public order and of a firm government ; that the people of the towns were the most democratic, and that to grant the suftrage to them, and not to the peasants, would be to put themselves in the hands of the anarchists, and to deprive themselves of the powerful and certain support of the intelligent body of the peasant proprietors. Urged by these views, these governments have not attempted 10 limit the number of the electors, by adopting a property qualification, but have admitted the whole people to the electoral privileges. They could not have adopted a more conservative policy, for they have, by this nieans, enabled the peasants to swell the members of the Conservative party in the Chambers, by sending thither representatives of their own feelini^s and principles. The peasent proprietors of all the provinces of those countries are all immediately interested in the preservation of public order. Everybody, except the labourers of some of the largest towns, has, or expects soon to have, something to lose by a revolution. None, but those labourers, fancy themselves 286 The Division of the Land interested in public disturbances; and even in the large towns, the riots of 1848 often arose more from the excitement always attendant upon sudden political change, and from the rioting of people long unaccustomed to political liberty, than from any strong or deep-rooted discontent, or long-cherished anarchical feelings. All the substratum of society, in most of the rural districts of these countries, is conservative. It is the minority only who are interested in political change. The English order of things is inverted. In England it is the peasants and operatives, who fancy they have nothing to lose and much to gain by a revolution of society. It is the majority with us who think they are deeply interested in an upturning of society. It is the majority who hope to gain some share of the vast terri- torial domains of the nobles, or at least to get some part of those great tracts of land, which they observe lying unculti- vated by any one ; or who, without having any specific views whatever, say, we cannot lose, for we have nothing to lose, we cannot be poorer than we are, or more wretched than we are ; we may possibly gain by a change ; but if not, it is clear we cannot lose. There are vast masses, not only of our town operatives, but also of our country peasants, w^ho, in times of commotion, reason in this manner, and are at the beck of the first demagogue who arouses their slumbering feelings. Symptoms of this under-current of passion are now and then vouchsafed us, like the warnings of a volcano. Some- times we have Rebecca riots ; sometimes. Chartists' risings ; sometimes, actual insurrections, sometimes, wide-spread incen- diary fires ; and in Ireland, constant rebellion. The more intelligence spreads among the poor of our country, the more will all this increase, unless we alter the laws which tend to prevent the peasants acquiring property. The classes who are deprived of the natural means of improving their social condition, will rise more and more fiercely against the obstacles which beset them, the more clearly they perceive those obstacles. If it be necessary or expedient that the present landed system should be continued, it would be wiser to get rid of every school in the whole country. To give the people intelligence, and yet to tie their hands, is more dangerous than to give fire to a madman. At present our peasants are deficient in intelligence, and therefore they are quiet. renders the Peasants Conservative. 287 In Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and France, all is different to the picture I have just been attempting to draw. The peasant proprielors, and the inhabitants of the smaller provincial towns of those countries, will never be insurrectionary whilst the present subdivision of land continues. Every peasant feels that his social position and well-being depend entirely and solely on his own exertions. He knows that if he does not acquire land of his own, and if he does not better his condition, it is entirely his own fault. He knows that no law impedes him, or diminishes the returns of his labour ; that no class is favoured more than his own ; that he can ask for no social change, unless it be less tax- ation and improved education. He feels, therefore, that change cannot benefit him socially, and that it might possibly deprive him of some of the advantages he now possesses. He is, therefore, adverse to sudden changes of all kinds. He is naturally, and from motives of self-interest, a supporter of a strong and peaceful government. He is adverse to war, be- cause war costs money, and entails heavy taxation. The peasants of France have gradually, during the last thirty years, been becoming more and more pacific, solely owing to the effect of the subdivision of property. The people of several of the greatest towns of France are still as warlike as ever. In Germany and Switzerland the same fact is observable. The war party, and the revolu- tionary party, in Germany, are formed of the inhabitants of the great towns. The same may be said of Switzerland. The people of the small provincial towns, and of the rural districts, are eminently pacific and conservative in their ten- dencies. I was constantly told in Germany, prior to the outbreaks of 1848, that if political changes were ever effected, they would originate with the people of the larger towns, and not with the peasantry. I remember, in particular, a very intelli- gent man at Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia, saying to me, " The peasants 3.re so adverse to political commotion, and so interested in public tranquillity, on account of their being the owners of the land, that they will never endeavour to effect any political changes, however much they may dislike the present political thraldom. They feel that they are well and cheaply governed, that they have no social advantage to gain by a change, that they have property which might be considerably injured by 2 88 The Division of the Land public riots, and that they might themselves lose some of that freedom of labour which they now enjoy." This opinion has been remarkably verified by the conduct of the peasants during the political riots and struggles, which have taken place in the great towns of Germany. Nowhere have the town rioters found much countenance or support given them by the peasants. In the late barricade riots in the manufacturing district and town of Elberfeld, the peasants kept aloof ; and when the rioters forsook their barricades, and attempted to make their way in a body across the Rhine Provinces, in order to join the republicans of the towns of South Germany, the peasant proprietors armed, pursued and attacked them, took them prisoners, and delivered them all into the hands of justice. Many such instances might be quoted. This represents the universal feeling of the German peasants in all those provinces where the land is divided. Everything I heard upon my travels in Europe, and everything which occurred in 1848, confirmed the truth of the opinion expressed by the gentleman of Elberfeld. I travelled with a banker of . Berne, just after the invasion of Lucerne by the people of Areovie. He assured me that nothing was to be feared from the Swiss peasants. He told me that, only just before, the peasants of the canton of Berne had sent a deputation to the Council of State of the canton, to tell them that if the radicals of the city ventured to engage in any insurrection against government, or in any unconstitutional proceeding, they would instantly arm in the defence of public order, and would assist the executive officers with their united strength. Such also was the opinion of the head professors of the great schools in Vevay, and such, indeed, was the opinion of almost all the gentlemen connected with the cantonal govern- ments, with whom I conversed. It is true that, in 1847, the peasants joined with the towns- people in the greatest part of Switzerland, in invading the small mountain cantons. But I believe they were not only warranted in taking that course, but that they w&xq forced io take it. By the old constitution of Switzerland, imposed upon them by the allies on the settlement. of Europe, it was necessary to have a majority of three-fourths of the cantons in order to effect any change in the constitution. Now it so happened renders the Peasan4s Conservative, 289 that all the populous cantons of Switzerland, nearly two-thirds of all the cantons, and more than jiine-tcnths of all the people desired to increase the executive power of the Diet of Switzer- land, and to make it something more like a parliament. Until 1847 it was almost entirely powerless, the government of each canton being carried on almost independently of the other cantons, by means of a separate Council of State. Owing to this, Switzerland, as a nation, was almost incapable of action. It could not combine for any great object. It had no weight in the Councils of Europe. It was even weak in matters of mere defensive policy. There were five or six of the small mountain cantons, who systematically voted against every national proposal made in the Diet, and who systematically opposed all revision of the Constitutional Chart. It was believed, by the majority of the Swiss, and it seems probable, that these little cantons were in the pay of Austria ; and that Austria, by means of her gold, annulled all the votes of the Diet, and, by preventing Switzer- land from combining for any object, kept her a weak and sub- missive neighbour. These obstructive cantons were the most thinly populated of all, but they had just enough votes to enable them to prevent the Diet from effecting any constitu- tional reform. The people of all the other cantons, and more populous cantons, were unanimous in desiring these changes. A large party even in the small cantons concurred in the wish, but all their peaceable efforts were unavailing. The vast majority of all the people of Switzerland were compelled to submit to the will of a very few, and those few bribed, as it was and is now generally believed, by the gold of the ancient, traditional, and inveterate enemy of Swiss freedom — Austria. Under such circumstances the patience of any people would have broken down. That no change was effected in Switzer- land during so many years, was solely owing to the conservative feelings of the peasant proprietors, and to the antipathy they felt to political commotions. But at length even these feel- ings gave way, and the peasants joined the townspeople in remodelling the Constitutional Chart by force of arms. I have given this hasty sketch of Swiss politics, merely to explain circumstances which hatve seemed to many to prove that the Swiss are revolutionary in their habits and interests. Such a supposition is utterly unfounded. There is not a more T 290 The Division of the Land industrious, frugal, temperate, and conservative peasantry in Europe. The profound tranquillity of Switzerland thi'oughout the revolutionary movements of 1848 and 1849 is a strong proof of this. It should be remembered that every man in Switzerland is a soldier ; that every man has a gun or a rifle of his own hung up on the wall of his cottage sitting-room ; that every man has a vote ; that every one can read and write ; and, more than all, that the police force is very small. If these facts are borne in mind, my readers will comprehend that the perfect tranquillity of Switzerland during 1848 and 1 849 was a very remarkable and significant proof of the con- servatism of the peasant proprietors, who form the great majority of the people. With Austria convulsed on the one side, with Italy, France, and Germany revolutionised on the other sides, and with her own territory deluged with political adventurers and refugees, Switzerland existed in the midst of the turmoil as tranquil and as safe as a sea-bird in a storm. Political tranquillity is established upon a much surer basis in Switzerland than in England. A rising of the peasants in Switzerland will never take place except in defence of their liberties, or in opposition to the enemies of social order and prosperity. The peasants of Switzerland have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by political disturbances ; and they are zn- iellis:cnt enough to understand this truth. If the system of landed tenures in Ireland could be altered, and a class of peasant proprietors be created, instead of the present miserable class of tenants-at-will, the Irish farmers and the Irish peasantry would be rendered as strongly disposed to support government, to maintain the public tranquillity, and to preserve intact the union of the two countries, as the present Irish landed proprietors are. The results which have universally followed the abolition of the laws, which enable proprietors to keep their lands out of the market for a great number of years, which thus tend to create and preserve great estates, and which immensely increase the difficulty and consequent expenses of transferring land from man to man, would again follow, if a similar great change were effected in the sister kingdom. The farmers and peasants would buy land. The bogs would soon be divided, purchased, drained, and cultivated. renders the Peasants Conse7'vative. 291 A great class of small yeomanry, like those who in the olden times existed in England, would rapidly spring up, A great conservative class would be thus created. The houses and social condition of these proprietors would improve in the same ratio as their industry ; and the industry of the Irishman at home would be as great, as it proverbially is on his clearings in the colonies. Every man who spent ^loo in a plot of land would laugh at the demagogues. The peasant proprietors would not ask our. assistance to keep them from starvation. The Irish farmers, who now send over their savings to the English savings-banks, or hide them among the rafters of their barns in Ireland, would soon buy land. Public discontent and rebellion would gradually subside, the more the peasantry and farmers acquired a stake in the country ; foreign capital would then flow into Ireland ; that land which had not been bought up by the inhabitants would be purchased by new comers ; manufactures would spring up ; the splendid havens of the sister island would once more be crowded with the shipping of the world ; and Ireland, so fertile and so admirably situated to carry on an immense trade with America, would soon become one of the most productive and prosperous islands of the sea. This is no fanciful picture. No country has yet changed tenants-at-will for small proprietors,, without being vastly bene- fited, and benefited, too, as I say Ireland w^ould be. Many countries have now tried the experiment, and in all it has signally succeeded. Before the division of land in France among the peasants, they were, according to the accounts of Arthur Young and many contemporary writers, in as bad a condition as that of the Irish at the present day. The same may be said of the peasantry of many parts of Germany, before the great statesmen of Prussia, Stein and Hardenberg, per- suaded the late king of Prussia to annul all the laws which enabled the old proprietors to prevent their successors from selling any portion of their lands. Since those great men effected that change, the peasants of Prussia have risen from a condition analogous to that of the Irish at the present day, to the prosperous and happy one which I have endeavoured to describe. A similar result has followed a similar change in Saxony, B-aden, Bavaria, Styria, the Tyrol, Switzerland, Hol- land, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and France ; and it is but reasonable to conclude, that if a change were made in the 292 The Division of the Land enables landed tenures in Ireland, similar to that brought about in Prussia by Stein and Hardenberg, an equally happy result would follow ; and I am convinced that it can be effected by no other means. The more intelhgence advances among the peasants of Germany and France, the more clearly will they perceive that they can gain nothing, and that they might lose much, by civil commotions, and therefore the more conservative will they become in their ideas and in their habits ; but the more intelli- gence advances in our country, the more plainly will the peas- ants see the misery of their situation, — the more clearly will they understand the difference between their own state and the state of the peasants abroad. — the better will they under- stand the working of the laws affecting the landed property in this country, — the more plainly will they perceive, that the effect of those laws is to take away from them any chance of improving their social condition, unless they leave their native parishes and homes, — and the more strongly will they be in- clined to combine for the violent alteration of the system of the tenures of land. 1 2. Another most tisefiil and important effect of the freedom of landed property from the old feudal restrictions is, that it enables the small shopkeepers to purchase land, and renders them more conservative in their political ideas. The more a man lives immured in a town, and shut out from the pleasures of the country, the more strongly do his thoughts revert to the healthy pursuits of a rural life, and the more strongly is he inclined to look for a means of escaping, towards the close of his life, from the din, the smoke, the exhausted atmosphere, and the crowded lite of the town, and for a means of exchanging all this for the health and tran- quillity of a rural retreat. Under our present system of landed tenures it is seldom possible for a small tradesman to buy a small estate, even if he has saved money enough to enable him to do so. He may often take the lease of a house, or of a house and garden ; but he is seldom able to get possession of a small farm even on lease ; for small farms are becoming, in most parts of the Shopkcepei'S to acquire Land. 293 England, less and less numerous every day. And even if he could get a small farm on lease, that does not offer nearly the same temptation to him as the possibility of buying a farm would do. He knows that small farms are rare ; that their rentals are very often — I might say generally — -fancy rentals ; that the leases are generally crowded with restrictive clauses, which destroy all the charm of ownership, and which fetter the operations of the active and enterprising improver ; and that, by taking the lease of such a farm, he would only run the risk of being drawn into liabilities, and being fettered by restric- tions which would soon make him a loser, and diminish, instead of increasing, the capital he had saved in business. Whether these fears and doubts be true or not, they certainly exist, and operate as I have said ; and I think that this opera- tion is prejudicial to the best interests of the country. The small shopkeeper feels that he is excluded from the possibility of obtaining that which his town life would natu- rally lead him to long for. He is deprived of a great induce- ment to saving, economy, and temperance. He feels that if he defers marriage, and denies himself present gratification, he can gain nothing more by self-denial than an enlargement of his shop and business ; and although this is an inducement to prudential habits, it is not nearly so strong an inducement as the hope of one day becoming an owner of a small estate, and an inhabitant of a rural parish. He finds himself prevented from acquiring that which is the day-dream of townspeople, and obliged to remain all his life in a situation, in v,'hich the majority would not remain, if they could escape. It is, therefore, no wonder that such a man should be much more radically inclined, should marry much earlier in life, and should burden himself with a much larger family than if he had some strong inducement to support the existing institutions, to practise self-denial and economy in his younger days, and to put up for a time with the less pleasurable occupations of his town life, in the hope and expectation of being able to change them at a future time for along-coveted pleasure. The small shopkeeper, who feels that he can invest his savings in the purchase of a farm, does not marry so soon as, and is more economical, more self-denying, more industrious, and much more conservative in general than the one who feels that he is prevented by the laws from all hope of ever purchasing a farm. 294 ^-^^ Division of Land 7'ediices So beneficial do I believe the system of small properties to be in its effects upon the characters, habits, and feehngs of the small shopkeepers, that if I did not advocate such a system for the sake of the peasants, I should do so for the sake of the shopkeepers. In a country like our own, where the accumulation of enormous masses of uneducated workmen is going on with such a rapidity, it is doubly important for us to consider how we may render our small shopkeeper class as conservative as possible, in order thereby to create a counterpoise for the influence of the increasing multitudes df the labourers of our great cities. It is impossible to attain this end more surely or more quickly than by encouraging the subdivision of the land, and by teaching the small shopkeepers to feel that they may become proprietors, if they will only save capital enough for the purchase of a farm. On this ground I repeat what I have said before, that if it were thought inexpedient to en- courage the general subdivision of land, yet it would seem to be highly expedient to introduce, at least into the crowded manufacturing districts, some such system, in order thereby to create among the shopkeepers, and among those who would become owners of gardens or of farms, a strong conservative class, capable of counterbalancing the immensely powerful democratic class, which is now nursing in those districts, and which is increasing there every day in strength and numbers. 13. The division of laiided property reduces that intense coin- petition for wealth, which distinguishes English life. — The intense competition of the diff'erent classes in England reacts very u)ifivourably upon, the poor. — The results of the great property system in Ireland. — The present con- dition of Ireland. — Tlie causes of that condition. — The remedy for Irish misery. One curious effect of the existence in a country of a great privileged class, like that of our landed proprietors, is to increase enormously the emulation and striving of the mer- cantile and professional classes below them. The luxury in which the great estates enable the great proprietors to live, and the splendid entertainments ^w^ fetes. the Competition of the Middle Classes. 295 which their wealth enables them to give, stimulate a rivalry which is felt more or less through every grade of the middle classes. If Lord A or Squire B gives dinners in a grand room hung with jDaintings, and covers his table with costly wines and viands brought from all corners of the world, Mr. C . a merchant living near, will not be content with a condition of life and fortune which does not enable him in some degree to emulate the display of his wealthy and influential neighbour. He will, consequently, strive to make his equipage as handsome, to dress his wife as well, to cover his table in as sumptuous a manner, and to hang his walls with as valuable paintings ; and in order to do all this, he will strive to make himself as wealthy as the rich proprietor who lives near him, and who invites him to his luxurious dwelling. Not, perhaps, that he imagines that all this luxury really increases happiness, but because a plain equipage, a plain house, and a plain dinner would prove him to be so much poorer, and therefore so much less influ- ential in society, and therefore so much less respectable in the eyes of his dependants than his wealthy and influential neighbour the landed proprietor. The luxury of the rich mer- chant influences the shopkeeper in the same manner as the luxury of the landed proprietor influences the merchant. Each class, down to the shopkeepers, emulates the richer class, so that the greater the wealth and luxury of the wealthiest class, the greater will be the competition of the middle classes. This emulatioji cantioi reach the lower classes, partly because of their inferior intelligence, and partly because of the utter impossibility of the peasants of England ever rising itt the world, by any exertion or present self-denial, however great. Among the middle classes, however, each class in England struggles hard to emulate those above it. The intensity of exertion necessary to ensure any sort of success is very great ; but the hope of success induces many to spend the greatest part, and some to spend the whole, of their lives in endeavour- ing to effect this end. In no country in the world is so much time spent in the mere acquisition of wealth, and so little time in the enjoyment of life and of all the means of happiness which God has given to man, as in England. In no country in the world do the middle classes labour so intensely as here. One would think, to view the present state 296 The Division of Land reduces of English society, that man was created for no other purpose than to collect wealth, and that he was forbidden to gratify the beautiful tastes with which he has been gifted for the sake of his own happiness. To be rich, with us, is the great virtue, the pass into all society, tlie excuse for many frailties, and the mask for numerous deformities. People in England do not ask themselves, how great a variety of pleasure they can obtain by their present incomes ; but how good an appearance they can keep up with it, how nearly they can imitat-e the manners and habits of the great above them, and how soon they can hope to imitate those manners and habits still more closely. I have been making these remarks, in order the better to describe the difference of German and Swiss society. In these countries there is no class^ and but few individuals who are as wealthy as the class of our landed aristocracy. Their richest class is not nearly so wealthy as the wealthiest class of our manufacturers. The reason of this is, that the whole of the fortune accumulated by a man in his lifetime seldom goes on increasing in the hands of his children, and seldom indeed remains undivided in the hands of a successor. It is generally divided at his death among several persons, so that a great fortune or estate does not remain any length of time entire. But a fortune like that of one of our nobles can very rarely be built up by one person. To amass such a fortune generally requires the exertions of several generations, to each of whom the former collector has left his gains undivided and indivisible. Where, therefore, the law does not assist the col- lector to keep his propeity together after his own death, very few such immense fortunes can ever be amassed. As the law does not in foreign countries allow such facili- ties for keeping accumulated what has been once collected together, the class of really wealthy men there is consequently very much smaller and very much poorer than in England, and the general style of living is much less costly and luxurious. A man may live respectable and happily, in countries where the law does not keep up a great model class, for one-fourth of the income which is necessary in England. The French, the Dutch, the Germans, and the Swiss, look with wonder at the enormous fortunes, and at the enormous mass of pauperism which accumulate in England side by side. They have little of either extreme. The petty sovereigns and the Competition of the Middle Classes. 297 a few nobles and merchants are wealthy ; but they form too small a minority to exercise anything like so powerful an in- fluence upon the society of those countries, as the numerous body of the English landlords do upon English society. The consequence is, that the middle classes of those coun- tries are not generally brought into contact with a class very much richer than themselves, and are not therefore so strongly urged into excessive expenditure by a desire to emulate a wealthy class, as is the case in England. All classes in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland, are theref^ore satisfied with less income than the corresponding classes in England. They, therefore, devote less time to labour, and more time to healthy and improving recreation. The style of living among the mercantile classes of these countries is much simpler than in England, but their enjoy- ment of life is much greater. They live not so much as we do to die rich, but to live happy. They do not strive after appear- ances nearly so much as we do. They do not spend so much upon their tables, their equipages, their dress, or the ornaments of their houses, but they spend more time in the enjoyment of life. They go out ofiener into the country, they frequent musical concerts much oftener, they attend the public assem- blies much oftener, they associate with one another much more, they keep up more of the olden pastimes and exercises, and they work during fewer hours of the year than we do. The strain of life and the competition for gain are not nearly so intense with them as with us. A German or Swiss merchant, or a German or Swiss shop- keeper, trades until he has made enough wherewith to purchase a small estate ; and he then often retires from business to enjoy the remainder of his days in the country upon his own land, and in his own house, and to bring up his family amid the improving influences of a rural life. The hope of obtaining a small estate of his own forms a very strong inducement to exertion and economy, and is a much more agreeable and enticing prospect, than the hope of merely leasing a country house at some future day ever ofters to a shopkeeper in our own country. A man whose wealth alone would not entitle him to a third- rate place in English society, might, as far as his wealth is concerned, move in the highest ranks of German society. People who feel that the richest class of a country are not far 298 Effects of the Great Estate removed above them, care less to devote their whole lives to destroy the remaining disparity, than those whom a long and almost insurmountable distance separates from the wealth and influence of the richer class. This intense competition of our merchants and manufac- turers, and of the middle classes of our country, to emulate the wealth o-f the superior class, who are upheld by the laws in the continued enjoyment of undiminished and accumulating riches, reacts upon the poor in a very injurious manner. The stronger the desire of the middle classes to amass wealth and to live luxuriously, the more will they endeavour to deduct from the wages which they are obliged to pay out to those below them ; the more will they deal hardly with the poor ; and the more difficult will it be for the poor to earn their subsistence. In a country, too, where, as in England, the social arrange- ments are such as to deprive one class of the poor, viz., the peasants, of any means of improving their condition in life, excepting by leaving their homes, this competition among the middle classes of society will press and does press upon the labourers with peculiar hardship. The man, who fancies he is obliged to keep up a certain style, in order not to be much less respectable in appearances than his wealthier neighbour, will necessarily be obliged to reduce his payments to those around him as much as possible. His servants and labourers cannot expect to receive from him more than the lowest hire at which, by hard bargaining, he can procure their services. And even if the rate of money-wages in a country is high, yet a middle class so circumstanced will get more work out of their labourers in comparison with the wages given them, than any middle class not similarly circumstanced can do. Thus, in our manu- facturing districts, although the rate of wages has been always on the average high, yet the labours of the operatives, as well as of the masters themselves, have been intense in the extreme. The objects which strike foreigners with the greatest astonishment, on visiting our country, and of which they see nothing at all similar in their own countries, are, — 1. The enormous wealth of the highest classes of English society, 2. The intense and continued labour and toil of the middle and lowest classes. And, 3. The frightful amount of absolute pauperism among the lowest classes. System in Ireland. 299 The first of these singularities of Enghsh society produces the second, and contributes greatly to the production of the third, whilst it is itself occasioned almost entirely by the effect of the old feudal laws, which restrain the subdivision and cir- culation of the great properties, after they have once been accumulated. This system is admirably well adapted for heaping up enor- mous masses of wealth in a state. I believe that no such masses as now exist in England, in the hands of some of the higher classes, could be heaped up under any other system than that now pursued ; but it should be remembered how, side by side with these heaps, pauperism goes on increasing. Could we regard the poor as only the machines, by which we were to create our wealth, even then I should doubt whether we should be economically prudent to be so careless as we now are about the condition of the machines ; but when we regard them as immortal beings of the same origin, and created for the same destiny as the richer and more intelligent classes of society, then such a system as the one we now maintain, appears to be, not only open to economical objections, but reprehensible and obnoxious on higher and more serious grounds. Look at Ireland, where this system of great estates, and great ignorance, has been so long in force ; what is the result in that unhappy country ? The whole of the land is in the hands of a small body of proprietors. The estates of these proprietors are so affected by the real property laws, that very few of them are able to sell any part of their lands. The richer proprietors live in England, and upon the Conti- nent, and spend all the produce of their estates, — except the small quantity which is paid to the cultivators of the land, — among foreign people. The trade of the provincial towns of Ireland is consequently nearly extinguished. All the people whom that trade would employ, and all the people who would be employed as servants, grooms, gardeners, and ministers to the wants of a resident class of landed gentry, and who would be fed and clothed with what feeds and clothes similar classes in foreign lands, find no employment in such channels, and are obliged to compete for work with the already poorly- remunerated agricultural labourers. There are consequently more labourers than there is labour or food for them. English o oo Eff^<^^^ ^f ^^^^ Great Estate grooms, English tailors, English shopkeepers, English servants, English workmen of all kinds are ministering in an English town to the wants of the Irish landlords, and are dividing among them the produce of the Irish estates, — which produce ought to be divided among the Irish labourers and Irish shop- keepers. Of the poorer classes of Irish landlords, Avho live in Ireland, most have received their estates from their ancestors heavily burdened with mortgages and incumbrances, whilst others have burdened their estates themselves by their own too lavish expenditure. Nearly all are in such a condition that they have no ready capital wherewith to cultivate their lands, or to make any im- provements ; nearly all have quantities of waste lands upon their hands, which they cannot cultivate themselves, and which they cannot sell to the farmers to cultivate, because of the way in which former proprietors have been allowed, by our feudal laws of real property, to arrange the property, and to divide the whole estate in the land among several successors and incumbrancers. Most of these landlords have had their hands tied so long, that they have grown, under the long continuance of this system, incapable of taking any step towards improvement, even if the law did not prevent them. The farmers and the peasants, feeling that they cannot get leases, that they cannot buy land, or obtain any security for investment in land, owing to the expense of conveyancing, to the intricate titles of most of the estates, and to the inability of the landlords to sell, have lost all interest in the improvement of the land, all hope of ever improving their own condition, all respect or sympathy with the government, which supports this system, and are one united mass of increasing, though smouldering, disaffection. They long for Repeal ; many even of the squires, the greater mass of the shopkeepers, and nearly all the farmers of the south of Ireland, are unanimous with the peasants in wishing for Repeal, They feel that they cannot be worse off than they are at present. They see no sign in the English horizon of a change. They would all sooner try an Irish tempest than stagnate and suffer as at present. If it had not been that our manufactures and our commerce have afforded an outlet for the peasants of our villages, and System in Ireland. 301 have continually diminished the strain upon the labour markets of the rural districts, the condition of the English peasants at the present day would have been just as bad as the present state of the Irish peasantry. But in England the peasant can always find an opening in our commercial towns, and in our manufacturing districts. There is a constant emigration going on in England from the villages to the towns ; and the com- petition for labour in the villages is therefore always far less than in Ireland, where it is so much more difficult than in England, for a peasant to emigrate to a place where labour is wanted. The towns in Ireland are too poor, and in too lifeless and stationary a condition, to afford many openings ; while England is a long way off, and her towns are already too full of the surplus of her own rural districts to take off all the surplus hands of Ireland. Besides, the Irish are so demoral- ised, and are increasing, owing to their utter demoralisation, at so rapid a rate, that it would be impossible to take off the surplus hands, unless we could retard the present rapid increase of the population. Let uS endeavour to describe the present state of Ireland in as few words as possible. Ireland itself is splendidly situated, in a commercial point of view, commanding the direct route between Northern , Europe and America, with some of the finest harbours in the world. Its soil is proverbially rich and fruitful, and has won for it throughout the world the appellation of the " Emerald Isle." Its rivers are numerous, large, and well adapted for internal commerce. Its people are, physically and intellectu- ally considered, one of the most active and restless in the world. In every colony of our empire, and among the motley multitudes of the United States, the Irish are distinguished by their energy, their industry, and their success. They make as good soldiers, colonists, and railway constructors as any other people. TJicy are industrious and successful everywhere but in Ireland} 1 The "Edinburgh Review " of Jan. 1850 bears testimony to this undeniable fact, and says ; " The capacity of the Irishnman to make a successful emigrant has been by some denied. On this subject, however, the direct testimony we possess is stronger than either theory or prejudice. We need only refer our readers to that so conclusively given, and with such remarkable unanimity, by witnesses from all our colonies, examined by the recent Colonisation Commiiiee. The efficiency and success of .thej Irish emigrant in Canada is attested by Mr. Pembeiton and Mr. 302 Ejects of the Great Estate Nearly one-third of this rich island is wholly uncultivated, and is nothing more than bogs, moors, and waste lands; the cultivation of the remaining part is generally of the most miserable kind. Most of the great proprietors have no spare capital to invest in the improvement of their estates, or in bringing any of their waste lands into cultivation. Few, of even those who have capital, are energetic or intelligent enough to expend it in so rational a manner. Many, if not most, of the resident landlords, in the south and west of Ireland, are a jovial, careless, hunting set of squires, who think and care ten times more about their sports than about their lands or tenants ; while the farmers, and under-lessees of the farmers, will not invest capital in the cultivation of their lands, or in reclaiming the bogs, because they have no leases, and no security for the outlay, and because they do not feel sufficient interest in the land of another to induce them to expend their own savings in improving it ; but instead of doing so, have often, as is well known, placed their spare capital, from the want of a better investment, in the banks of Ireland or of England. Many of the squires would willingly sell part of their lands, in order to get capital to improve the other part, while nearly all the larger farmers have spare capital, and would willingly and gladly purchase land and improve it, but both parties are prevented by the present laws relating to land. Nor is civilisation in Ireland merely stationary. It is actually going backwards. In the last few years hundreds of thousand's of acres have actually been thrown out of cuhivation, owing, on the part of the landlords, to inability to sell, and to want Brydone ; in New Brunswick, by Mr. Perley ; in Nova Scotia, by Mr. U.iiackc ; in the United States, by Mr. Mintern ; in Austr.ilia and Van Diemen's Land, by Colonel Mitchell, Colonel Macarthur, Mr. Verner, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Besn.-ird, Mr. Justice Therry, and the Rev. C. D. Lang. A yet more recent witness is Count Strzelecki, who observes, in his evidence given before the Committee of (he House of Lords on the Irish Poor Law, — 'The Irishman improves in two or tliree years by emigrating lo Australia : he acquires habits of industry ; he learns to rely upon him- self more than he does in Ireland ; he has an openness in his character, and shows all that he can do, while here he does not show it. ... I saw Irishmen in the United Slates, in Canada, and in Australia, living as well as Anglo-Saxons, acquir- ing their grumbling h.abits, and thus improving continually their condition. . This difference may perhaps be more successfully traced to the consequences of the transplantation from a narrow and confined moral and physical sphere of action, to a larger space with more freedom and more cheerful prospects of life, and of which they h.ivc none at home.'" System in Ireland. 30 of capital and activity ; and, on the part of the farmers, to want of security, and to being prevented purchasing any part of the strictly entailed estates. Sir Robert Peel, in his great speech in 1849, on Ireland, stated that in one barony, in the county of Cork, extending over 80,000 acres, all the lands were thrown waste ; and that in another locality, the union of Clifden, the rental of which is ^19,000, there were lands of the annual value of ^9000 thrown out of cultivation. Many of the great landlords know little or nothing of the state of the peasantry or farming on tlieir estates ; they receive as much of their rentals as possible, in England or abroad, and leave their agents to enrich themselves too often at the expense of the poor tenantry. The condition of the peasantry is something which none, but those who have actually witnessed it for themselves, can possibly realise. At the mercy of sub-agents of agents of the landlords — with no interest in the soil — liable to be evicted from their holdings by the agents — totally uneducated, for the most part — they live more wretchedly than any other people upon the face of the earth. Everywhere, even in the most prosperous of the eastern coun- ties of Ireland, a traveller, as he passes along the roads, will see, on the roadsides and in the fields, places which look like mounds of earth and sods, with a higher heap of sods upon the top, out of which smoke is curling upwards ; and with two holes in the side of the heap, next the road, one of which is used as the door, and the other as the window, of the hovel which exists beneath this seeming mound of earth. These are the cottages of the peasantry ! Inside, there is scarcely ever more than one room, formed by the four exterior mud walls ; and in these places, upon the mud floor, the families of the peasants live, often without a single piece of furniture, excepting a kettle, in which they boil potatoes, a plate or two, a wooden bench, and a heap of straw in the corner of the hovel. In this hole, human beings — men, women, boys, and girls — all live and sleep together, and herd with the pigs they fatten. Gaunt ragged figures, whose clothes hardly hang about them so as to hide their nudity, crawl out of these sties, and plant the ground around their cabins with potatoes, which generally constitute the only food of the inmates throughout the year, or infest, as beggars, 04 Effects of the Great Estate the thoroughfares, or swell the rebellious gatherings of the peasantry. Let Sir Robert Peel describe this state of things. He is not generally given to e.xaggeration. Speaking of the testi- mony of the Irish Commission, Sir Robert says, — " They said,' 'they regretted to be obliged to add, that though agri- cultural improvements were rapidly advancing, yet in most parts of Ireland there was not a corresponding advance in the condition of agricultural labourers ; that they continued to suffer the greatest privations ; that they were badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid.' In the second vol- ume of a useful digest of the evidence on the occupation of land, reference is made to a very curious document, attached to the census made in 1841. Those who prepared that census divided the houses of Ireland into four different classes, and the result showed that the lowest of the four classes was composed of mud cabins, with one room only. They then ascertained what proportion of the inhabited houses of Ireland consisted of that fourth class. Observe, this report was made at a period which could have reference to no date posterior to the year 1844; and it states, that 'it may be assumed that the fourth class of houses are generally unfit for human habita- tion • and yet it would appear that, in the best circumstanced county in this respect, the county of Down, 24/^- per cent., or one-fourth of the population, live in houses of this class : while in Kerry the proportion is (i^^^ per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole ; and taking the average of the whole popula- tion of Ireland, as given by the census commissioner, we find that in the rural districts about 43 percent, of the families, and in the civic districts, about 36 per cent., inhabit houses of the fourth class.' " But I should wish particularly to take the proportion of that part of Ireland, to which I more particularly refer, that part in which those distressed unions are now depending upon a few for the support of a great number of the inhabitants. I should wish to take the proportion there. In Donegal the number of the fourth class is 47 per cent. ; in Leitrim, 47 per cent. ; in Roscommon, 47 per cent. ; in Sligo, 50 per cent. ; in Galway, 52 per cent. ; in Limerick, 55 per cent. ; in Cork, 56 per cent. ; in Clare, 56 per cent. ; in Mayo, 62 per cent. ; in Kerry, 66 per cent. The lowest, or fourth CLASS, REMEMBER, COMPRISES ALL MUD CABINS, HAVING BUT System ill Ireland. 305 ONE ROOM. In the three last counties, Clare, Mayo, and Kerry, the proportion of every one hundred families, who occupy houses built of mud, and having only a single room, is, 56 per cent, in Clare, 62 per cent, in I\Iayo, and 66 in Kerry. Now that was the state of affairs before Ireland was visited by that great calamity, the first appearance of which was in the autumn of 1845." But horrible and shameful as this state of things is, it is by no means the full extent of the evil. Not only are the majority of the Irish condemned to exist in such hovels as Sir Robert Peel describes, but even their tenure of these disgusting cabins is insecure. If they do not pay their rent for them at tire proper time, they are liable to be turned adrift, even in the middle of the night, into the bleak road, without a shelter, and with their helpless wives and children. No notice is necessary ; no notice is given. The miserable tenants are subject to the tender mercies of a bailift", without any remedy or appeal except to Heaven. More than 50,000 such evictions took place in 1 849. More than 50,000 families were, in that year, turned out from their wretched dwellings, without pity and without a refuge ! Is it a wonder that fathers, and husbands, and brothers should often be driven to madness, desperation, and revenge? A very able man, who travelled through Ireland in the autumn of 1S49, says : — " In passing through some half dozen counties, Cork (especially in the western portions of it), Limerick, Clare, Galway, and jNIayo, you see thousands of ruined cottages and dwelhngs of the labourers, the peasants, and the small holders of Ireland. You see from the roadside twenty houses at once w'ith not a roof upon them. I came to a village not far from Castlebar, where the system of eviction had been carried out only a few days before. Five women came about us as the car stopped, and on making inquiry, they told us their sorrowful story. They were not badly clad ; they were cleanly in appearance ; they were intelligent ; they used no violent language, but in the most moderate terms told us that on the Monday week previously those five houses had been levelled. They told us how many children there were in their families : I recollect one had eight, another had six ; that the husbands of three of them were in this country for the harvest ; that they had written to their husbands to tell them of the desolation of their homes. And I asked them, U 3o6 E.ff(^<^i^ of the Great Estate ' What did the husbands say in reply ? ' They said * they had not been able to eat any breakfast ! ' It is but a simple observation, but it marks the sickness and the sorrow which came over the hearts of those men who here were toiling for their three or four pounds, denying themselves almost rest at night, that they might make a good reaping at the harvest, and go back that they might enjoy it in the home which they had left. All this is but a faint outline of what has taken place in that unhappy country. Thousands of individuals have died within the last two or three years, in consequence of the evictions which have taken place ; evictions, too, which are altogether unnecessary for the salvation of the proprietor, and which are as likely to produce ruin to his property as any other course which he or his forefathers have heretofore taken with respect to it. But there have been recent outrages com- mitted in Ireland. A respectable gentleman was shot in open day, on the Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, whilst on his way to church— shot, too, while two men were within two or three yards of him ; one, in fact, with his shoulder against his saddle. And the man who fired was seen going through the garden and escaping ; while two men were walking rapidly over a bog, supposed to be the assassins making their escape. Why were not these men apprehended ? Because of the rottenness that there is in the state of society in these districts ; because of the sympathy which there is on the part of the great bulk of the population with those who, by these dreadful acts of vengeance, are supposed to be the conservators of the rights of the tenant, and supposed to give him that protection which imperial legislation has denied. The first thing that ever called my attention to the condition of Ireland was the reading an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment, but the truth struck me at once ; and all I have seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty — when government denies the right of a people — when competition is so fierce for the little land which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland — when, in fact, for a bare potato, millions are scrambUng, these people are driven back from law and from the usages of civilisation to that which is termed the law of nature, and if not of the strongest, the law of the vindictive ; and in this case the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by these acts of ven- geance, periodically committed, that they can hold in suspense Sysfcjn in Ireland. 307 the arm of the proprietor and the accent, who, in too many cases, if he dared, would exterminate them. At tliis moment there is a state of war in IreLnnd. Don't let us disguise it from ourselves ; there is a war between landlord and tenant ; a war as fierce, as relentless, as though it were carried on by force of arms. There is a suspicion between landlord and tenant which is not known between any class of people in this country : and there is a hatred, too, which I be- lieve, under the present and past system, has been pursued in Ireland, which can never be healed or eradicated. Of course, under a state of things like this, industry is destroyed, the rights of property are destroyed, and at this moment landlords in Ireland of the most excellent character, and of the most just intentions, cannot make those disposi- tions of their property which are necessary even for the ad- vantages of the tenants themselves in some cases, because of the system of terror which prevails through many of the counties."' ^ Such is the frightful, the appalling, result of our long govern- ment of Ireland ; and we wonder that the Irish should rebel against such a system of misgovernment ! Hitherto we have done nothing to effect a change. A statute was passed in the past year (1S49) to enable proprie- tors of estates in Ireland, which are burdened with mortgages and certain other charges mentioned in the Act, to sell the estates and to confer a good and indisputable title upon the purchasers. This statute is a very good one so far as it will affect the state of landed property in Ireland, but its effect will be a ve>y limited one. It leaves the powers of entailing and settling lands untouched ; it does not create any system of registration of titles ; it does not attempt to simplify the conveyance of land, except in a few cases ; and it will not, therefore, enable the shopkeepers, or the farmers, or the peasants of Ireland to purchase land. It will not create a class of yeomanry farmers, or a class of peasant proprietors. It will not tend to render the lower classes of Ireland either more prosperous or more con- servative in their tendencies. The only effect it can have will be, to change the proprietors of some of the more heavily 1 See Mr. Bright's late remarkable speech on the state of Ireland. 3o8 What we shall be obliced «i' burdened Irish estates. This will be certainly an ndvantagc, so far as it goes, inasmuch as it will transfer some of the land from careless, poor, and ignorant men, to persons having capital and intelligence to improve it. But this is but a drop in the ocean, as compared to what Ireland requires. Ireland requires a class of yeomanry, who would be naturally interested in the preservation of order, in the improvement of the cultivation of the soil, and in reclaiming the millions of acres of rich land, which now lie waste and uncultivated. Ireland requires a law which would enable the peasants, by industry, prudence, and economy, to acquire land ; which would thus interest the peas- antry in the support of the government and in the preservation of social tranquillity ; whicli would dissipate that hopelessness and despair which now drives the fine peasantry of that noble island into disaft'ection and rebellion ; which would make the Irish peasant as active and as successful in Ireland, as he is throughout our colonies and the United States ; which would induce him to settle on the waste lands at home, in order to cultivate them, instead of escaping to distant wilds to effect there what is so much wanted at home ; and which would offei him the same inducements to exert himself, and to practise sobriety, economy, self-denial, and industry, as present them- selves to him as soon as he lands in North America. And we want a law which would bring capital to the land and land to the capitalist. This can only be effected in the same way as the same result was effected in Prussia and throughout Germany and Switzerland^ viz., by freeing the land of Ireland from the action of the entail laws ; by forbidding all settlements, entails, and devises, which would withdraw land from the market beyond the life of the person making such settlement, entail, or devise, or which would prevent any proprietor of land having a life-interest therein from SL-lling the land ; and l^y creating a system of registration of all conveyances, deeds, leases, mortgages, and writings affecting any piece of land, which would render the investigation of the titles of estates perfectly simple, and which, combined with the diminished power of entailing, settling, or otherwise affecting land, would render the transfer of land as cheap and secure as the sale of a piece of furniture, cloth, or other article. This would soon lead to the following results : — to do for Ireland. 309 I. Proprietors of heavily mortgaged estates would sell at least part of their lands. 1. Careless and extravagant owners would sell part of their estates to supply means for the gratification of their tastes, or for the payment of their debts. 3. Many landowners, who prefer to live in England, would sell their estates. 4. All landowners, who possess waste lands capable of cultiva- tion, would sell at least part of their waste lands. 5. Merchants, farmers, and peasants would purchase farms or gardens ; and in this way, land would get into the hands of persons, willing and able to spend capital or labour upon its improvement, and a large class of small proprietors would immediately spring up throughout every county, all interested in social order, in the improvement of the land, and in the prosperity of the country ; and in this way, the face of Ireland, and the character of the Irish, would, in the course of a few years, be entirely changed. Until we can find an Irish Stein or an Irish Hardenberg, who will grant the Irish people free trade in land, \)\' prcve7iting its being tied up by settlement, and who will interest the peasants and farmers of Ireland in preserving the public tran- quillity and in imp'roving the agriculture of the country, by enabling them to purchase land, we shall have done nothing;, positively notliing, for Ireland. The expenses of procedure under this new statute will be so great, owing to the intricacy of the titles of the Irish estates (an intricacy which can never be diminished, so long as the law confers such extraordinary powers of disposition on landed pro- prietors), and the cases, in which relief is granted by the Act are, comparatively speaking, so very few, that the effect of the statute will never be felt by those classes who most stand in need of relief, viz., the farmers, the shopkeepers, and the peasants of Ireland. Now there are three facts, of which there can be no doubt : the Jirsi is, that the peasants of France and Germany were, fifty years ago, subjected to a social system precisely similar to that now in force in Ireland ; the second is, that at that time, the condi- tion of the peasants of France and Germany was, according to the testimony of Arthur Young, and many other eyewitnesses, at least as bad as the condition of the Irish people in the present day ; and the t/ii'rd fact is, that since the old system of great 3 1 o W/iai we shall be obliged estates and great ignorance has been changed, and since the svstem which I have described has been put into force, the condition of the peasants of these countries has changed most undeniably, and, according to the unanimous testimony of all writers, immensely for the better. There can be no doubt that in Germany, Tyrol, Switzer- land, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland, where a system dia- metrically contrary to our own has been now for forty years maintained ; where all the peasants and labourers are well edu- cated ; where good schools and thoroughly efficient and well- trained teachers are to be found in every village and town ; where no laws prevent the natural subdivision and sale of land, or promote its unnatural and extremely unhealthy accumulation in a few hands ; and where every peasant and small shopkeeper knows, that if he is prudent and economical, he may purchase a farm ; I say, there can be no doubt that in these countries the peasants are less pauperised, more intelligent, more hopeful, prudent, prosperous, and happy, more conservative, and more virtuous than they are in our own country. I have always felt convinced, and I repeat my conviction here again, that if we wish to make an Irish labourer as prosperous, prudent, independent, conservative, and virtuous, as a German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant-proprietor is, we must legislate for the one, as the German, Swiss, and Dutch governments have long since legislated for the other. We must deprive every Irish proprietor henceforward of the power of preventing the sale of the fee-simple of his estates at any time after his death ; we must introduce a good system of registration into that country, and render every future conveyance, which is not registered immediately after the making, entirely ineffectual and worthless ; we must facilitate the sale of estates, which are now kept out of the market by old mortgages, settlements, and wills ; we must greatly increase the efficiency of the Irish system of national education, by building good colleges for the education of the teachers, and by facilitating the erection of schools and the sup- port of teachers in poor districts unable to raise local funds ; and until these measures have begun to take effect, we must maintain public tranquillity and order by the continued presence of a strong military force. By these means we should enable and induce the farmers, and many of the peasants, to buy land ; wc should thus create a class of conservative yeomanry, interested in the preservation to do for Ireland. 3 1 r of public peace and public order ; we should soon bring all the bogs and moors into cultivation ; we should stimulate the people to labour, in order to make themselves proprietors ; we should induce habits of prudence, self-denial, and industry ; we should improve the system of farming ; we should make capital flow into Irelnnd, and we should clothe it with a new and with a progressive civilisation. Before closing this chapter, I shall show, as briefly as possible, — 14. What sevej'al of the greatest writers of France think of the results of the subdivision of land in that country. In France a system exactly opposite to our own is in force. The law endeavours to force the subdivision of the land. It gives every child of a deceased parent a right to a certain share of all the land of which the father dies possessed, and that, too, even if the father wishes to devise it in a different manner. An owner of land in France may sell it as he pleases, or give it to whomsoever he chooses, or do what he likes with it, during his oivn life., but he cannot devise it as he pleases. On his death the law gives each child a right to a certain portion of the property of which his father dies possessed, whether the father hns made a will or not. While in England the lav/ gives the proprietors of land such extraordinary powers of restraining the sale of their estates, long after their own deaths, as to cause the accumulation of great estates in few hands, and to prevent the sliopkeepers and peasants buying land excepting in a few instances ; in France, on the other hand, the law forces, as far as it can., the subdivision of the estates. Each of these extremes is objectionable in an economical point of view, although I believe the English system to be the most injurious of the two, in its effects upon the majority of the people. The great problem to solve is, to devise a middle system, viz., a code of laws, which would prevent any land being rendered unsaleable for any period, except while held in trust for an infant ; which would allow a parent to devise his land in fee} but only in fee., to any person or persons he pleases; which would prevent the owner leaving different interests in the same 1 I.e., so as to give the devisee full powers of sale and disposition. 3 1 2 Results of the Division piece of land to different persons, to come into possession at successive periods ; and which would also, by means of an effective and cheap system of registration, a thing that could be easily effected, render the conveyance of a piece of land simple, cheap, and secure. I have said that the French Xt^^w forces subdivision as far as it can do so. It cannot do so in reality, for it is found that where an estate is too small to be divided further with advantage, one of the children buys the whole, and pays the other children an equiva- lent in money for their shares ; or the whole estate is sold to a stranger, and the proceeds are divided among the children, in the proportion in which the estate would have been divided. From statistics given by our great economist Mr. IMill, in the Appendix to the first volume of his " Principles of Politic;d Economy," it would seem that the average size of the holdings of the 3,900,000 smallest proprietors of France is betweenyfz/^ and eight and a halfdicrts. And as Mr. Mill says, ''Suppose as bad an agriculture as exists anywhere in Western Europe, and judge whether a single family, industrious and economical as the poorer classes of the French are, and enjoying the entire produce of from five to eight and a half acres, subject to a payment of only tenpence an acre to the government, can be otherwise than in a very desirable condition;" and Mr. Mill then goes on to show, from a series of very interesting statistics, " that there is every reason to infer, from these general data, that the morcellement (or subdivision of the estates') is making no progress" while iti many parts of France it is actually diminishing. As one proof, among others, of the truth of this conclusion, Mr. Mill gives the following interesting facts. He says, " A new cadastre, or survey and valuation of lands, has been in progress for some years past. In thirty-sevejt cantons, taken indiscriminately through France, the operation has been com- pleted ; in tiuenty-otie it is nearly complete. In the thirty-seven, the cotes foncieres^ which were 154,266 at the last cadastre (in 1809 and 18 10), have only increased by 901 1, being less than six per cent., in considerably more than thirty years, while in many of the cantons they have considerably diminished. From this increase is to be subtracted all which is due to the 1 T7VO cotes foncieres, or separ.ite accounts wilh the land-tax, correspond to a tingle proprietor. of Land in France. 31 .) progress of building, during the period, as well as to the sale of public and communal lands. In the other twenty-one cantons, the number of cotes foncieres is not yet published, but the number of parcellcs, or separate bits of land, has diminished in the same period ; and among these districts, is included the greater part of the banlieue of Paris, one of the most minutely divided districts in France, in which the morcellement has actually diminished by no less than sixteen per cent." This system was embodied by Napoleon and his ministers in the Code Napoleon ; and in whatever country the supremacy of the great Emperor was established, there he and his ministers immediately introduced this law ; so convinced were they of the enormous benefits which would accrue to the peasants from such a system, and of the popularity to be gained by the introduction of this change. Several countries, and, among others, the Prussian Rhine Provinces, have retained these laws ever since ; and the peasants of those lands still bless the Emperor's memory, for the vast boon he conferred upon them. It was, indeed, a great, bold, and ably-devised measure. Napoleon knew how these laws would reinvigorate the people ; he knew how the peasants were shackled and demoralised by the feudal laws ; he knew how thankful the peasants and even the lower part of the middle classes would be, to be enabled to obtain land ; and he therefore adopted the best possible plan for rendering himself and France popular with those countries which they conquered ; he freed the people from the feudal laws, and enabled the peasants to become pro- prietors of the soil on which they laboured. It is the recol- lection of this fact that accounts, in a great measure, for the singular esteem with which Napoleon's memory is cher- . ished by the people in many parts of Europe. He was their deliverer. Reichensperger says, " All have acknowledged, that the wonderful manner in which the prosperity of France has increased since 1790, notwithstanding the tremendous wars and revolutions it has passed through, is entirely owing to the laws which now regulate landed property in that country; that it is entirely owing to this cause that the land of France nourishes at. the present day thirty-four m.illions of people, IN A BETTER MANNER than it used to nourish twenty-five millions ; and that its people, by the increase of their wealth, pay. with less imposed taxation, T300 millions of francs 3 1 4 Results of the Division annually ; when the old monarchy fell because it attempted to raise 500 millions of francs annually." It is worthy of remark, what a great array of celebrated politicians, economists, and literary men of France, after having personally viewed the effects of the French system, have written in its favour. After Napoleon, its legislator, follow as its defenders, Sismondi, Troplong, Say, De Tracy, Droz, Chevalier, Ch. Dupin, Count Gasparin, Count Villeneuve- Bargemont, Tissot, Chaptal, Passy, Buret, jNIathieu de Bom- basle, De Carnd, De Barante, Morel de Vind(?, Moreau de Jonnds, and many others of less note ; besides our own English writers. Mill, Laing, Howitt, and others, and the German politicians and writers. Stein, Hardenberg, Thaer, Reichensperger, Dieterici, and others. Vauban, ]Mirabeau, Arthur Young, and many other writers, have severally left us very graphic descriptions of the state of the French peasantry, prior to the outbreak of the first Revolution, when the land belonged to the great nobles and the Church, and when the peasants and farmers had scarcely ever any chance of acquiring any. They represent them as reduced to the lowest grade of poverty and civilisation ; as badly fed, scarcely covered with rags, wretchedly housed, and only removed one step from famine, to , which crowds fell victims in times of even moderate scarcity. The celebrated Vauban, in 1698, describes their condition as follows ^ : — " It is certain that the mass of pauperism is now extremely great ; and that if no aid is afforded, the poor, who have no means of assisting themselves, will sink into a depth of pauperism, out of which they will never again be raised. The great high roads, and the streets of the towns and villages, are full of beggars, who are driven out by hunger and want of everything. . . . Ahnost a tenth of t]ie population are as poor as beggars, and actually beg. Of the remaining nine-tenths, five are unable to give alms, because they are them- selves reduced to ahnost the same plight, and of the remaining four-tenths, three are in a very miserable condition. . . . And although, as Reichensperger observes, when Vauban wrote thus, the population of France amounted to only sixteen millions, while now it amounts to more than thirty-four mil- lions ; yet, notwithstanding, the condition of the poor is now immeasurably superior to what it then was in every respect. 1 Quoted by Reichensperger, p. 376. of Land in France. 315 That this miserable state of things had not improved in 1760, we Jearn from Ouesnay, who informs us, that at that time, of thirty-six milhon acres of arable land in France, thirty millions were cultivated by little farmers, so miserably poor that their landlords were obliged to advance them oxen, seed, and even money, to be repaid at the next harvest.^ Arthur Young describes the misery of the peasants of France in his time, by comparing it to that of the Irish labourers ; he says emphatically, " // reminded me of the miseries of Ireland." But since that time everything has been changed in France. The labourers have been enabled to purchase lands. The extraordinary powers of the landed proprietors have been taken away. The conveyance of land from man to man has been rendered almost as simple as the sale of so many yards of cloth in a draper's shop. The peasants have become pro- prietors of the farms on which they used to labour as tenants- at-will. The question, which all honest men ought to seek now to answer for themselves is, has this system made the people happier .? I am convinced it has done so. Let us see what the French writers themselves say. Sismondi says,- — " France underwent a Revolution, at a time when the great mass of the population was deprived of property, and consequently of the benefits of civilisation. But this Revolution has, after causing many miseries, bequeathed to posterity many blessings ; and one of the greatest of these is the guarantee that such a scourge can never again afflict the land. The Revolution has wonderfully increased the number of the landowners. There are now (1819) more than 3,000,000 families, comprising 15.000,000 individuals who possess estates of their own, upon which they live. So that more than half the nation are interested, for their own sakes, in upholding the rights of all. . . . The desire of the peasants to become landowners was accomplished by a great deed of violence, viz., by the confiscation of national property of every kind. The miseries of war, both foreign and civil, are no doubt evils which our nature dreads, as it does floods and earthquakes. But as soon as the scourge has ceased, we ought to rejoice if any good result has been effected : and in this cas,?, the good which was effected could not most certainly hive 1 See Reichensperger, p. 376. ' Sismondi, Nouv. Priiicipes, liv. iii. c. 3, quoted by ReiclKn^perger. 3 1 6 Restdts of the Division been inore valuable or more certain of duration. The breaking up of the great estates proceeds daily ; daily are great estates sold, with advantage to the public, to persons who formerly farmed them, and who improve their cultivation. The nation is still removed from having reaped all the advantages which it may expect from this division of the land, since habits are only slowly formed, and because the spirit of order, of economy, of cleanliness, and of elegance, can only follow a long enjoy- ment of the new order of things." In another place he says,^ — "Whilst the condition of the agricultural labourers in England proceeds rapidly towards disorganisation, and is already disturbed in the country districts, the peasants of France are improving and rising in the social scale ; they are establishing their prosperity on a sure foundation, and without giving up labouring with their own hands ; they are enjoying great prosperity ; they are receiving intellectual cultivation, and are beginning, although but slowly, to avail themselves of the discoveries of science. In fact, the condition of agriculture, and of the agricultural classes in France, is as prosperous as the present political circumstances of the country permit." Reichensperger says, that the comparative results of the English and French systems may be inferred from the fact, that in every loo inhabitants, there are in France, according to Lawatz, 7 paupers, but, according to Villeneuve, only 5 paupers; in Prussia, according to Schmidt, 3^ paupers; while in England there are from 16 to 20 ! Buret, who visited England prior to laying a report on pauperism and its causes before the Institute of France, says that in France there is, poverty, hvxt in England there is misery. Troplong, one of the ablest of the living lawyers of France, speaks in the highest terms of the results of freeing land from all restrictions preventing its sale, and thus enabling the pea- sants to acquire land. "This result,"^ he says, "appears to me a fortunate one, when considered politically, economically, or socially; it is good that labour should reap its own fruits; it is good that the labourer should be enabled to attain a position of independence and of certainty ; it is especially good in a society of democratic tendencies that firm founda- tions of social order and strong conservative interests should be formed. This peasant proprietor class has the conservative 1 Nouv. Princ. liv. iii. ch. &. * Reichensperger, p. 379. of Land in France, 317 feelings of a landed aristocracy, without their injurious luxury and extravagance ; it is equally active and successful, but less ambitious. No other class has so much to lose in the bloody game of revolutions. The state is always certain to hnd in it the elements of order, and the spirit of industry and peace." I have no need to observe how singularly these remarkable words have been verified in the late French Revolution. The peasant proprietors have been animated, throughout nearly the whole of France and Germany, with the best possible spirit. The demagogues failed to incite them to sedition by any promises. The people felt they were proprietors, and that they had something to lose. Tliey have universally shown themselves in favour of the most liberal reforms in the poli- tical regulations, but extremely adverse to anything like dis- order and strife. Le Comte Chaptal ^ says, — " Before the Revolution (of 1789) the land of France belonged to three very different classes of possessors. The first consisted of persons who had scarcely anv interest in the amelioration of the lands ; the second consisted of rich persons who lived in the great cities or at court, and troubled themselves very little about the improve- ment of their estates ; the third consisted of a great number of little farmers who rented a small farm, but received so small a part of the returns of their labour as scarcely to supply their necessities, and who neither possessed intelligence nor money enough to undertake improvements. Now, all is changed. There are no longer any landowners, who do not themselves, either from necessity or interest, take the greatest pains to improve the cultivation of their lands. The tolerably even apportionment of the land-tax, the repeal of a great number of oppressive and injurious customs, the division of the land among a ^reat number of owners, have stimulated industry throughout tlie country, and introduced improvements which have raised French agriculture to a high degree of per- fection." In another work, Chaptal speaks, in a yet more decided tone, of the good results of the division of the land in France. He says,^ — "The wonderful change of property which has taken place in the last thirty years, and the creation of a great number of proprietors, must necessarily have led to an improvement of agriculture. A long experience has 1 Des Progres de I'lndustrie Agricole et Manufacturiere en France, v. ii. p. i68. • De riiidustne Franjaise, quott-d by Reiuhensperger. 3 1 S Results of the Division shown that the new proprietor of a plot of land is much more earnest about its cultivation than the former one was ; he studies to increase its produce, and shuns no pains to attain this end. He cultivates every bit of land which seems capable of producing, and does not rest until he has perfected all possible improvements. Formerly, there were estates in France of very great size, the produce of each of which scarcely served for the nourishment of a single family ; circu7nstances have caused their division, every part of tliem has been brouoht jtnder cultivation, and their produce has increased TENFOLD, Proofs of the truth of this assertion may be found in all parts of France. . . . When one compares the present cultivation of the land with that of 1789, one is astonislied at the improve- ment which has taken place. Harvests of all kinds cover the land, a more numerous and stronger race of cattle labour on and manure the land. Healthy and rich nourisJunent, clean and comfortable dwellings, and simple but good clothing, have been acquired by the inhabitants of the country ; misery is ban- ished, and general prosperity has arisen, out of the power of disposing freely of the land." And this, be it remembered, is said of a people w-ho, in 1789, were described by Young as being as miserable as the Irish. Ch. Giraud ^ finds the cause of the present wonderful prosperity of agriculture in France in the system of peasant proprietors. He is of opinion that the division of landed property, and elevation of the peasants to the position of proprietors, has stimulated the industry of the farmers, and has proved the superiority of cultivation by small over the culti- vation by great proprietors. De Barante has treated the question of peasant proprietors politically, and he shows that every regulation which tends to draw the population from the villages into the towns, is a great political error, as political riots are never begun in the country districts, but in the streets and squares of the towns. " Nothing,"^ he says, " m^akes a people calmer or more mor.il, than the great subdivision of the land, a regulation against which persons who have more envy than intelligence have raised a sort of opposition. By means of this division the 1 Essay on the History of French Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages, published in 1846. See Reichensperg'-r, Die Agrarfra'je, p. 383. * De Barante : des Communes et de I'Ariitocratie, quoted by Reichensperger. of Land in France. 3 1 9 whole population become sharers in the public interests ; all are made to love peace and order, which are so necessary to their prosperity ; the poor man is made economical and sav- ing ; he works harder because he works for himself; his life becomes more regular ; and he acquires respect for property, because he himself is a proprietor. " As far as regards national prosperity and the improvement of agriculture, ojie 7)mst slutt one's eyes if one ivouhi ?io( see hoiu much both have gained by the new order of things. " In the greatest communes one finds scarcely ten persons who do not assist ; the soil is, so to speak, cultivated with the spade ; it produces like a garden, AND YIELDS A TENFOLD HARVEST. Tlie miseries of poverty are lessened, since every man is able to care for himself and for his family, and from due precaution prepares more than his own family requires. By this means the whole land is covered with small and divided stores, which together form a great and excellent safety depot. Besides, the great variety of products, which tlie division of property encourages, assists in diminishing the evils of an insufficient harvest." De Carn^ expresses a very decided opinion that the sub- division in France has reached its utmost limits, and that, while some of the greater estates are subdivided, many of the smaller ones are reunited ; and that the tendency of things is to increase the number of those proprietors who possess middle- sized farms, and to lessen the number of both the large and the extremely small estates throughout the country.^ " One of the most recent of the French writers, Eugene Buret, has inquired, with great acuteness, into the causes of poverty in different countries, but he does not find it in the system of small properties. He thinks the state of the agricul- tural classes of France — whose soil is laboriously but praise- worthily cultivated by a crowd of small proprietors- — a happy one, and expresses his conviction that one chief error in the state of Great Britain is that a small plot of land cannot be obtained there ; while, in France, the too great expense of the system of conveying land, and the too great burden of taxation on the poorer classes, are the only causes whicli prevent the country reaping the full benefits of their present system of agriculture." ^ 1 De la Democratic aiix Etat^-Unis et de la Bourgeoisie en France. - nie Agrarfrage, y. 385. 320 Eesitlts of the Division o M. Eugene Buret says, — " And yet, although one part of the population of each of the two countries (England and France), — viz., the manufacturing population — is subjected to the same economical regulations, we are able to declare that the majority of the French people will never sink into such dis- tress, as that in which the English poor are plunged, and still less into that more frightful distress, towards which the English poor are rapidly advancing. Happily for us, the two people do not resemble one another, either in their present or in their future. " Between them, there is the vast difference of a revolution. One-third only of our poor are employed in manufacturing opera- tions ; the other two-thirds live by the cultivation of the soil. This majority of the French population, although generally poor, is in an economical condition, to which it is not possible to compare the condition of the English people. It possesses a considerable part of the soil, upon which it labours, and it is gradually acquiring a greater share of the land, thanks to the law which divides the lands of the deceased equally among his children. The land does not, with us, belong to a class distinct from that of the labourers, or to certain privileged persons who are, so to speak, irremovable. The labourers upon the lands in our country are almost all of them elevated to the dignity of proprietors ; and, after having lent their arms to the master who employs them, they are still able to enrich, by their labours and by their intelligence, a small plot of land, which belongs to themselves. In France, there is some land for every one ; whilst, in England, the agricultural labourers cannot obtain any, either on hire, or at a very high price. I need not again remind my readers of the peasants of Berkshire, of whom I have already said, that they beg in vain for a little land in which to plant some potatoes. In Great Britain, the agricultural labiurer works for wages, without having any interest in the land upon which he labours. The great estates, and the great farms, condemn him to that condition of depend- ence which is the bane of his industry ; while the competition of the day-labourers for work^ which requires no apprentice- ship, but only the exercise of brute force — keeps the wages much below what is necessary for the proper support of the labourers. " For such a state of things — which is the absolute separa- tion of capital and labour — there is no possible economical of Land in France. 321 remedy. It is more difficult to liberate labourers from depend- ence upon a proprietor, than to free them from tyranny. In order to conquer civil liberty, force and audacity only are necessary ; but to raise the labourers to a better economical position, great intelligence and great riches are necessary. It is necessary for them to become capitalists in their turn ; and how can this great work be accomplished, when both the political and the social institutions of a country are opposed to it ; when the law protects the feudal estates from the bad management, from the imbecility, and from the folly of the proprietors themselves ? The future will show us what will be the result of the English system. " In France, the state of the laws relating to property is quite contrary to the state of these laws in England : it is the extreme division. It is, perhaps, the abuse of a good opposed to the extreme of an evil. The system of small pro- prietors, and of cultivation of small farms, in our country, is opposed to a system of great proprietors and of cultivation of great farms in England. Landed estates pass from hand to hand, and separate and unite in our country with such a strange rapidity, that economists have busied themselves about the evil effects that the extreme division of the soil produces. " Such is the condition of man in society, that even good principles themselves may degenerate into abuses. But hap- pily, the inconveniences which result from a good principle badly applied may be diminished, or even destroyed, by wise reforms. Good principles carry in their natural development a remedy for abuses. It is already easy to see whither the progressive division of the soil will conduct an intelligent nation. It is quite evident that there is a means of com- bining the advantages of cultivation on a great scale, with the advantage of that division of the soil which, in augment- ing the number of proprietors, augments progressively the number of individuals directly interested in making the land produce more. " The means /.c, to associate the possessors of neighbouring lands, so as to cultivate them in common in the manner the most economical and advantageous to all the proprietors. To arrive at this end requires neither revolution nor violence. The natural progress of men and of things must necessarily modify, X 322 Results of the Division in this manner, tlie economical management of the land in France. E-n attendant, however, our peasant proprietors are poor, but they are not iniserable.^' ^ " M. Chevalier has, in his lectures upon political economy, considered the same question, and has laid the greatest weight upon the condition of agriculture. He pleads for a better system of credit, for improvement of roads, means of watering the lands, (S:c., so as to increase by one-half the produce of the lands ; but no complaint ever escapes him of the agriculture of France being injured by too great division ; but it is, on the contrary, manifest from his whole system, that he regards this division as a great benefit." ^ Mathieu de Bombasle says,^ — " During the last half century the French system of agriculture has been greatly improved ; and if a proof of the truth of this were needed, it might be found in the fact, that the present thirty-tliree tnillions of itthabitants obtain a richer and a better nourishment than the tiventy-Jive millions of the old monarchy jcsed to do. The in- crease in the value of this year's agricultural products, over that of the first year of this present century, is at least 1500 million francs." " M. C. Dupin also rejoices in the increasing number of the small proprietors of land, and recognises it, as a great guarantee for the gradual and steady development of all the resources of the country." ^ The next authority upon this subject is that of Le Comte Gasparin. His testimony is very able, and very well worth perusal. He says,^ — " If it were really true that nothing could prevent the progressive subdivision of landed property, that the father's plot of land would be reduced to a nintli or a twelfth for his grandson, and that after three generations, each Frenchman would only possess Tr| y- of an acre, then we should be all of us obliged to share the doubts of those who oppose our present system ; and to endeavour, in spite of the principles of equality and justice, and of all opf>osition, to prevent the subdivision of the land. Who, however, does not perceive that the conclusions of those who prophesy such results, are 1 De la Misere des Classes Laborieuses en Angleterre et en France, tome pre- miere, p. 238. - Die Agrarfrage, p. 385. 3 Spectateurde Dijon, gth Oct. 1840, quoted in Die Agrarfrage. * Die Agrarfrage, 836. 5 Revue dea Dcux Mondes, Janvier, 1843. of Landin France. t '^ '> open to the same objection as the arguments of AlaUhus ? they are indeed mathematically true, but in practice they are very considerably modified. It is quite true that, as far as the law is concerned, it is possible that the land may go on sub- dividing ad infinihim ; but how do people avail themselves of this legal possibihty ? It is true that the numbers of proprietors increase year by year, but one perceives that this division is effected at the cost of the greater proprietors. The smaller plots do not generally subdivide any further. Although some foolish fellows here and there, when they inherit a share of a little plot, demand to have it divided, yet the generality of the people understand very well the evil of an estate of great circumference but of small contents. In these cases they generally effect an arrangement; one man takes the whole property, or else one of the prosperous neighbours purchases it and adds it to his own estate ; so that what the system of division had formerly separated are again consolidated. I do not know what takes place in those countries where the subdivision of land is of recent date, and where experience is wanting ; but in my country, where people have gained experi- ence, the great estate divides, while small estates are again consolidated, so that the estates assume such a middling size as best suits the real interests of the people. ... In France, the small properties flourish, are purchased at high prices, and return a good profit." Le Comte Villeneuve-Barjemont, who acted as prcfet in one of the French departments, and who has given great attention to, and made many researches into, the causes of pauperism and the effect of the subdivision of land, declares it to be his opinion that there is no reason to dread an excessive sub- division of the land. He says, — " If any one travels through the agricultural districts of the greatest part of France, where the land is subdivided the most, he will 'nwd fezu paitpers, few beggars, and few une7nployed persons. The population is, more- over, a stronger one, education is not less diffused among them, and their morality is greater." ^ M. Passy, in a work entitled " De la Division des Heritages et de ITnfluence qu'elle exerce sur la Distribution des Richcsses," which was published in 1839 in the " Me'moires de I'Acade'mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques" (tome ii. 2= s^rie, p. 183. 1 Economic Politique Chretienne, 1824, v. i. p. 305. 324 Results of the Division et seq^), opposes the doctrine that the great subdivision of the land in France is hkely to increase beyond its natural limits, so as to pauperise the little proprietors. He proves that the small estates have just as great a tendency to ufiite, as the larger estates have to divide. He shows that in the twenty years which elapsed between 1815 and 1835, duringwhich period the population had increased 14 per cent., notwithstanding the continued subdivision of the greater estates in France, notwith- standing the increase of population ; notwithstanding that the same persons were often entered in many different communal registers as distinct proprietors ; notwithstanding the bringing into cultivation of many waste lands, and notwithstanding the building in the country districts of many manufactories, each of which is registered as standing on a small estate of its own ; the number of the landed proprietors of France only increased 8 per cent, De la Farelle^ says, " that it is an error to suppose that the land is as much subdivided in France as some writers have represented. He says, that the error originated from calcu- lating all the names entered upon the different communal registers as names of different individuals^ while in truth the names of very many proprietors are entered many times in difterent registers, as they possess lands in different com- munes. He calculates the number of proprietors in France at 5,000,000." One, however, of the most remarkable testimonies in favour of the system of peasant proprietors is M. Passy's account ^ of the progress of agriculture in the Ddpartement de I'Eure, in France, since 1 800, when the lands began to divide, and when the peasants began to purchase farms. This department is, as Reichensperger says, singularly fitted to exemplify the results of the peasant proprietor system, inasmuch as it possesses no peculiar advantages over the other agricultural departments, and inasmuch as it contains few towns and no great number of manufactories. It is, in truth, simply an agricultural department. We shall not then be acting unfairly or illogi- cally in adopting the results of the peasant proprietor system in this department, as a fair illustration of its general results throughout France. I\I. Passy gives the following table, 1 Du Progres Social an Profit des CLisses Populaires, — quoted by Reichen- sperger. 3 Journal des Economistes, 1842, p. 44. of Land in France. 325 which shows that the agricultural products of this depaitment have greatly increased, not only in value but in quantity also, since the peasants were enabled to purchase farms for themselves. Value of the Products, Total N umber of estimated according Kinds Hectolitres or Kilogrammes. to their Mean Price at of Products. the Time. iSoo. 1837. iSoo. 1837- Francs. Francs. Wheat , . 1,475,173 Hect. 1,742,729 Hect. 23,502,768 27,883,664 Mixed Grain 289,000 ,, 419,451 ,, 3,757,000 5,442,863 Rye . . . 136,000 „ 211,221 ,, 1,369,800 2,112,210 Barley . , 73,000 „ 108,269 „ 730,000 1,082,690 Oats . . . 578.760 „ 1,324,878 „ 4,051,320 9,274,146 Buckwheat . 2350 „ 2914 „ 7050 8742 Potatoes . 224,000 „ 1,221,130 „ 672,000 3,663,293 Beetroot 12,250 „ 166,925 „ 24,500 332,850 Vineyards . 34,338 » 18,651 „ 686,760 373,020 Artificial Meadows . 3,042,025 Kil. 170,130,100 Kil. 91,261 5,108,903 Natural Meadows . 62,729,500 „ 96,971,300 ,, 1,884,785 2,909,139 Gardens 1,671,000 3,328,400 Cabbages . 6940 Hect. 33,758 Hect. 152,680 742,676 Wood . . 146,640 Kil. 133,200 Kil. 65,988 59,941 Flax . . . 1,456,150 „ 1,071,760 „ 2,912,300 2,143,520 Hemp . . 129,600 „ 261,090 „ 129,600 261,690 Cider . . 733,500 Hect. 926,800 Hect. 5,134,800 6,487,600 Vegetables . Total . 54,210 „ 55,856 „ 1,084,200 1,117,120 ... 47,614,812 72,428,364 This table shows, as Reichensperger says, that in the thirty- seven years which elapsed between 1800 and 1837, the value of the products of the department increased ^\ per cent, while the population of the department only increased during the same time from 403,506 to 424,762, or little more than 5 per cent.; so that in 1800 there was 128 francs' worth of agri- cultural products per head, while in 1837 there was 162 francs worth per head. But it will perhaps be asked, was there not a diminution in the number of cattle fed by the department during these years, to account for this increase in the amount and value of the agricultural products ? Quite the contrary ; M. Passy says 326 Results of the Divisio7i that there was, on the other hand, a great increase, as exhibited in the following table : — Kinds of Cattle. 1800. 1837. Increase. Decrease. Horses . 29.533 51,151 2I,6lS Horned Cattle 50,809 105,745 53,^76 Sheep . 205,111 511,390 306,279 Pigs . 46,646 49,191 13,545 Goats 292 808 516 Asses and Mules . 6S07 5961 846 If it is fair to take this department as a sample of the progress of agricultural affairs throughout France, then indeed there can be no longer any doubt of the extraordinary benefits of the system of farming by means of small proprietors. But whether we take it as a sample or not, it shows, at least, what amazing results it is possible to attain with a small estate system. The IMinister of the Interior to the King of Prussia, in 1843, and the Minister of Statistics in the same country, the latter of whom has lately travelled in the departments of France, to observe the progress of agriculture, — both of them bear witness to the flourishing and improving condition of agriculture in the latter country ; and they show that there are in France 823 agricultural associations, 20 model agri- cultural institutions, 9 chairs for agricultural professors, and 4 agricultural institutes, founded for the promotion of the study of agriculture.^ Another equally remarkable and incontrovertible testimony in favour of the small proprietor system in France, is the report of the Central Agricultural Congress at Paris, published in the "Journal des D^bats," 30th March 1847, in which the condition of agriculture in France in 1788, when the land was in the hands of a few proprietors, is compared with its present condition. From that report it appears 2 that in the year 1788, only 612 litres of wheat and corn were raised per hectare, and that from 1700 to 178S, that is, during the time when the land 1 Reicliensperger, Die Agrarfrage, p. 394. 3 Die Agrarfrage, p. 395. of Land in France. 327 was consolidated in the fewest number of hands, agriculture made no progress. While in 1839, only 39 years after the land was divided, 1301 litres of wheat and corn per hectare, i.e., MORE THAN TWICE AS MUCH PER HECTARE AS IN I 788, just before the land was divided, were raised in the ivJiole ot France, and in many departments, as many as 1400 litres per hectare were raised ! According to the same Report also, in 1760, only seven millions of the French people lived on wheat and corn, while in 1843, twenty millions of the French people lived on wheat and corn, and the remainder were much better nourished than in the former period. Is it possible, after such facts as these, to doubt the benefits of the small proprietor system ? Another testimony in favour of this system is that of M. Bertin, sous-pr^fet of the arrondissement of Fougeres, the most eastern district of Brittany. The report upon this arrondisse- ment, published by M. Bertin, in 1846, is quoted by Mr. Mill, in the Appendi.K to the first volume of his Principles of Political Economy, as follows : — " ' It is only since the peace,' says this intelligent functionary, ' that the agriculture of the arrondissement has made much progress ; but from 1 8 1 5 it has improved with increasing rapidity. If from 18 15-1825, the improvement was as one, it was as three between 1825 and 1835, and six since that period.' At the beginning of the century, little wheat was cultivated, and that little so ill, that in 1809 the produce per hectare was estimated at only 9 hectolitres. At present M. Bertin estimates it at 16. The cattle being better fed and crossed with more vigorous breeds, have increased in size and strength ; while in number, horned cattle, between 181 3 and 1844, multiplied from 33,000 to 52,000; sheep, from 6300 to 11,000; swine, from 9300 to 26,100; and horses, from 7400 to 11,600! New and valuable manures have been introduced, and have come largely into use. The extent of meadow land has increased, and is increas- ing, and great attention has of late been paid to its improve- ment. This testimony comes from an enemy of the morcelle- ment, who, however, states that it is advancing very slowly, and is not likely to advance much further, the coheirs not dividing each parcelle, but either distributing the parcelles among them, or disposing of them by private or public sale. Some farmers, he says, who are also proprietors, have the 3^8 Results of the Division good sense to sell the few fields which belong to them, in order to increase their farming capital. M, Bertin is an enemy to stall-feeding, which, he says, is not practised in his arrondisse- ment. The increase of live stock is therefore the more re- markable. ... Of the food of the inhabitants, he says, not long ago it was composed almost exclusively of milk, buck- wheat cakes, and rye bread, but lias greatly improved in quantity, quality, and variety, especially in the last ten years, and now consists of luheaten bread, or bread of two-thirds wheat and one-third rye, with butter, vegetables, and, ' in good farms,' about a kilogramme (or i\ lbs.) of pork per week for each person. There is also some consumption of other flesh- meats among the labouring people, and the arrondissement contains sixty-three butchers' shops, where fifteen years ago there were not thirty, the 'increase not being in the towns (or rather town) but in the villages. The clothing of the rural population is substantial, ' and different for every season, which is always a sign of general comfort ; ' and ^persons in rags are very rare in this arrondissement.' " Since this sheet went to the press, a very remarkable paper has been read before one of the scientific societies of Paris, by the well-known statistical writer, M. Moreau de Jonnes, showing in the most striking manner, from a comparison of the statistics of different periods, the remarkable and progres- sive improvement which has taken place in French agriculture, and in the social condition of the peasants since the division of the land ; but hitherto I have not been able to obtain a copy of it. There are several points connected with the progress of French agriculture, and the social condition of the French peasantry, upon which all English travellers and all writers are agreed. They are the following : — I. It is allowed by all that the industry of the peasant proprietors is quite marvellous, that they seem to spare no pains which can by any possibility increase the fertility of their farms, and that it is a wonderful thing to see how enthusiastically both men and women labour on the farms. Some travellers call this a miserable drudger)'. To me it has always seemed a labour of love and hope, inasmuch as the French peasant knows that he is working, not fur a landlord or master, but for himself, and that he and his family will derive all the benefits of every improvement of the productive- of Land in France. 329 ness of his farm. If they did not feel a real pleasure in their work, they would not labour as they do. Misery and the mere fear of starvation do not make men intensely indus- trious. All the miseries of the Irisla have failed to produce this result. 2. It is allowed by all that the cultivation of the farms of France is very beautiful, and that the fields are cleaned, weeded, manured, and irrigated, as if they were so many gardens. Each little proprietor knows intimately every square yard of his estate, and is prompted by his desire to improve the condition of his family, and, by the interest which, as owner, he feels in his property, to make it as fertile and pro- ductive as possible. The extraordinary manner in which the irrigation of the land is managed in the southern provinces, and in which the streams and rivers are made to refresh the lands in the dry seasons, and the richness of the verdure and green crops which the peasants obtain by these means, are said by all travellers to be very remarkable, and to testify, in the strongest manner, to the enthusiastic industry and enter- prise which the division of property inspires. 3. It is allowed by all travellers, and by all writers on the subject, that the clothing of the peasantry is very good and comfortable. Even those who are the most inveterately hos- tile to the division of landed property, bear evidence to these facts ; while all French authorities concur in stating that the character of the clothing of the peasantry has very considerably improved of late years. Some persons talk of peasant proprietors, as if these latter could not sell their estates, even if they found that they could not cultivate them profitably. But this is to exhibit a total ignorance of the whole system. The system of peasant pro- prietors is literally a system oifree trade in land. If an owner of an estate under this system has not sufficient capital to enable him to cultivate his land profitably, he has two courses always open to him, viz., to borrow capital by mortgaging his land, or to sell the land to some one who has capital. A peasant pro- prietor will never keep his land, if he cannot make a fair profit from it, so as to repay him for his labour and his expenditure. If he has mortgaged it so heavily as not to leave him any hope of raising more upon it, or of supporting his family comfortably after paying the mortgage, he can always sell his land, pay off 33"^ Resitlts of the Division the mortgage, and hire himself out as a day Libourer, until he and his family have saved enough wherewith to purchase another farm. Under this system, therefore, land never remains long in the hands of those who are not able to cultivate it profitably, or who are not interested in its cultivation. But under the system of entails and of great estates, we know that it is con- stantly the case that landlords have no capital wherewith to cultivate their land ; that they have already borrowed so much upon it that they can borrow no more ; and that they cannot, owing to the terms of the settlement, sell their estate or any part of it ; so that the landlord finds his hands tied fast, while the estate is left in a state of miserable cultivation, because its owner has no spare capital to expend upon it, and because he cannot sell it to any one else who has spare capital, and who would feel interested in improving the land, although there may be many such purchasers in the market. Under the German, French, and Swiss systems, a peasant proprietor never retains his land in his own possession, if he finds he cannot make a profit from it large enough to live upon. There are no regulations, no laws, no settlements, which prevent the peasant selling whenever he feels disposed to do so. There are always great numbers of rich merchants or small shopkeepers, who wish to invest capital in land, and who are able to bring capital to its cultivation. It is the principal feature of the foreign systems, that land can be brought into the market just as easily and cheaply as any other commodity. It can be passed from hand to hand with the greatest facility. This feature of these systems secures their vigour and the productiveness of cultivation in those coun- tries, where they are in force. Land and capital are not neces- sarily separated. They can be always easily united. Small estates, however, under a system of strict settlements and complicated successions, such as ours, will always be ruinous ; because, under such systems, the small proprietor cannot get rid of his land, when he feels it is ruining him to cultivate it. Land under such a system is often kept for years in the hands of men who have no capital to expend upon it. So in Saxony, before the beginning of the present century, there were a number of small proprietors, who held their lands under strict settlements ; and accounts published in those times represent the condition of the proprietors themselves, and that of La nd i7i Fra nee. 331 of their farms, to have been wretched, and to have been pro- gressively deteriorating ; and those old reports, with great dis- crimination and justice, declare, that the cause of that state of things was, not the smallness of the estates, but that the small proprietors could not dispose of their lands to men of science and capital, when they felt it to be their interest to do so. INDEX OF SUBJECTS IN THE APPENDIX. The Education of the Peasants and the Division OF THE Land tend very greatly to Improve the Cultivation of the Land • . The difference between tenants-at-will and peasant pro- prietors . . . . . .199 The Irish peasants are tenants-at-will . . . 200 Opinions of Reichensperger and Kraus . . . 201 The produce of land farmed by small proprietors is greater than its produce when farmed by great proprietors . 203 Opinions of Reichensperger, Rau, Thaer, and Shubert . 203 Increased productiveness of agriculture in Prussia since the subdivision of the land .... 208 PAGE 2. The Education of the Peasants, combined with the Subdivision of Land, tends to Strengthen their Prudence, Foresight, and Economy . .178 The laws prohibiting marriage in certain cases in Switzer- land . . . . . . .178 Opinions of Reichensperger and Thaer . . , iSo Statistics of the age of marriage in Geneva, Vaud, Prussia, and England . . . . . 1S2 The postponement of marriage does not necessarily in- crease the immorality of the peasants . . .186 Opinions of Mill, Laing, Sismondi, Rau, Quetelet, and Legoyt ....... 191 Statistics showing the rate of the increase of population in different countries . . . . .192 The parish of Montreux . . . . -195 Opinion of Nicholls ..... 196 The small amount of pauperism in some of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland .... 197 199 Index of Stibjccts, 33 "^ PAG a Kau's account of agriculture in the Palatinate . . 20S Banfield's account of the condition of agriculture in the Prussian Rhine provinces . . . .212 Opinions respecting the progress of agriculture in Prussia 215 The improvement in the cultivation of the land in Saxony and Switzerland since the division of the lands . 219 The difference between the state of agriculture in Wales and Scotland and in Saxony and Switzerland . . 220 Gleig's account of farming in Saxony . , . 221 The hillside farming in Saxony .... 224 The agricultural colleges of Switzerland and Germany . 225 Sismondi's description of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland ...... 229 Nicholls' and Reichensperger's descriptions of the small farms of Belgium ..... 230 Howitt's account of peasant farming in the Palatinate and in Germany . . . . . .231 Professor Rau's account of the state of agriculture in the Palatinate ...... 235 Strohmeier's account of the progress of agriculture in the canton of Soleure ..... 236 Professor VuIIiemin's account of the progress of agricul- ture in the canton of Vaud .... 237 Herr Von Knonau's account of the progress of agricul- ture in the canton of Zurich .... 237 Herr Pupikofer's account of the progress of agriculture in the canton of Thurgovie .... 238 Herr von Knonau on the management of cattle in Zurich 238 Inglis' account of farming in Switzerland . . 240 Laing's account of the farming by peasant proprietors in Norway and on the Continent . . . 240 The cultivation of the small farms in Flanders . . 244 Mr. Mill's opinions of the excellent effects of the system of peasant proprietors ..... 245 The Education of the Poor and the Division of the Land tend greatly to Improve the Character of their Houses and of their Villages . . 253 The cottages in Prussia and the Rhine provinces . 254 Banfield's description of the peasants' farms in the Rhine provinces ...... 255 The difference between the state of the town labourers of England and Germany . . . . .257 334 Index of Subjects. PAGE Dr. Bruggeman's opinion • , . . .257 The cottages in Switzerland. — Von Knonau's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Zurich . 259 Bronner's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Aargau ..... 261 Strohmeier's description of the peasants' houses in tlie canton of Soleure ..... 262 Pupilcofer's description of tlie peasants' houses in the canton of Thurgovie ..... 262 Professor VuUiemin's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Vaud ..... 263 Im Thurm's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Schaffhausen .... 263 Von Knonau's description of the peasants' houses in the canton of Schweitz ..... 263 Symon's description of the peasants' houses in the can- tons of St. Gall and Appenzell. — Chambers' opinion of the condition of the Swiss peasantry . . 265 MUgge's description of the improvement of the condition of the peasantry in the canton of Vaud since the aboli- tion of the feudal laws ..... 265 Sismondi's description of the social condition of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland . . . 266 Laing's description of the social condition of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland .... 266 Nicholls' description of the houses and social condition of the small proprietors of Belgium . . . 267 Reichensperger's opinion of the effect of the subdivision of land upon the peasants of Prussia . . . 268 The difference between the state of the houses of the peasants in those parts of Germany where the land is divided, and in those parts where it is not divided . 268 The causes of the miserable condition of the houses of the peasantry in countries where the land is in the hands of a few persons ..... 269 8 One generally true Index of the Condition of the Poorer Classes of any Country is the Character OF their Amusements . . . . . 273 The respect for property, and the absence of enclosures, enable the townspeople in Germany to enjoy walks through the fields. — The little respect shown for landed property in our manufacturing districts . . 274 hidex of Su bjccts. 335 PACK 9. The Education of the Poor and the Subdivision OF Land tend very materially to Improve the health and social comforts of the Poorer Classes 275 The food of the German poor. — Reichensperger's opinion 275 The increase in the consumption of bread by the Prussians, as shown by Banfield's statistics . . 276 The increase in the consumption of meat by the Prussians since the division of the lands .... 277 The increase in the general consumption of the Prussians since the subdivision of the land, as shown by the Report of the Prussian Minister of Statistics . . 27S Opinions of the Minister ..... 279 Pupikofer's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Thurgovie. — Im Thurm's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Schaffhausen. — Professor VuUiemin's account of the food of the poor in the canton of Vaud ...... 280 10. The Education of the Peasants and the Division of the Land tend to Render the Peasants very Conservative in Feeling The peasant proprietors of France Of Germany ..... Of Switzerland , . . . • Their conduct during the late political revolutions What would be the effects of free trade in land in Ire land ...... 282 283 2S4 2S8 288 291 12. The Freedom of the Land from the old Feudal Restrictions, enables the small Shopkeepers to ACQUIRE Land ....•• 292 The great advantage of making it possible for our shop- keepers to acquire land .... 293 13. The Division of Landed Property reduces that Intense Competition for Wealth which distin guishes English Life .... The intense competition of the different classes in Eng land reacts very unfavourably upon the poor . The results of the great property system in Ireland The present condition of Ireland The causes of that condition . . . • 302 The remedy for Irish misery ...» 3^^ 294 295 299 o 01 »J' Index of Subjects. 14. The Opinions of great Writers on the Results OF THE Division of Landed Property in France Mill, Napoleon and his Ministers Reichensperger, Sismondi Troplong .... Chaptal ..... Giraud de Barante, De Carne, Buret Chevalier, De Dombasle, C. Dupin, Gasparin Villeneuve Bargemont, Passy Report of the Central Agricultural Congress Bertin ..... Points upon which all travellers in France are agreed PACK 315 316 317 319 322 324 326 327 328 THE END. PKINTKD DY BAI.I.A NTVNE, HANSON AND CO. EUINUUKIJH /NU LONDON A LIST OF C. KEG AN PAUL AND CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 8.79. I, Paternoster Square, London. A LIST OF C. KEGAN PAUL AND CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. ABDULLA (Hakayit). Autobiography of a Malay Munshi. Translated by J. T. Thomson, F. R. G. S. With Photo- lithograph Page of Abdulla's MS. Post Svo. Cloth, price 12s. ADAMS (F. O.), F.R.G.S. The History of Japan. From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. New Edition, revised. 2 volumes. With Maps and Plans. Demy Svo. Cloth, price 21s. each. ADAMS (W. D.). 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