A PLEA 
 
 FOR 
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORS 
 
T^ 
 
 A -PLEA FOR 
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORS 
 
 WITH THE OUTLINES OF A PLAN FOR THEIR 
 ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON, C.B. 
 
 AUTHOR OF A TREATISE 'ON LABOUR* ETC. 
 
 Modum agri imprimis servandum (PuNii Nat. Hist. lib. xviii. 7) 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO, 
 
 1874 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 LONDON : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTtSWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARF 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
TO MESSIEURS 
 
 LEONCE DE LAVERGNE & EMILE DE LAVELEYE 
 
 PRE-EMINENT among LIVING WRITERS on RURAL ECONOMY 
 THIS EDITION 
 
 OF 
 
 'A PLEA FOR PEASANT PROPRIETORS' 
 
 ' > . 
 
 THE RESULT OF RESEARCHES IN A CORNER OF THE SAME FIELD 
 
 is 
 WITH AN ADMIRING FELLOW-LABOURER'S CORDIAL REGARD 
 
 INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS WORK appeared originally in 1848, and has 
 been long out of print. Some years ago, while 
 the discussions which terminated in the passing 
 of the Irish Landlord and Tenant Act were at 
 their height, it came greatly into request, and I 
 was strongly urged by the late Mr. Mill and 
 other friends to republish it ; but to do so re- 
 quired an amount of preliminary labour for which 
 I neither then had, nor have since, until recently, 
 been able to find, leisure. For the last few 
 months, however, my spare half-hours have been 
 occupied with little else. Every portion of the 
 book has been searchingly revised ; the first 
 Chapter has been almost rewritten, two new 
 Chapters (the fourth and seventh) have been 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 introduced, and to or in all the rest material 
 additions, corrections, and other alterations have 
 been made. No pains, in short, have been spared 
 to render this edition an adequate exposition of 
 its subject, and also an effective aid to study of 
 the still greater subject with which it is inex- 
 tricably bound up. 
 
 Of neither subject of neither Peasant Pro- 
 prietorship nor Landed Property in general is 
 the daily increasing interest likely to begin to 
 diminish for some generations to come. 
 
 CADOGAN PLACE: January, 1874. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 COMPARATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS OF LARGE AND 
 SMALL FARMS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prejudices entertained by English Economists against Small 
 Farms Examination of the Objections to them Com- 
 parison of Small with Large Farmers in respect to Com- 
 mand of Capital Copiousness, of Crops Live Stock 
 Use of Manure Arrangements for Drainage and Irrigation 
 Use of proper Implements and Machinery Facilities 
 for Division of Labour and Rotation of Crops Singular 
 Industry of Small Farmers Obligations of most advanced 
 British Agriculturists to lessons taught by Flemish Peasan- 
 try Bigoted attachment to old customs one defect of 
 Peasant Farmers Comparative amounts of Net Produce 
 sent to market by Large and Small Farmers Large non- 
 agricultural population of certain countries of Small Farms 
 Comparison in that respect between England and the 
 Channel Islands . , . .1 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Special advantages of Small Proprietors Their peculiar Re- 
 gources and Incentives to Diligence Alleged tendency of 
 Small Properties to Excessive Subdivision, and to promote 
 Pauperism Examination of arguments in favour of that 
 opinion Evidences against it from History of the Jews, of 
 Ancient Rome and Greece, and of England From the Past 
 and Present condition of Norway, Switzerland, the Tyrol, 
 and the Channel Islands Objection of Mr. G. W. 
 Norman and Judge Longfield to Peasant Proprietorship . 42 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP IN FRANCE. 
 
 Inconsistency of Evidence on this subject Arthur Young's 
 Description of Small Proprietors in France Causes of 
 their former depressed state Their condition since the 
 Revolution Present number of French Landowners 
 Improbability of its having increased within the last thirty 
 years Average size of Estates Erroneous conclusions of 
 MM. Mounier and Rubichon and of Mr. John Wilson 
 Croker Present state of the Peasantry Evil influence of 
 the French Law of Inheritance State of Agriculture 
 Depressed condition of the Population of certain Districts 
 Remarks on some Statements in Mr. M'Culloch's 
 'Treatise on Succession to Property' . . . .112 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP THE 
 SUBJECT RESUMED. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Confirmation by M. de Lavergne of views set forth in preceding 
 Chapter Praises of Peasant Proprietors applicable to such 
 only as till their own lands No other Landlords so grasp- 
 ing as Peasants who let their land Tendency of Peasant 
 Proprietorship to lapse into Petty Landlordism Examina- 
 tion of Colonel Mure' s argument to that effect . . .158 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MORAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 Honesty, Sobriety, and Loyalty of Small Proprietors Their 
 Educational Advantages Excessive Parsimony and Bigotry 
 Means of correcting these Defects Cruelty to Animals 
 involved in the most approved mode of Peasant Farming . 168 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IRELAND : PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, AS VIEWED 
 IN 1848. 
 
 Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry Its Causes Historical 
 Sketch Changes required in the Tenure of Land Neces- 
 sity of retaining the Small Farm System in Ireland Ex- 
 amination of various Proposals for improving the Condition 
 of the Irish Labouring Class Impossibility of providing 
 the Peasantry with adequate Employment except on Small 
 Farms Plan for the formation of a Proprietary Peasantry 
 on the Waste Lands . . . . . 190 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IRELAND : FORECAST FROM 1873. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Neglect of Suggestions offered in preceding Chapter Failure 
 of similar plans wherever tried Causes of such failure 
 Precautions which might have prevented it in Ireland- 
 Remedial and pacifying Expedients actually adopted in 
 Ireland Continuance, nevertheless, of Irish Disaffection 
 Governmental interposition for factitious creation of a Pea- 
 sant Proprietary no longer desirable Removal of Legal 
 Obstacles to natural growth of such a Proprietary the only 
 legislative aid required Interest of existing Landowners 
 in fostering such natural growth . . . . 253 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Remarks by M. de Laveleye on the Anti-revolutionary in- 
 fluence of Peasant Proprietorship .... 267 
 
A PLEA 
 
 FOR 
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORS 
 
A PLEA 
 
 FOR 
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 COMPARATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS OF LARGE AND 
 SMALL FARMS. 
 
 LARGE LANDED ESTATES by no means necessarily imply 
 large farming, but small farming is an almost invariable 
 concomitant of small proprietorship ; for numerous petty 
 properties welded together into a single farm would 
 generally have long to. wait before finding favour in the 
 eyes of an eligible tenant. Whatever evils, therefore, 
 are inherent in peasant farms must be scarcely less 
 inseparable from peasant properties, and no plea for the 
 latter can be perfectly satisfactory which does not 
 entirely exculpate the former also. 
 
 Now, ever since political economy was raised by Adam 
 Smith to the dignity of a science, its British professors 
 have been almost unanimously of opinion that small 
 farms are incompatible with the prosperity either of 
 agriculture or of agricultural labourers. Land, they 
 assert, cannot be properly cultivated unless it be held 
 
 B 
 
PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 in large quantities by men of capital, nor can its culti- 
 vators be in a satisfactory condition unless they be hired 
 servants, and chiefly dependent for subsistence on the 
 wages they receive. The eminent men by whom this 
 notion has been promulgated have supported it by many 
 ingenious and plausible arguments ; nor has their advo- 
 cacy been confined to theoretical reasoning. They have 
 ventured to appeal to experience and observation, and 
 have been able to point to several facts which at first 
 sight, and until carefully examined, seem to justify their 
 views. So long, indeed, as their attention was confined 
 to their own country, the conclusion at which they arrived 
 was just such as might have been expected. Eighty or 
 ninety years ago, when their doctrine was coming into 
 fashion, farms of 1,000 or 1,500 acres, though much less 
 numerous than at present, were already not unknown in 
 England : and, though a more usual size was a hundred 
 acres or thereabouts, farms of less than that extent were 
 gradually becoming less common, and the cottage 
 tenements of a dozen acres or less had almost entirely dis- 
 appeared. 1 Simultaneously with this change in the 
 arrangement of land, agriculture had made undeniable 
 progress, and its improvement was most remarkable on 
 the larger farms. Farm labourers, indeed, having lost 
 the land anciently attached to- their habitations, were 
 
 1 Can my sons share from this paternal hand 
 The profits with the labours of the land ? 
 No : though indulgent Heaven its blessing deigns, 
 Where's the small farm to suit my scanty means ? 
 
 Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy, 1799. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 not so well fed or so expensively clad as some centuries 
 earlier, when sumptuary laws had been thought necessary 
 to restrain their excesses in diet and dress ; but the 
 memory of those golden days was retained by few except 
 professed antiquarians, and the result of a comparison 
 with more recent times might have appeared favourable 
 to the actual state of things. During the reign of George 
 II. and the first thirty years of George III. the English 
 peasant was in a better position in many respects than in 
 the preceding century. His wages were higher, though 
 provisions and most other articles of consumption were 
 cheaper. His supply of necessaries, if not plentiful, was 
 at least not scanty, and the progress of the arts had placed 
 many conveniences and luxuries within his reach which 
 were utterly unknown to his wealthier ancestors. With 
 glass panes in his casement, a glass tumbler or two and 
 some plates and dishes on his shelves, and some potatoes, 
 and possibly a little tea and sugar in his closet, it would 
 have seemed ridiculous to question his advantage over his 
 rude forefathers, whose horn casements excluded the 
 light and admitted the wind, who ate and drank out of 
 wooden bowls and bickers, and ate and drank little but 
 what their own ground furnished. His superiority over 
 the serfs of Germany and Russia, who, like his own 
 ancestors, were paid for labour, not in money, but in 
 land, was, of course, taken for granted. To have 
 questioned it would have been a reflection on British 
 freedom. It was therefore assumed that the actual 
 social position of the English agricultural labourer was 
 the highest which he had ever attained; and it was 
 
 B 2 
 
PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 further assumed, that the occupation of land by the 
 lower class of peasants was a mark or relic of serfdom 
 and barbarism, and that their deprivation of land 
 and conversion into labourers for money-wages, was an 
 indispensable step in their progress to freedom and 
 civilisation. Adam Smith himself, who appears to have 
 subsequently taken a juster view of the subject, speaks 
 in one of the early chapters of his great work of ' the 
 diminution of the number of cottagers and other small 
 occupiers of land/ as ' an event which has, in every part 
 of Europe, been the immediate forerunner of improve- 
 ment and better cultivation.' 
 
 These inferences from experience of large farms in 
 England, were shortly afterwards confirmed by the 
 observed results of the formation of small farms in Ireland. 
 The partition of the immense pastures by which so large 
 a portion of that island had been overspread, was followed 
 by the creation of a body of small farmers, poor, ignorant, 
 and unenterprising at first, and poorer and more spiritless 
 in every succeeding generation, and by the excessive 
 multiplication of a cottier peasantry, whose debasement 
 and misery were at once the wonder and the scandal of 
 the age. Some explanation will hereafter be offered of 
 the peculiar circumstances which caused the subdivision 
 of land to be followed in this instance by such deplorable 
 consequences. Suffice it in this place to admit the fact, 
 and to acknowledge that it affords some justification for 
 the opinion which has been founded upon it. With small 
 farms, sloth and misery on one side of St. George's 
 
SMALL FARMS. 5 
 
 Channel, and on the other, large farms, tolerably culti- 
 vated and moderately productive, together with a 
 peasantry in a condition which, by comparison, might 
 almost be styled comfortable, even careful inquirers 
 might be excused for inferring that the several phenomena 
 in juxtaposition bore to each other the relation of cause 
 and effect. Whether the inference was correct as well 
 as pardonable, and whether such hasty generalisation 
 was quite consistent with the rules of induction, are 
 questions which may be better answered when we come 
 to extend our field of observation, and having collected 
 additional facts, shall have ascertained how far 
 they can be reconciled with the theory at present in 
 vogue. 
 
 But. how narrow soever may be the basis on which 
 the theory rests, the superstructure itself must be con- 
 fessed to be very cleverly put together, and to present a 
 very imposing aspect. Nothing, indeed, could be more 
 satisfactory than the way in which the superiority of 
 large to small farms has been accounted for, provided 
 only that the superiority were real, and that the advantages 
 claimed for the former, and the evils imputed to the 
 latter, actually existed. The arguments used have not 
 only obtained very general acceptance among persons 
 without adequate means of testing them : they have pre- 
 judiced the minds of many against the admission of 
 opposite evidence, and have stood their ground in situ- 
 ations where everything around bore testimony against 
 them. Their fallacy can scarcely therefore be exposed 
 
PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 without a patient and minute investigation ; and it is 
 hoped that the space here allotted to that purpose will 
 not be thought excessive, when the difficulty as well 
 as the importance of the subject is considered. 
 
 it is asserted, in the first place, that small farms must 
 needs be badly cultivated. ' The produce of a farm of 
 five, ten, or twenty acres, may perhaps enable its occupier 
 to preserve his family from downright starvation ; but it 
 will never,' we are told, * enable him to accumulate stock 
 to any extent/ He must consequently be too poor to 
 bear the expense of properly manuring, draining, or irri- 
 gating his fields ; he cannot afford to * use any but the 
 simplest machines/ nor to avail himself, except very in- 
 sufficiently, * of the powers of the lower animals,' nor of 
 those improvements which in rich and enlightened coun- 
 tries are continually being made in his art. Neither can 
 he properly vary his crops, but, for want of space for 
 judicious alternation, must injure his land by making it 
 bear similar sorts of produce too frequently. Moreover, 
 not only is he mainly dependent on manual labour, with 
 little aid from mechanism or from the inferior animals, he 
 cannot even make the best use of that labour. The same 
 man must by turns apply to every sort of work, and con- 
 sequently will do every job worse than it would be done 
 on a large farm, where separate persons, it is said, would 
 be ' ploughmen, thrashers, hedgers, shepherds, cowherds, 
 oxherds, lime-burners, drainers, &c.' Finally, the small 
 farmer is seduced into idle habits by temptations too 
 strong for his virtue, or forced into them by influences 
 beyond his control. Not being subject to the same com- 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 pulsion as the hired labourer, he * naturally ' allows him- 
 self more frequent intervals of relaxation. ' A cottager, 
 however small his possession, has some species of produce 
 to dispose of. This,' it seems, * leads to a habit of going 
 to market, where much precious time is lost in the adjust- 
 ment of trifling bargains.' ' Nothing,' as Arthur Young 
 has very justly, but somewhat superfluously, remarked, 
 1 can be more absurd than a strong, hearty man walking 
 some miles, and losing a day's work in order to sell a 
 dozen of eggs, or a chicken, the value of which would not 
 be equal to the labour of conveying it if he were properly 
 employed/ Then it is assumed that farms cannot be 
 small without being too small to afford constant employ- 
 ment to their occupiers. But the latter, when they have 
 nothing to do at home, cannot find work elsewhere, at 
 least if all the neighbouring farms be of much the same 
 size. In consequence, they contract habits of indolence 
 which are too frequently converted ere long into habits 
 of dissipation. Of course, an idle drunkard, who keeps 
 neither a horse nor a cow, whose only tools are the spade 
 and hoe, who seldom manures, and never drains, but 
 nevertheless overcrops his land, is a wretched farmer, and 
 it would be perfectly marvellous if his farm were not the 
 counterpart of himself. l 
 
 Here is a tolerably long list of charges, yet they form 
 but one clause in the bill of indictment. Let us examine 
 them separately, beginning with the culprit's alleged in- 
 evitable indigence. 
 
 Of such indigence, if it were real, two explanations 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. Cottage System. 
 
8 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 might be suggested. Either there might be circum- 
 stances inseparable from small fanning rendering it less 
 efficient and less productive than large, or, whatever the 
 productiveness of small farms, the conditions of occupa- 
 tion might be such as to prevent their tenants from 
 retaining as much of the produce for their own use as 
 larger holders would be permitted to appropriate from 
 the same extent of land. Now, that this latter cause very 
 frequently operates is not to be denied. Personal habit, 
 reinforced by family tradition, the potent and manifold 
 charms of a country life, ignorance of, or sense of unfit- 
 ness for, any other career, all unite to dispose the sons of 
 farmers to follow the calling of their fathers, and to 
 compete with each other for the possession of any farm 
 there may be to let- The smaller the farm, the less the 
 capital required for its cultivation, and the larger the 
 number of qualified competitors, whose competition, where 
 farms are very small indeed, is often so fierce that, in 
 order to obtain what seems to them their sole means of 
 livelihood, they enter into engagements that leave them 
 barely wherewithal to support life, and would not leave 
 even that if enforced to the letter. So it used to be in 
 Ireland in the dismjil decades immediately previous to 
 the famine of 1846, when all the potatoes grown on the 
 four or five acre, or still smaller plots, which then took up 
 nearly a twentieth of the cultivated area, would in many 
 instances not have sufficed for the rent which the cottier 
 had, in his desperation, undertaken to pay, and when, 
 therefore, all that remained for his subsistence was just so 
 many potatoes as the compassion of the landlord or of the 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 landlord's agent suffered him to keep. Things, however, 
 can scarcely reach to quite so deplorable a pitch except 
 where land, besides being excessively subdivided, is also 
 held at will. In that case a spade or mattock and a 
 barrowful of tubers for seed may constitute the entire 
 farming stock looked upon as indispensable; whereas, 
 wherever farms are not so diminutive as to render leases 
 ridiculous, and leases are actually adopted, every in- 
 coming tenant is expected to be the possessor of some 
 capital, which he, on his side, will be disinclined to invest 
 except upon conditions that leave him a reasonable 
 prospect of obtaining such moderate return as sufferance, 
 the badge of all his tribe, has taught him to deem ade- 
 quate. Still, even in Flanders, where nine-year leases 
 generally prevail, the small tenant-farmers fare as to diet 
 little better than their own labourers, who, while the 
 hardest worked, are also about the worst fed of their class 
 that Europe can show. 1 In short, it may as well at once 
 be frankly acknowledged that, wherever the terms on 
 which land is held are the result of a bargain with a 
 landlord exercising full proprietary rights, the small 
 tenant's share of the produce will be considerably less 
 
 1 So says M. de Laveleye, writing in 1863 (Economic Ruralede 
 la Belgique, p. 69). The Flemish farm-labourer's actual bill of 
 fare, however, as transcribed by him in 1870, is one which most 
 Englishmen of the same class may well envy. 'For breakfast: 
 bread-and-butter with chicory, coffee, and milk ; for dinner: pota- 
 toes, vegetables, and bread; at 4 P.M., bread-and-butter again; 
 and for supper, the same fare as for dinner : very seldom, a little 
 bacon, and as for butchers' meat, four or five times a. year.' Cob- 
 den Club Essays, ist series, pp. 264, 265. 
 
10 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 than a large farmer would have insisted on. It does not, 
 however, follow that the small farmer must have relatively 
 less money than the large to lay out on the land. There 
 is no reason why his capital on entering should not be at 
 least as great in proportion as the other's, since, whatever 
 be the proper amount per acre, from 5/. to 2o/., there will 
 always be more bidders with 257. or ioo/. to spend upon 
 five acres than with 2,5007. or io,ooo/. to spend upon 
 five hundred acres. Neither although the five-acre 
 tenant would probably be much the more highly rented 
 of the two, so that, unless he somehow managed to get 
 more gross produce out of the land than the other, his 
 own net rate of profit would be less, and it would there- 
 fore be harder for him to add to his original capital 
 does it follow that, because less able to afford expendi- 
 ture on his land, he must therefore spend less. He 
 might perhaps choose to stint himself in order not to 
 stint the land, which, as he would well know, could not, 
 unless generously treated, be induced to yield him where- 
 withal to meet the onerous obligations he had incurred. 
 And this, in fact, is what he commonly does. 
 
 In East and West Flanders, where the average size is 
 about five acres and seven acres and a-half respectively, 
 the capital with which a tenant enters averages at least 
 87. an acre, and this is gradually increased, and often 
 doubled, during the currency of the lease ; whereas in two 
 other Belgian regions, the Hesbayan, whereof one-tenth 
 is occupied by farms of ioo acres and upwards, and the 
 Condrusian, where farms as large as 250 acres abound, 
 the capital invested in the soil is estimated at between 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 5/. i2s. and 61. &s., and between 3/. and 4/. respectively, 
 while in England its average is probably not above 6/. l 
 True, whereas the English farmer expects ten per cent, 
 on his capital, the Fleming is fain to be satisfied with two 
 per cent.', and to content himself with rye bread, pota- 
 toes, a few beans or other vegetables, and butter-milk, 
 scarcely ever tasting meat, or even bacon, or any beverage 
 stronger than chicory, and reserving beer for high da*s 
 and holidays ; while many an English farmer breakfasts 
 on game, or veal-and-ham pie, according to the season, 
 can produce a bottle of '34 port for a favoured guest, 
 sends a son to Cambridge, and is lulled into his after- 
 dinner nap by the performance of his daughters on a 
 semi-grand piano. But the Fleming's obligation to the 
 practice of such severe economy is an incident of tenure, 
 not a necessity of small culture. Small farms are not 
 always rack-rented. In some territories the landlord's 
 exactions are restrained by custom having the force of 
 law ; in others, the occupant is altogether rent free. 
 Were it not so, the present volume would lack an 
 adequate pretext, for there would then be no Peasant 
 Proprietors to plead for. Some such people, however, 
 being certainly existent, a further certainty regarding 
 
 1 Economic Rurale de la Belgique, par Emile de Laveleye, pp. 
 49-51, and 161, and 186-8. La Hesbaieis, strictly speaking, merely 
 the portion of the province of Liege westward of the Meuse; but in 
 the agricultural and more extended sense in which, after M. de 
 Laveleye's example, the term is here used, it includes also the 
 whole of Brabant and Hainault. Le Condroz, the territory of the 
 ancient Condrusii, occupies the portions of Namur and Liege 
 bounded by the rivers Meurthe, Ourthe, and Lesse. 
 
12 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 them is that, since small tenants, with only a small 
 portion of the produce of their fields at their disposal, 
 can, nevertheless, lay out upon their land more in pro- 
 portion than large tenants do actually lay out, small 
 proprietors, to whom the entire produce belongs, cannot 
 but be able to do the same. This certainty is indepen- 
 dent of the comparative productiveness of small and 
 large farming, and does not, therefore, require for its 
 corroboration that the second of the possible causes of 
 the penury of small farmers, viz., the comparative un- 
 productiveness of small farms, should be disproved. On 
 other accounts, however, it may be of use to show how 
 absolutely overwhelming against the reality of such un- 
 productiveness is the preponderance of evidence. 
 
 In contrasting small with large culture, the most legi- 
 timate course might seem to be to observe the respective 
 aspects presented by them in one and the same country, 
 and to note, for example, that, on the ten-acre farms 
 of Fianders, the crops are heavier by a fourth than on 
 the hundred-acre farms of La Hesbaie, and as heavy 
 again as on the farms of two hundred and fifty acres in 
 Le Condroz. This seemingly fair mode of comparison, 
 however, might, in the hands of a skilful manipulator of 
 statistics, become exceedingly misleading, bringing out 
 almost any results desired, according to the country to 
 which it was applied, and testifying almost as strongly in 
 England to the superiority of large farms, as in Belgium 
 to that of small. If our object be, not to fortify any 
 foregone conclusion, but simply to get at the truth, we 
 had better go for our materials of comparison to distinct 
 
SMALL FARMS. 13 
 
 regions in which, on the one hand large, and on the other 
 small, culture appears to most advantage. Now, in 
 England the country in which large farms are both 
 more numerous and in general far better tilled than in any 
 other the average yield of wheat per acre was, in 1837, 
 only twenty-one bushels ; the highest average for any 
 single county being no more than twenty-six bushels. 1 
 The highest average since claimed for the whole of 
 England is thirty-two bushels ; but this is pronounced to 
 be much too high, by that best perhaps of all authorities, 
 Mr.^aird, who gives twenty-six and a-half bushels as the 
 ' average of figures furnished to him by competent judges 
 in all parts of the country ;' adding, as the result of his 
 own observation, that ' thirty-two bushels, as an average 
 produce, is to be met with only on farms where both soil 
 and management are superior to the present average of 
 England.' 2 In Jersey, however, where the average size 
 of farms is only sixteen acres, the average produce of 
 wheat for the five years ending with 1833 was, by official 
 investigation, ascertained to be forty bushels. 3 In Guern- 
 sey, where farms are still smaller, 4 thirty-two bushels 
 per acre were, according to Inglis, considered about the 
 same time, 'a good but still a very common crop;' and the 
 light soil of the Channel Islands is naturally by no means 
 particularly suitable for the growth of wheat. That of 
 
 1 See Table in M'Culloch's Statistics of British Empire, vol. i. 
 p. 482. 
 
 2 English Agriculture, pp. 480-522 and 3. 
 
 8 Guernsey and Jersey Magazine, vol. iii. p. 186. 
 4 Owing, says Inglis, to there being ' no law, as in Jersey, for- 
 bidding the subdivision of land below a certain extent.' 
 
14 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 Flanders, originally a coarse siliceous sand, is particularly 
 unsuitable, and accordingly very little wheat is sown 
 there, but of that little, the average yield, at least in the 
 Waes district, is, according to a very minute and careful 
 observer, from thirty-two to thirty-six bushels. 1 Of barley, 
 a more congenial cereal, the average is in Flanders forty- 
 one bushels, and on good ground sixty bushels ; 2 while in 
 England it is probably under thirty-three, and would 
 certainly be overstated at thirty-six bushels. Of course, 
 the English averages are considerably exceeded in 
 particular localities, on such farms for instance as those 
 of Mr. Paget, near Nottingham, and of Mr. Stansfeld in 
 the West Riding of Yorkshire, wheat crops of forty-six 
 bushels per acre being not extraordinary, and of fifty-six 
 bushels not unknown. 3 But these exceptional cases may 
 be more than matched in Guernsey, where the largest 
 yield of wheat per acre in each of the three years ending 
 with 1847, was proved, to the satisfaction of the local 
 Agricultural Society, to have been not less than seventy-six, 
 eighty, and seventy-two bushels respectively. Of potatoes, 
 ten tons per acre would, anywhere in England, and even 
 on the rich ' warp lands ' bordering the tidal affluents of 
 the Humber, be considered a high average crop ; 4 but in 
 Jersey, the average is reckoned at fifteen tons, 5 and near 
 
 1 Outlines of Flemish Husbandry, by the Rev. W. Rham, in 
 Library of Useful Knowledge, p. 92. 
 
 2 Laveleye, ut supra, p. 84. 
 
 ^Caird's English Agriculture, pp. 211 and 289. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 301. 
 
 5 Guernsey and Jersey Magazine, vol. iii. p. 106. Inglis gives 
 29,077 Ibs., or nearly 13 tons, as the average Jersey crop. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 Tamise, in Eastern Flanders, Mr. Rham found a cultivator 
 of eight acres of poor land raising nearly twelve tons 
 from one of them. 1 Clover, again, ' the glory of Flemish 
 farming,' is nowhere else found in 'such perfect luxuriance' 
 as in Flanders, where it exhibits ' a vigour and weight of 
 produce truly surprising/ especially when it is discovered 
 ' that such prodigious crops are raised from six pounds of 
 seed per acre.' 2 The superiority in productiveness of 
 the best small over the best large farming, of which these 
 are illustrations, is no more than might be expected by 
 any one who considered that, the smaller the farming, 
 the nearer, if good of its kind, it approaches to gardening, 
 and who recollected, too, how hopelessly, with reference 
 to copiousness of crops, the greatest of our agricultural 
 giants our Pagets, Puseys, Huxtables, and Mechis are 
 distanced by their dwarf competitors, the market gardeners 
 of our metropolitan suburbs. The same superiority alone 
 can explain the eagerness with which agricultural labourers 
 will accept from the farmer who employs them, allot- 
 ment plots at as high a rent per rood as their employer 
 grumblingly pays for the same land per acre. Still, 
 whatever the productiveness of small farming, it is of 
 course possible for a farm to be so small that its total 
 produce will not be more than enough for the subsistence 
 of its cultivator ; who, in that case, unless he possesses 
 supplementary resources of some sort, cannot prevent 
 the land from becoming rapidly impoverished. Not so, 
 
 1 Flemish Husbandry, p. 92. 
 
 2 Rham, p. 35-7, and M'Culloch's Geographical Dictionary, 
 vol. i. p. 331. 
 
l6 PRODUCTIVENESS OP 
 
 however, if the holding be of as much as ten or twelve 
 acres, or reach to even half that size. Many a lease- 
 holder of five or six acres spends, acre for acre, on im- 
 provements, not simply as much, but a great deal more 
 than the largest agricultural practitioners. His entire 
 profits might not, indeed, even though he sat rent free, 
 enable him to do some few things that are occasionally 
 done by managers of large properties. Assuredly he could 
 not, * to improve the breed of his sheep, give a thousand 
 guineas for the hire of a single ram for a single season; ' 
 nor ' send across the kingdom to distant provinces for new 
 implements, and for men to use them ; ' nor ' employ and 
 pay men for residing in provinces where practices were 
 found which he might wish to introduce.' But with all 
 deference to Arthur Young, who says that such efforts 
 are common in England, they are never made except by 
 the very largest farmers, and very rarely even by them ; 
 while, as to all the more ordinary expenses of cultivation, 
 if the small farmer be not equally able to bear them, it 
 can only be because he is usually more heavily rented. 
 Otherwise, with as much ease as the tenant of two or 
 three square miles, he ought to be able, if need were, to 
 'cover his whole farm with marl at the rate of 100 or 150 
 tons an acre ; ' to ''drain all his land at the expense of 2/. 
 or 3/. an acre ; ' to ' pay a heavy price for the manure of 
 towns, and convey it thirty miles by land carriage ; ' or to 
 'float his land at the expense of 5/. an acre.' 
 
 But why do I say * ought to be able ' ? He is able. 
 Disproportionately rented as he almost always is, the 
 small farmer often contrives to spend upon his land 
 
SMALL FARMS. 17 
 
 more in proportion than more than one in a thousand of 
 the largest farmers ever does. So far from being * unable 
 to accumulate stock to any extent/ his accumulations of 
 live stock are often such as might well fill his rival with 
 humiliating surprise. ' It would startle,' says Mr. Rham, 
 * the English farmer of 400 acres of arable land, if he 
 were told that he should constantly feed 100 head of 
 cattle ; yet this would not be too large a proportion if the 
 Flemish system were strictly followed ... a beast for 
 every three acres being a common Flemish proportion, 
 and on very small occupations, where spade husbandry is 
 used, the proportion being still greater.' That the 
 occupier of only 10 or 12 acres of light arable soil should 
 be able to maintain four or five cows may appear asto- 
 nishing, but the fact is notorious in the Waes country.' 1 
 To possess plenty of live stock is to possess in equal 
 abundance the first requisite of fertility. ' No cattle, no 
 
 1 Flemish Husbandry, pp. 59, 60, and 94. The statements 
 in the text are of somewhat ancient date, but are still as applicable 
 as ever. During a tour last summer (that of 1873) through Belgium, 
 I visited two farms near St. Nicolas in the Pays de Waes, the two 
 first that came in my way. On one of ten acres I found four cows, 
 two calves, one horse, and two pigs, besides rabbits and poultry. 
 On the other, of thirty-eight acres, one bull, six cows, two heifers, 
 one horse, and seventy-five sheep ; these last, however, being 
 allowed, in addition to what they got on their owner's land, the run 
 of all the stubbles of the commune, the whole commune on the 
 other hand being allowed the use of the bull gratis. A few days 
 afterwards I went over a farm of thirty- two acres a few miles from 
 Ypres. On this I counted eight cows, six bullocks, a calf six 
 weeks old, and four pigs ; and was told by the farmer, in the presence 
 of his landlord, that, over and above what his own cattle yield, he 
 purchases no less than 2OO/. worth of manure annually. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 dung : No dung, no crop/ is a Flemish adage ; and the 
 wealthiest of English farmers are less prodigal of manure 
 than those poor Flemish peasants, who, by the continual 
 intermixture of animal and vegetable refuse, have con- 
 verted mere powdered flint, through which, in its natural 
 state, water runs as through a filtering stone, into a dark 
 rich mould, of a fertility unsurpassed on this side the 
 Alps. Mr. Caird cites as something remarkable that, for 
 a farm six miles from Manchester, manure should have 
 been bought at the rate of twelve or thirteen tons an 
 acre; 1 but this, which in England passes for lavishness, 
 might seem more like niggardliness in Flanders. For 
 there, from ten to fifteen tons of good rotten dung, and 
 ten hogsheads of liquid from the urine tank, per acre, are 
 quite common sacrifices and libations to the Sterculine 
 Saturn ; and some thirty shillings' worth of purchased 
 fertilisers bones, wood-ashes, linseed-cake, and guano 
 are not unfrequently superadded. Nay, when potatoes 
 are the crop for whose increase the deity is invoked, 
 sixty tons of manure per acre are no unusual quantity to 
 lay on. 2 In the Channel Islands also, manure is em- 
 ployed with great liberality, ten cart loads of sea-weed, 
 worth fifty shillings, besides stable dung, being the 
 ordinary allowance per acre. 3 Drainage is an operation 
 which, in many situations, cannot be effectually executed 
 unless it be undertaken on an extensive scale ; but that 
 the necessity of combining for the purpose does not 
 
 1 English Agriculture, p. 270. 
 
 2 Rham's Flemish Husbandry, pp. 31 and 92. 
 
 3 Duncan's History of Guernsey, p. 294. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 19 
 
 prevent small occupiers from properly performing this 
 important part of their business, is shown by the example 
 of the Netherlands, the country above all others in which 
 drainage is most indispensable, and in which also it is 
 most amply provided for. Combination equally enables 
 small farmers to construct expensive works for irrigation. 
 Perhaps the most ingenious contrivances of the kind 
 which anywhere exist are to be found, not among the 
 scientific and wealthy agriculturists of Europe, but 
 among the Bedouins of some Arabian oases, which owe 
 their fertility to the labour and skill exerted by the 
 inhabitants in order to obtain supplies of water. The 
 greater part of the country being destitute of running 
 streams on the surface, springs are sought in high places 
 beneath it, and in order to reach them the ground must 
 often be opened to a depth of forty feet. ' A channel 
 from the fountain-head is then, with a very slight descent, 
 bored in the direction to which it is to be conveyed, with 
 apertures at regular distances, to afford light and air to 
 those who are occasionally sent to keep it clean. In 
 this manner water is frequently conducted from a 
 distance of six or eight miles, and an unlimited supply is 
 obtained. The channels are usually about four feet 
 broad and two feet deep, and contain a clear rapid 
 stream.' l If the small farmer use only the ' simplest 
 machines/ it is probably because experience has taught 
 him, as we shall hereafter see, that the simplest tools are 
 by far the most efficient. Those who keep no horses are 
 
 1 Wellsted's Travels, vol. i. p. 93. 
 c 2 
 
20 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 chiefly they whose holdings are so small that they 
 seldom have occasion for them, and for whom it is 
 cheaper to hire them when required. It happens, how- 
 ever, that Flemish tenants of twenty-five acres and 
 upwards do keep a good many horses. In 1846 it was 
 reckoned that in Western Flanders there were between 
 three and four, and in Eastern nearly six, horses for 
 every hundred acres. In disproof of the small farmer's 
 alleged inability to avail himself of the services of others 
 of the ' lower animals,' it may suffice to cite Mr. Rham,. 
 whose statement, that it is quite common for Flemish 
 tenants of nine acres to keep as many as three cows, has 
 already been quoted, and who also speaks of a tenant of 
 barely five acres, the only drawback from whose happi- 
 ness was that he could not immediately afford the money 
 to buy a second cow, although he knew he could have 
 maintained two very well. Such a farmer in Belgium 
 would use the spade only for trenching the ground ; but 
 among equally small occupiers in the Channel Islands, 
 whether from attachment to old custom, or from some 
 other cause, not only is the plough in general use, but a 
 plough called * la grande querrue/ so large and lumbering 
 that not less than eight or ten horses or oxen are often 
 employed to draw it. Very few of the peasants are rich 
 enough to possess one of these ponderous engines, or the 
 number of cattle required for it ; but the poorest has no 
 difficulty in borrowing both the one and other from his 
 neighbours ; who, moreover, cheerfully assist each other 
 in busy seasons. The good feeling subsisting between the 
 people of the Channel Islands allows this exchange of 
 
SMALL FARMS. 21 
 
 services to be effected by barter ; but, even if money 
 were employed in the transaction, it is obvious that every 
 one, with the hire of his own services, would be able to 
 purchase an equal quantity of work from others, and 
 that thus the division of labour could be practised even 
 on small farms, although not nearly to the extent to 
 which it is carried on in large ones. 1 So much must be 
 admitted in favour of the latter ; but of all the claims 
 hitherto enumerated, set up on their behalf, this is the 
 only one which can be even partially conceded. The 
 assertion that a suitable rotation of crops is impracticable 
 in small farms, must sound strangely to anyone who 
 from the top of a church tower in the Pays de Waes, has 
 looked admiringly down on the country round, glowing 
 like a Turkey carpet, with intermingled patches of red, 
 blue, yellow, white, violet, and green, of every tint. The 
 Flemish peasant is for nothing more remarkable than for 
 the great variety of plants among which he distributes his 
 attention ; finding room, as he does, within the scope of 
 ten or twelve acres, for wheat, rye, barley, or oats, rape 
 and clover, flax or hemp, hops, chicory, poppies or 
 tobacco, peas, beans, French beans, vetches' or cabbages, 
 potatoes, turnips, carrots, and beet-root. Is it the 
 number of these that is supposed to prevent their 
 rotating, instead of multiplying the facilities for interchange 
 of situations ? 
 
 1 ' Jersey labourers are not to be obtained for hire, but willingly 
 exchange labour. Hired labourers are English, Irish, or French.' 
 Inglis's Channel Islands, vol. i. p. 82. See also Le Quesne's 
 Ireland and the Channel Islands, p. 113. 
 
22 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 But of all the charges brought against small farmers 
 the most amazing is that which represents them as sloth- 
 ful, so diametrically is it opposed to truth, which lite- 
 rally leaps into the eyes of all who are willing to look in 
 the right direction. Small farmers (such of them, that is, 
 as are either owners or leaseholders of their farms, and it 
 must be distinctly understood that this vindication .is in- 
 tended^ to apply to no others) are not only not generally 
 indolent, but their most distinguishing characteristic is 
 ardent, constant, nay, almost excessive, industry. Cir- 
 cumstances may, no doubt, be imagined in which it would 
 be impossible for them to be uninterruptedly employed. 
 If in any district all the farms were of the same size, and 
 if that size were insufficient to occupy the entire labour 
 of one man, the occupiers would sometimes be without 
 work at home, and would be unable to procure it else- 
 where. But, when small farms are defended, it is of course 
 understood, either that the smallest is sufficiently large to 
 keep its tenant in full work, or that, if any are below that 
 size, a proportionate number are above it. Unless, there- 
 fore, it be supposed that small farms have a tendency to 
 decrease in size (a point to which we shall come here- 
 after), the apprehension that small farmers must neces- 
 sarily be occasionally idle from absolute deficiency of 
 work, may be at once dismissed. It is further asserted, 
 however, that the small farmer, even when he has work 
 to do, will be apt to shirk it. He is subject to no 
 immediate compulsion. No one can forbid his sitting 
 down as soon as he is tired, or taking a holiday whenever 
 he feels inclined ; and it is presumed that he will not 
 
SMALL FARMS, 2$ 
 
 fail to abuse this liberty. But, although he is exempt 
 from the same compulsion, he is stimulated to exertion 
 by influences much stronger than any that affect the 
 hired labourer. The latter must not, indeed, openly 
 dawdle about his business, or he may be dismissed ; but, 
 provided he work hard enough to content his master, he 
 is himself content, and aims at nothing more. He has 
 little or no inducement to exert himself further ; he has 
 no certainty of gaining an increase of wages by so doing : 
 it is far more probable that virtue in his case would be 
 suffered to be her own sole reward ; and industry is a 
 virtue too nearly related to fatigue to allow of such a 
 reward being very eagerly coveted. On the contrary, 
 leaseholding cottage-farmers work for themselves ; their 
 remuneration is regulated by their exertions ; the fruits 
 of their industry, after a certain fixed deduction has been 
 made, belong to themselves, and the produce of any extra 
 labour is wholly their own. Day-labourers never work so 
 hard as when paid by the piece; but a cottage-farmer 
 does nothing else but piece-work. Human nature would 
 be even more inconsistent than is commonly supposed, 
 if a man would waste time, of so much value to himself, 
 either in rest, recreation, or marketing, and yet would 
 exert himself diligently as a day-labourer, in order to avoid 
 dismissal from a situation not nearly so remunerative. 
 In truth, the only instances of idleness on the part of 
 cottage-farmers are taken from countries where they are 
 only yearly tenants. But the reputation of rack-rented 
 yearly cottiers has already been acknowledged to be too 
 rotten to be patched up, and must be abandoned to the 
 
24 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 mercy of their censors. The small farmers with whom 
 we are at present dealing, are such only as, being either 
 leaseholders or proprietors, have a secure hold upon the 
 land, and the industry of these is admitted even by their 
 most determined opponents. Mr. M'Culloch represents 
 them as contracting 'indolent habits,' as being 'incapable 
 of continuous and vigorous exertion,' and as not accu- 
 mulating capital ' in one case out of a hundred.' Yet the 
 same Mr. M'Culloch confesses that ' the very large pro- 
 duce obtained by the Flemish farmer is solely attributable 
 to indefatigable industry; for that the soil is naturally poor 
 and the climate by no means especially favourable ; ' * 
 and M. de Laveleye shows in eloquent detail how in- 
 defatigable that industry is. There is not a day on which 
 the husbandman may not be seen ploughing, digging, 
 harrowing, hoeing, manuring, sowing, or finally garnering 
 the heterogeneous fruits of his unremitting toil; while his 
 children, who have been since dawn on the roads or 
 commons, are carefully picking up, and depositing in their 
 little cart, everything which, as a German traveller deli- 
 cately says, 'attests the passage of horses or sheep.' 
 Arthur Young, as zealous a champion as anyone of large 
 farms, although in the course of his tour through France 
 he could see nothing else ' respectable ' in small proper- 
 ties, yet admits that he found ' a most unremitting in- 
 dustry.' ' Though,' says he, ' 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 
 
 1 Compare Statist. Acct. of Brit. Emp., vol. i. pp. 150 and 
 151 ; and Geog. Diet., vol. i. p. 330. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 2$ 
 
 possessors was so conspicuous and meritorious, that no 
 commendations would be too great for it/ l 
 
 In order to accumulate evidence to the same effect, it 
 is only necessary to turn to any country in which the 
 peasantry cultivate their own lands. Such is the case in 
 Zurich, as well as in several other Swiss Cantons ; and, 
 accordingly, says Inglis, ' Anywhere in the neighbourhood 
 of Zurich, in looking to the right or the left, one is struck 
 with the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants. In 
 the industry they show in the cultivation of the 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 perhaps as half- 
 past eight, there was the labourer, mowing his grass or 
 tying up his vines. But there are other and better evi- 
 dences of the industry of the Zurichers than merely seeing 
 them late and early at work. It is impossible to look at 
 a field, a garden, a hedge, 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 leads 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-by; it is everywhere 
 bounded by a fence ; stakes are placed at intervals of 
 about a yard, and about two and four feet from the ground 
 boughs of trees are passed longitudinally along. If you 
 1 Travels in France, vol. i. p. 412. 
 
26 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 look into a field 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 accu- 
 racy ; not a single weed is to be seen, nor a single stone. 
 Plants are not earthed up as with us, but are placed in 
 small hollows, into each of 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 trellice is erected against the wall to 
 which the boughs are fastened, and there is not a single 
 twig that has not its appropriate resting-place.' l In 
 another place he says, * When speaking of the Engadine * 
 (with respect to which he had previously stated that the 
 whole of the land belongs to the peasantry), ' I did not 
 sufficiently enlarge upon the industry of the inhabitants, 
 but it deserves a panegyric. 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 ; wherever a rock will bear a blade, verdure is 
 seen upon it ; wherever rye will succeed, there it is cul- 
 tivated. 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.' 2 Mr. Laing 
 
 1 Inglis's Switzerland and South of France, vol. i. pp. 32 and 33. 
 * Ibid. pp. 145 and 146. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 27 
 
 confirms these statements, and applies the description to 
 Switzerland generally. ' The little spots of land,' he says, 
 ' show the same daily care in the fencing, digging, weed- 
 ing, and watering.' The owners ' have a kind of Robinson 
 Crusoe industry about their houses and little properties ; 
 they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, or im- 
 proving something about their tenements.' l In Germany, 
 Mr. Howitt, after mentioning that the land ' is for the most 
 part in the hands of the people,' and 'parcelled out 
 amongst the multitude,' describes the peasantry as labour- 
 ing ' early and late, because they feel that they are labour- 
 ing for themselves. There is not an hour of the year,' he 
 adds, ' 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 clearing 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 Germans 
 earn their firewood. In the depth of frost and snow, go 
 into any of their hills and woods, and there you find them 
 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 
 
 1 Notes of a Traveller, pp. 354 and 355. 
 
28 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 home with the most incredible toil and patience.' l In 
 another place he says : ' In England, with its great quan- 
 tity 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, sainfoin, 
 lucerne, rape, colewort, cabbage, rutabaga, black turnips, 
 Swedish and white turnips, teazles, Jerusalem artichokes, 
 mangel-wurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, field beans and 
 peas, vetches, Indian corn, buckwheat, 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 to re-flood ; 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, and poultry, to look after ; 
 their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, 
 to prune and thin out the leaves where they are too thick ; 
 and anyone may imagine what a scene of incessant labour 
 it is.' 2 As Mr. Inglis had declared the industry of the 
 
 1 Howitt's Rural and Domestic Life of Germany, pp. 50, 51. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 44. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 29 
 
 small proprietors of Zurich to be ' unrivalled,' so Mr. 
 Howitt calls the small proprietors of Germany ' the most 
 industrious peasantry in the world ; ' the truth being, as 
 Mr. Mill aptly observes, in commenting on this remark 
 of Mr. Howitt's, that ' whoever is acquainted with only 
 one region in which there are peasant proprietors, invari- 
 ably thinks the peasantry of that particular region the 
 most industrious in the world.' Enough surely has now 
 been said to prove that there is no vice with which small 
 fanners are less justly chargeable than with idleness, and 
 it cannot be necessary to produce other witnesses in their 
 favour from the Channel Islands, the Tyrol, or from the 
 Saxon colonies of Transylvania. 
 
 It seems, then, that they are not necessarily poor, 
 but, on the contrary, as their rate of profit is higher, are 
 likely to be relatively richer than large farmers ; they 
 can lay out more money on their land in proportion to 
 its extent : they can use more manure ; they can buy for 
 themselves all ordinary agricultural implements ; and, by 
 combination among themselves, can obtain the use of the 
 most costly machines, or effect the most expensive im- 
 provements ; the idea of their being prevented by want 
 of space from varying their crops, is merely fanciful ; and, 
 although they may be unable to carry the division of labour 
 as far as might be desirable, their disadvantage in that 
 and all other respects is much more than counterbalanced 
 by the superiority of their industry. 
 
 The reader, indeed, if tolerably versed in agricultural 
 history, may not improbably have been tempted to groan 
 under the foregoing accumulation of proof that the 
 
30 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 * 
 
 disabilities represented as inseparable from the condition 
 of small farmers have no existence, and that there is really 
 nothing in that condition incompatible with the practice 
 of the most approved methods. Why, it is precisely the 
 practice of good small farmers that the best large farmers 
 have taken as their model. It is mainly by copying the 
 former, that the latter have become what they are. It is 
 from Flanders that our mediaeval kings brought over 
 colonists to settle down in the Welsh peninsula of Gower, 
 and in the Irish Baronies of Forth and Bargey ; and to 
 teach husbandry to such of the wild natives as their 
 devastating wars had spared. To Flanders our ancestors 
 owed the hop, and several culinary vegetables, and in 
 especial that ' good root ' for whose English vocative 
 Mrs. Quickly's spelling would, a little before that worthy 
 lady's time, have been in a double sense appropriate. 1 
 It was of 'the Husbandry used in Brabant and Flanders ' 
 that Sir Richard Weston wrote, and Thomas Hartlib in 
 1650 published a 'Discourse, showing wonderful improve- 
 ment of land there, and serving as a pattern for our practice 
 in this Commonwealth.' From Flanders it was that 
 soon afterwards our countrymen learnt to make artificial 
 fields of clover, which, as Weston tells us, was previously 
 unknown in England as a cultivated crop, and found only 
 amongst natural grasses in rich meadows ; and, from what 
 
 1 Sir Hugh Evans. What is the focative case, William ? 
 William. O, vocative, O. 
 Evans. Remember, William, focative is caret. 
 Quickly. And that's a good root. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 31 
 
 he observed in Flanders when passing through in George 
 the Second's train, that Lord Townshend conceived 
 the enthusiasm for turnip cultivation which gained for 
 him the nickname of 'Turnip-tops' as his reward. Now, 
 from the earliest period to which farming can be traced 
 back in Flanders, it seems always to have been on a 
 small scale. To anyone who endeavours to picture to 
 himself the maritime districts of Belgium as they must 
 have shown themselves in the sixth and seventh centuries 
 a mere intermixture of sandy waste and salt marsh, over 
 which the sea continually broke, and a few Menapian 
 stragglers plodded or paddled it cannot but seem 
 singular that a region so utterly unattractive should have 
 been selected by agricultural adventurers as a field for 
 experiment. The following may perhaps be a partial solu- 
 tion of the enigma. The primitive civilizers of the Nether- 
 lands may have been refugees from neighbouring Roman- 
 ised cities of Gaul or Rhenish Germany, who, when those 
 countries were overwhelmed by barbarian invaders, took 
 shipping, and sailed away in search of an asylum elsewhere. 
 The very dreariness of the Dutch and Belgian coasts, 
 which in other circumstances would have been so re- 
 pulsive, might now be welcome, as promising the wanderers 
 security against molestation from either dispossessed 
 natives or fresh immigrants. We know that it was by 
 considerations of this kind that the fugitive citizens of 
 Aquileia were led to select the muddy islets at the 
 mouth of the Brenta, whereon to lay the foundations of 
 Venice. Like the Venetians, too, these settlers in the 
 Low Countries may well have begun by devoting them- 
 
32 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 selves almost exclusively to foreign commerce, from sheer 
 want of any other suitable occupation ; for, except by 
 becoming the carriers of northern Europe, they could not 
 immediately have earned a livelihood. The example of 
 Venice, again, shows what great wealth they might acquire 
 in that capacity ; commercial wealth would supply the 
 means of creating manufacturing wealth, and the two 
 combined, while causing corn, wine, and oil to be im- 
 ported, would create a demand for provisions of other sorts 
 which could not be brought from a distance, and which, 
 to be had at all, would have to be grown near at hand. 
 Wherever numerous human habitations are collected to- 
 gether, the prime requisite for the fertilisation of land can- 
 not be absent; whoever would undertake to reclaim a piece 
 of the apparently irreclaimable wastes that surrounded 
 the early Flemish settlements would freely be allowed to 
 do so rent-free. But, with so intractable a soil, his only 
 chance was to attack it spade in hand ; and it would be 
 but a very small piece that a single individual could 
 succeed in subduing with the spade. Whence it would 
 naturally result that the belts of cultivation that gradually 
 encircled the Flemish towns, and, gradually widening till 
 they met, at length enveloped the whole open country, 
 would consist almost entirely of garden-plots, tended for 
 the most part by their own freeholders. To the still 
 existing race of gardening farmers who descended from 
 these in lineal succession, the greatest of English agricul- 
 turists are indebted for most of the improvements on 
 which they pride themselves ; having by them been, first 
 introduced to an acquaintance with green crops, next 
 
SMALL FARMS. 33 
 
 taught to substitute an unceasing alternation of green and 
 white crops for the previous ruinous rotation of one or 
 more cereal crops and a fallow ; and being even now in 
 process of being by them initiated into the sterculine 
 mysteries of 'the maturation of manure under cover, the 
 special value of naturally liquid manure, and the im- 
 portance of liquidising solid manure. 1 
 
 Still it is not pretended that small farmers, even the 
 best of them, are all that they might be, or that the 
 generality are not a very long way indeed behind 
 ideal perfection. Living usually on the same spot, with 
 little leisure for reading, and few opportunities of com- 
 paring their own doings with those of other people, they 
 are exceedingly averse to change, bigoted to old habits, 
 and proportionately disdainful of foreign practices. 
 Those most skilful and successful of all small farmers, 
 the Flemings, used to be as obnoxious as any to this 
 
 1 Likewise into another cognate mystery, of which M. de 
 Lavergne thus writes : * Les cultivateurs flamands ne s'en contentent 
 pas ' (i.e. des masses enormes d'engrais fournies par leurs animaux); 
 * ils y ajoutent les boues de ville, les tourteaux, les os, les sables de 
 mer, et surtout un genre particulier de fumure, dont personne ne 
 connait aussi bien qu'eux la preparation et 1'emploi, 1'engrais 
 humain. Rejete avec repugnance par beaucoup de peuples, notam- 
 ment par les Anglais, qui commencent a se raviser, cet engrais est 
 des plus energiques ; en le perdant, on laisse echapper une immense 
 richesse. C'est par lui que les Flamands ont pu etendre leurs cultures 
 epuisantes, sans nuire a la fecondite de leur sol, et se montrer supe- 
 rieurs meme aux Anglais, comme production. Tandis que 1'Angle- 
 terre consacre les trois quarts de son territoire a la nourriture du 
 betail, la Flandre n'emploie qu'un quart, bien quelle nourrisse pro- 
 portionellement plus d'animaux ; elle y supplee par 1'engrais humain. ' 
 Economic Rurale de la France, pp. 71, 72. 
 
34 
 
 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 reproach. Most likely they have altered a good deal for 
 the better within the last thirty years ; but, previously, 
 there were none who adhered more pertinaciously to 
 hereditary usages, or were more unwilling to adopt 
 modern inventions, or to listen to the counsels of modern 
 science. ' There are few books on husbandry, 5 said Mr. 
 Rham, in 1838, ' published in Flanders, and if there were, 
 the Flemish farmers would not read them. New pro- 
 ductions or new methods are not readily adopted by any 
 farmers, and least of all by the Flemings.' No ground 
 can be more carefully tilled than theirs, more thoroughly 
 drained or kept freer from weeds ; but their implements 
 of husbandry, though handy, are rude and simple in com- 
 parison with the ingenious agricultural machines so 
 common in this island ; the horses are oppressed by 
 massy wooden collars, and broadcast sowing has only to 
 a very moderate extent given way to drilling. But this 
 prejudice in favour of antiquated customs, instead of 
 furnishing a warrant for the unqualified condemnation of 
 small farming, really proves conclusively that there must 
 be some more than counterbalancing excellence in a 
 system which, in spite of such drawbacks, is in its results 
 more than a match for the most imposing combinations 
 of capital and science. However ignorant of theory the 
 small cultivator may be, however inefficient his tools, 
 however much of his time may be lost in turning re- 
 peatedly from one job to another, he does nevertheless 
 somehow persuade his land to yield larger returns than 
 the large occupier, with all his advantages, manages to 
 extort from an equal area. That this is the case has 
 
SMALL FARMS. 35 
 
 now, it is hoped, been sufficiently demonstrated to leave 
 no doubt as to the side in whose favour the verdict should 
 be given, if the question at issue between large and small 
 culture were to be determined by their respectively pro- 
 portionate amounts of gross produce. 
 
 Gross produce is not, however, the only thing to be 
 considered; for, as Arthur Young remarks, so many hands 
 might be employed to raise the larger amount, as to 
 afford nothing' for the market. In such a case there 
 could be no towns, no exchange of raw produce for 
 manufactures, no division of labour into rural and urban; 
 all the members of the community would be husband- 
 men, and would raise or manufacture every article . at 
 home. Everything, although very badly made, would 
 have cost a great deal of labour. Little progress could 
 be made in the arts of life ; society would remain in its 
 rudest stage, and, instead of the blessings of civilisation, 
 there would be at best only a sort of coarse abundance. 
 For these reasons, Young pronounces that to be the best 
 system of cultivation which allows of the largest produce 
 being carried to market; but neither is this test altogether 
 unexceptionable. The largest surplus produce might be 
 supplied by those cultivators who retained least for 
 themselves, but it would surely be preferable that their 
 necessities should first be adequately supplied, even 
 though somewhat less should remain for the consumption 
 of others. That is the best system of agriculture, not 
 which provides for one class at the expense of another, 
 but which insures the greatest plenty to all ; and small 
 farms, therefore, might possibly be preferable to large 
 
 D2 
 
36 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 ones, even though it should appear that a smaller surplus 
 produce were sent from them to market. 
 
 Waiving, however, this consideration, and accepting 
 unconditionally the test proposed by Young, we shall 
 still find that small farms are not only the most produc- 
 tive in proportion to their extent, but that the supplies 
 sent from them to market are also relatively the largest. 
 In proof of this it will not suffice to discover that land, 
 when divided among numerous occupants, pays commonly 
 a much higher rent than when united into a few extensive 
 holdings; that whereas, for example, 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 where the average sizes of farms 
 are respectively eleven'and sixteen acres will not let for at 
 least 4/., 1 while in Switzerland the average rent is 6/. an 
 acre. For, as already intimated, these higher rents might 
 be results of an incident not of culture but of tenure, 
 which, although unhappily -a very frequent, is not a neces- 
 sary, concomitant of small farming. Neither will it suffice 
 to show that, although the agricultural population in a 
 minutely divided territory is always far denser than in one 
 of large farms, certain territories of the former description 
 are also among those which maintain in addition the 
 largest manufacturing and commercial population 
 Belgium, for instance, being second to England alone in 
 that respect, and Switzerland and Rhenish Prussia being 
 
 1 According to Mr. le Quesne, the average rent of good land in 
 tie Channel Islands may be estimated at 6/. and its value at I5o/. 
 an acre.' Ireland and the Channel Islands, p. 123. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 
 
 37 
 
 further illustrations of the same fact. For it may 
 readily be objected that the non-agricultural sections of 
 a community need not be dependent for their subsistence 
 on home produce, but may derive part of their supplies 
 from abroad, and it may generally be impossible to 
 ascertain what is the proportion imported. This objec- 
 tion does not, however, apply to the Channel Islands. 
 We are there able to determine pretty accurately the 
 quantities of food imported and exported, and after 
 making the needful allowance on that account, we shall 
 find that two small territories occupied exclusively by 
 small farmers, and affording employment to four times 
 the number of cultivators that would be thought requisite 
 on large farms, do nevertheless furnish a sufficiency of 
 food, not only for those cultivators and their families, but 
 for a non-agricultural population, in addition, twice or four 
 times larger than is maintained by an equal extent of land 
 in Great Britain. 
 
 The extent of cultivated land in England is, according 
 to the estimate of Mr. Caird, 1 27,000,000 acres, of 
 which about one-fourth, or 6,833,500, is under wheat, 
 barley, oats, or rye, another fourth under green crops, 
 and the remainder under grass. At the rate of 34 
 bushels per acre, the annual produce of the corn- land 
 would be about 29,000,000 of quarters, .and, at a 
 similarly liberal rate, that of the remaining acreage, a 
 quantity of food equivalent to 46,000,000 of quarters, 
 making a total of indigenous provisions equal to 
 
 1 English Agriculture, pp. 521 and 522. 
 
38 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 75,000,000 of quarters of corn. But, in addition, in 
 the three years ending with 1870, about 14,000,000 of 
 imported corn, together with the equivalents in rice, 
 cattle, butchers' and salted meat, fish, cheese, butter, 
 lard, and eggs, of 11,000,000 or 12,000,000 more, or 
 25,000,000 of quarters altogether, were on an average 
 annually retained for home consumption; so that of the 
 population of England proper according to the Census 
 of 1871, about 24,500,000 one-fourth would seem to be 
 fed from abroad. The Tables of the last Census, so far 
 as yet published, do not show the classification of the 
 people according to occupation, but in 1861 the number 
 of persons in England connected with agriculture was 
 1,600,000. It is possible that, owing to the growing use 
 in husbandry of mechanical and other labour-saving 
 contrivances, this number may not have much increased, 
 and if it alone be deducted from the present total popu- 
 lation, the non- agricultural residue will appear as some- 
 what under 23,000,000, of whom nearly 6,000,000 have 
 been shown to subsist on foreign imports, so that only 
 17,000,000, exclusive of cultivators, remain to be fed by 
 our 27,000,000 of acres of cultivated land. This is at 
 the rate of less than one person for every acre and a half. 
 The total population of Guernsey was in 1 86 1, 24,243; 
 in 1871, 30,593; the corresponding figures for Jersey 
 55,613 and 56,657; the agricultural population of Guern- 
 sey in 1 86 1, about 2,850 ; that of Jersey, 5,063; but the 
 other statistics in my possession available, for the desired 
 comparison of those islands with England, are only those 
 collected by me for the purpose a full quarter of a century 
 
SMALL FARMS. 39 
 
 back. In 1841, Guernsey contained 10,240 acres of culti- 
 vated land; her total population was 21,440; of whom, on 
 the presumption that the proportions were much about the 
 sarne in that year as they were subsequently in 1861, the 
 agricultural portion was 2,530, the non-agricultural 18,910. 
 In the year 1834, foreign provisions were imported to the 
 value of 8 i,4oo/. But, whereas corresponding imports into 
 Great Britain are paid for almost entirely with manufac- 
 tured goods, in the Channel Islands they are to a great 
 extent bartered for other agricultural produce. The 
 exports of provisions from Guernsey in 1835 were worth 
 27J500/., 1 so that the value of the surplus imports was 
 53,9007. only ; which, at the rate of lo/.-a head a very 
 moderate rate for a community so generally well off as 
 that of Guernsey would suffice for the maintenance of 
 5,930 persons. Deduct that number from the non- 
 agricultural population referred to above, and there will 
 remain 12,980 persons, exclusive of cultivators, to be fed 
 with the produce of 10,240 acres. This is at the rate of 
 very nearly two persons for every acre and a half. 
 
 The results exhibited by Jersey are still more striking. 
 In 1841, the cultivated portion of that island contained 
 about 18,000 acres ; the total population was 47,500, the 
 number of cultivators, on the same presumption as before, 
 4,320, and the non-agricultural residue, 43,200. In the 
 
 1 The authorities for these statements and for those in the next 
 paragraph are partly tables in Montgomery Martin's History of the 
 British Colonies, vol. v. pp. 481 and 482, and in the Guernsey and 
 Jersey Magazine, vol. iii. pp. 106-9 > an ^ partly oral communications 
 made to myself during a six- weeks' sojourn in the Channel Islands in 
 1847. 
 
 *D 4 
 
40 PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 
 year 1834, foreign provisions were imported to the value 
 of 8o,ooo/., but provisions were exported to the value of 
 nearly 6o,ooo/., so that the value of the net imports was 
 2o,ooo/. 1 This sum might suffice for the maintenance of 
 2,000 persons, leaving nearly 41,200, besides cultivators, 
 to be fed with the produce of 18,000 acres. This is at 
 the rate of very nearly four persons for every acre and a 
 half. 
 
 Thus it appears, that in each of the two principal 
 Channel Islands, the agricultural population is more than 
 four times as dense as in England, there being in the 
 latter country only one cultivator to seventeen acres of 
 cultivated land, while in Guernsey and Jersey there is 
 one to about four. Yet the agriculture of these islands 
 maintains, besides cultivators, non-agricultural popula- 
 tions, respectively twice and four times as dense as that 
 of England. This 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 to the abundant use of manure. The 
 results of the comparison just made may be surprising to 
 most English readers, but the Channel Islanders them- 
 selves are not insensible of the advantages they derive 
 
 1 Compare with these the corresponding particulars for the Isle 
 of Wight, which, says Mr. Cliffe Leslie, ' has not one peasant pro- 
 prietor, and, with 86,810 acres of land, has a population of 55,362, 
 and scarcely any commerce or shipping. 'Land Systems and In- 
 dustrial Economy of Ireland, England, and Continental Countries, 
 p. 74. 
 
SMALL FARMS. 41 
 
 from their method of farming, and very reasonably con- 
 gratulate themselves upon it. ' There are larger estates 
 in England,' says a late Bailiff of Guernsey, Mr. Brock, 
 * than the whole of this island ; but where will one be 
 found that produces the quantity of provisions sent to 
 market by our small farms ? Let the production of the 
 island be compared to that of any ten thousand acres 
 kept in one, two, or three hands in Great Britain, and the 
 advantage of small farms will be obvious. Independently 
 of the two thousand families living in the country, com- 
 pare the surplus produce sent to market with the 
 surplus produce of any ten thousand acres in one, 
 two, or three hands elsewhere, and see on which side 
 the balance will be found.' l Surely the particulars 
 mentioned above must be sufficient to establish the truth 
 of the opinion in support of which they have been cited. 
 If they had been known to Arthur Young, they must 
 have induced that candid writer to lay aside his prejudices, 
 and to acknowledge that, tried by his own test, small 
 farms had come off victorious, as best answering what he 
 had himself pronounced to be the main purpose of agri- 
 culture, so that if they were nevertheless still to be con- 
 demned, it must be on some other ground than that of 
 ingratitude for the pains bestowed on them. 
 
 1 Guernsey and Jersey Magazine, Oct. 1837, p. 258. 
 
42 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 THE preceding chapter was principally intended as a 
 vindication from the reproach of infecundity of small 
 leasehold farms, although some of the illustrations con- 
 tained in it were drawn from peasant properties. It is 
 obvious, however, that the arguments urged in favour of 
 the former apply with greatly increased force to the 
 latter. A small landowner, whose whole produce belongs 
 to himself, is of course richer than he would be if he had 
 to pay rent ; he can more easily bear the expenses of 
 cultivation, of procuring proper implements and manure, 
 of drainage and irrigation, and he can keep more live- 
 stock. Small leaseholders, as a class, can lay out more 
 money on their land in proportion to its extent than 
 larger occupiers ; but a small freeholder has more to lay 
 out than a leaseholder of the same degree, and has, 
 besides, very much stronger motives for liberal expendi- 
 ture. ' A small proprietor/ says Adam Smith, * who 
 knows every part of his little territory, who views it with 
 all the affection which property, especially small property, 
 naturally inspires, and who, upon that account, takes 
 pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 43 
 
 generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most 
 intelligent, and the most successful.' It may be added 
 ithat he is also the most enterprising. He need not 
 carefully calculate whether an outlay will be fully repaid 
 Uo him within a certain number of years ; he has only to 
 consider whether the addition to the annual value of his 
 land will be equal to the interest of the sum which the 
 improvements will cost ; he does not consider it essential 
 that the principal should ever be returned ; he is satisfied 
 to sink it for ever in his own land, provided that, in that 
 safest of all investments, it yield a perpetual annuity 
 equal to what would be its annual increase in another 
 employment. Nay, if he be tolerably frugal, devoting to 
 domestic and miscellaneous expenses no more than the 
 leaseholder of a similar property would so appropriate, 
 he may even grow rich. Inglis tells us that ' many Swiss 
 peasants have amassed large fortunes ; ' in the village of 
 Bergun, in the Grisons, he heard that there were two 
 persons holding money in the British funds, one, i,ooo/., 
 and the other somewhat less ; and in another village of 
 the same sequestered canton he found two peasants said 
 I to be worth each 2o,ooo/. sterling ; r and in the Channel 
 Islands, men working in the fields in smock frocks are 
 frequently pointed out to a stranger as possessors of 
 considerable property. Compare this state of things 
 with England, where Burke's remark, that 'a farmer's 
 trade is a very poor trade,' still holds good, and where it 
 is still as rare as ever to find an instance of one occupying 
 
 1 Inglis's Switzerland, vol. i. pp. 91, 109. 
 
44 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 from 150 to 400 acres, who, * after a course of the most 
 unremitting parsimony and labour, dies worth more than 
 pays his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly 
 the same equal conflict between industry and want, in 
 which the last predecessor, and a long line of prede- 
 cessors before him, lived and died.' 1 
 
 Again, the peasant proprietor has the strongest 
 possible incentives to diligence. A man never works 
 so well as when paid by the piece, but even then the 
 more he is paid the better he works. The small lease- 
 holder, not less than the small proprietor, is paid in pro- 
 portion to his labour ; but the latter is paid at a higher 
 rate, for he takes to himself the whole fruit of his exer- 
 tions, while the former must content himself with part. 
 The proprietor, too, knows that, if his labour increase the 
 productiveness of his land, his remuneration will increase 
 likewise ; whereas that of the tenant, if augmented for a 
 while by his own exertions, is pretty certain to be 
 reduced to its former level at the expiration of his lease. 
 Besides, many rural operations yield no profit until after 
 a long lapse of time, and yield so little even then that 
 the enjoyment of it in perpetuity seems requisite to 
 recompense the labour expended. Such operations are 
 seldom undertaken except by proprietors. No others 
 would think of planting an orchard such as Arthur 
 Young saw near Sauve, on a tract consisting ' seemingly 
 of nothing but huge rocks;' or, as in the mountains of 
 Languedoc, would ' carry earth in baskets on their backs 
 
 1 Thoughts on Scarcity. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 45 
 
 to form a soil where nature had denied it;' or would 
 inclose and till fields and gardens on a ' wretched blow- 
 ing sand, naturally as white as snow.' But, as Young 
 exclaims, in spite of himself, ' give a man the secure 
 possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a 
 garden ; ' there is ' no way so sure of carrying tillage to 
 a mountain-top as by permitting the neighbouring 
 villagers to acquire it in property. The magic of pro- 
 perty turns sand to gold.' 1 It may be objected that the 
 gold realised does not repay the expense of transmutation, 
 and that therefore the labour employed upon it has been 
 misapplied ; and no doubt any moneyed speculator who 
 should engage in such alchemy with hired labour might 
 never recover the amount of his outlay. But and here 
 comes a conclusive answer to those who, instead of 
 admiring such agricultural achievements, condemn them 
 as waste of power the peasant who performs them on 
 his own account, performs them without other outlay 
 than that of labour which would otherwise have lain 
 useless at that particular time. When the hired labourer 
 has earned his daily wage, and gives himself up to rest 
 or amusement, the small freeholder is content to recreate 
 himself by turning to some lighter work. For him it is 
 sufficient diversion to weed and water his cabbages, or 
 train his fruit trees ; and in wet or. wintry weather, when 
 out-door work is scarcely worth paying for, and when 
 the day-labourer must often remain idle because no one 
 will give him work, then it is that the cottager builds up 
 
 1 Travels in France, vol. i. pp. 50, 51, 88, 412. 
 
46 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 terraces on the steep hill-side, or lays the site of a 
 garden amongst rocks. It is, in short, a prime excellence 
 of peasant proprietorship that it stirs into activity labour 
 which would otherwise not have been exerted, in other 
 words, would not have existed, and the fruits of which, 
 consequently, however insignificant, are, at any rate, all 
 pure gain. 
 
 In short, whatever may be the absolute merits of 
 small properties, they must be acknowledged to be' 
 preferable to equally small leasehold farms in all those 
 respects which we have hitherto considered. They have, 
 however, been subjected to one accusation, to which 
 leasehold farms are less obnoxious, and which, if well- 
 founded, would completely neutralise all their advantages, 
 and would indeed justify their unqualified condemnation as 
 one of the greatest curses with which a country can be 
 afflicted. It is asserted that small properties have a 
 strange tendency to become smaller by subdivision, and 
 that, as an increase in the number of properties implies a 
 corresponding multiplication of proprietors, an excessive 
 agricultural population must soon come into existence. 
 An estate may be just sufficient to afford full occupation 
 to its owner, and to enable him to maintain his family in 
 comfort; but, on his death, his children may divide the land 
 amongst themselves, and may convert their separate shares 
 into so many distinct farms. But if the original property 
 were but just large enough for the employment and 
 maintenance of one family, the separate portions must 
 each be too small for those purposes ; yet the partition 
 need nat stop here. In another generation or two, the 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 47 
 
 number of owners may be so much increased, and the 
 size of their respective shares so much diminished, that the 
 whole produce of the land belonging to each family may 
 just suffice to keep it from starvation. A similar partition 
 may take place on every small estate, so that a country 
 entirely occupied by small proprietors may, in the course 
 of two or three generations, be filled with a peasantry as 
 numerous as the whole produce of the soil can preserve 
 in existence. Not only would such a peasantry be 
 reduced to the lowest depth of misery, they would also 
 be the sole inhabitants of their country ; for as, in order 
 to live, they would be obliged to consume whatever pro- 
 visions they were able to raise, they would have none 
 left to exchange for manufactured goods, no surplus to 
 send to market for the subsistence of a town population. 
 The whole country might be justly described as a vast 
 * pauper- warren,' and such, we are told, is the fate impend- 
 ing over every country in which the actual cultivators are 
 at the same time owners of the soil. 
 
 In inquiring into the grounds for these frightful pre- 
 dictions, our first consolation is derived from the reflection, 
 that they take for granted the right of all the children of 
 a deceased landowner to share his estate amongst them. 
 But peasant proprietorship and custom of gavelkind, or 
 the like, although often found together, are two distinct 
 things, and the first may exist quite independently of the 
 second. Peasant proprietors may be conceived to exist, 
 who should be* at liberty to bequeath their lands to 
 whomsoever they chose, or who should be forbidden to 
 divide them into portions of less than a certain size. 
 
48 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 Besides, it is not obvious why .the baneful influence of 
 gavelkind should be confined to small properties, and 
 should not operate on estates of all sizes. If the 
 children of the owner of twenty acres might divide their 
 patrimony into portions of five acres, the inheritors of an 
 estate of twenty times the size might split it into farms 
 of a hundred acres. One of these, on the occurrence of 
 another death, might undergo a second partition, and the 
 grandchildren of the original gentleman-farmer would 
 then sink to the degree of peasants. Thus, the only 
 difference between dividing a country into estates of 
 twenty and into estates of four hundred acres, would 
 appear to be, that the evils apprehended in the former 
 case would in the latter be retarded by some two 
 generations. 
 
 It may, however, be urged, that a peasant's sons 
 have more than ordinary motives for effecting a partition 
 of their patrimony. It has even been asserted that they 
 have no alternative. The younger sons of an agricultural 
 capitalist may seek their fortunes in trade ; but in a 
 country of small farms, a farmer's sons, it has been said, 
 have no means of gaining a livelihood without becoming 
 farmers themselves. Such a country, according to the 
 late Mr. M'Culloch, ' can never furnish surplus produce 
 sufficient, after satisfying the wants of the cultivators, to 
 feed a numerous body of merchants, handicraftsmen, &c., 
 nor would small occupiers have any demand for the pro- 
 ducts or services of such persons. There could, therefore, 
 be no demand for that surplus population which an 
 agricultural society is always producing, and the division 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 49 
 
 of the paternal properties would be the only way in 
 which families could be provided for.' l Of this it need 
 only be said, that it is a false inference from false 
 premises. It has been shown that well-managed small 
 farms send to market not only as large, but a much larger 
 surplus produce than corresponding portions of the best- 
 managed large farms, and may afford subsistence for 
 more numerous bodies of artisans, manufacturers, traders, 
 and other inhabitants of towns. Consequently, where 
 they abound, the greatest abundance and variety of non- 
 agricultural employments may likewise be found ; so that 
 the necessity for adopting the business of husbandry 
 because no other is open to him, should apparently be 
 felt by no man so little as by the son of a peasant pro- 
 prietor. Mr. M'Culloch, however, uses some additional 
 arguments, which are much more to the purpose, and 
 cannot be so summarily disposed of. He insists much 
 on the preference which the young peasant, even if 
 enjoying liberty of choice, is likely to show for the 
 business in which he has been brought up. ' The strong 
 predilection,' he observes, < entertained by the great bulk 
 of the children engaged in agriculture for the pursuits of 
 their fathers, has been remarked by every one in any 
 degree familiar with rural affairs.' Children at liberty to 
 divide their father's estate, possess * the greatest facilities 
 for gratifying their natural inclination.' They have ' the 
 power of continuing in the line of life in which they have 
 been educated, and which must in consequence be 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. Cottage System. 
 E 
 
50 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 endeared to them by all those early associations which 
 exert so strong an influence over future conduct.' More- 
 over, * the possession of a piece of ground gives a feeling 
 of independence to a small capitalist or a poor man that 
 he cannot otherwise experience.' A possession of this 
 sort may fail to render him comfortable, ' but it gives him 
 a security against want. It. furnishes him with a cottage, 
 and unless it be unusually small, it will enable him to 
 raise such a supply of potatoes, as will go far to support 
 himself and his family. In no way, therefore, can a poor 
 man be so independent. The possession of a piece of 
 ground renders him in some measure his own master. It 
 exempts him from the necessity of severe labour and un- 
 remitting application.' From these considerations Mr. 
 M'Culloch concludes, that the children of small land- 
 owners will choose ' to reside on the little properties they 
 have obtained from their ancestors, and that the process 
 of division and subdivision will continue until the whole 
 land has been parcelled out into patches, and filled with 
 an agricultural population equally destitute of the means 
 and the desire of rising in the world.' l 
 
 This reasoning, no doubt, possesses much force, and 
 might perhaps not inexcusably be looked upon as decisive 
 if the question at issue were .merely hypothetical, and 
 related only to what might be expected to take place in 
 circumstances hitherto untried. Arguments on the other 
 side are not indeed wanting, and some shall be forthwith 
 produced ; but they may not perhaps do more than make 
 
 1 M'Culloch's Edition of the Wealth of Nations, vol. iv. pp. 462-4. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 51 
 
 the balance of probabilities equal ; facts may need to be 
 thrown in to turn the scale. 
 
 Nothing can be said in opposition to the alleged 
 fondness of young country people for a country life 
 
 'Tis born with all : the love of Nature's works 
 
 Is an ingredient in the compound man, 
 
 Infused at the creation of the kind. 
 
 Man, though immured in cities, still retains 
 
 His inborn, inextinguishable thirst 
 
 Of rural scenes. 
 
 In those born and bred amongst them, then, the attach- 
 ment to such scenes may well be a sort of passion. But 
 the love of country pursuits is common to all country- 
 folk ; agriculture is the favourite occupation of agri- 
 culturists of every degree, of the gentleman-farmer not 
 less than of the peasant proprietor. The sons of either 
 are equally attached to the business in which they have 
 been brought up, and would make equal sacrifices rather 
 than relinquish it. If the son of an owner of twenty 
 acres would be satisfied with the possession of five acres, 
 so also might the son of a proprietor of an estate of four 
 hundred acres apply himself as contentedly to the 
 cultivation of one hundred, and the son's son to that of 
 twenty. By so doing, the last-mentioned would, it is 
 true, sink below the condition in which he was born, and 
 would degrade himself from the rank of a petty gentle- 
 man to one little above that of a peasant; but the 
 peasant's son also has a station in society to maintain, he 
 also is ambitious of remaining on an equality with the 
 companions of his youth, and would fear to be looked 
 
 2 
 
SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 down upon by the twenty-acre men of his father's 
 acquaintance. Rather than submit to such debasement, 
 he probably, like the young gentleman with whom we 
 have been comparing him, would sell his inheritance, and 
 with the help of the proceeds endeavour to make his 
 way in some new walk of life. His little capital might 
 not perhaps enable him to establish himself immediately 
 as his own master, and he, like his betters, might be com- 
 pelled to begin with a subordinate situation ; but perhaps 
 also he would have sense enough not to estimate at more 
 than its real value the independence he had forfeited. 
 Certainly he would not value it at all on that particular 
 account on which Mr. M'Culloch lays most stress, viz., 
 for the exemption which it would afford from the neces- 
 sity of severe labour. No one works harder than the 
 peasant proprietor ; nowhere could he find a stricter 
 task-master than himself ; he is not likely then to refuse 
 to take the service of another from the mere fear of being 
 overworked. 
 
 Two advantages land certainly possesses over most 
 other kinds of property : there is less risk of its being 
 lost, and it is tolerably certain to yield some annual 
 produce. The amount may be small too small, per- 
 haps, for the comfortable subsistence of the owner, or 
 even for his preservation from want ; but it will help, 
 more or less, to save him from starvation ; whereas, if 
 the land were sold, and the proceeds invested in trade, 
 the speculation might prove unprofitable, or the money 
 might be totally lost. Suppose that this and other con- 
 siderations should determine several sons of a small pro- 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 53 
 
 prietor not to sell the paternal acres, but to trust entirely 
 to them for subsistence, does it follow that they must divide 
 the land ? Would it not be more natural, as well as wiser, 
 to cultivate it in common as in their father's lifetime, and 
 to continue to live together in the family dwelling ? They 
 could scarcely be dissuaded from doing so by the fear of 
 not agreeing about the mode of cultivation, or insist upon 
 a partition, ' in order that each might pursue his own plan 
 of farming, and avail himself of what he might suppose 
 his own superior sagacity.' l Such causes of dissension 
 might well exist among great agricultural capitalists, men 
 whose enterprise and ardour for improvement were pro- 
 portioned to their means ; but they could scarcely have 
 place among peasant proprietors, whose 'inveterate 
 retention of local and hereditary usages ' furnishes such 
 abundant matter for reproach. Whatever might be their 
 points of difference, they would at least agree in reverencing 
 old-established customs, and would probably be only too 
 unanimous in abiding by the rules of their forefathers. 
 Discord might possibly gain admittance amongst them, 
 but would certainly not be introduced by the spirit of in- 
 novation. 
 
 But it may be argued, that, without dividing the land, 
 the co-proprietors could not build separate cottages for 
 the reception of their respective families. We have now 
 reached the foundation-stone of the whole theory of the 
 tendency of small properties to endless subdivision. It 
 is based upon the assumption that members of the lower 
 
 1 M 'Culloch, ut supra. 
 
54 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 classes are apt to marry as soon as they have a prospect 
 of a bare subsistence. This, which is true of the lowest 
 class, where that lowest class is sunk in the depths of 
 destitution, is false of every class enjoying a moderate 
 share of the conveniences of life, and is, in substance, 
 admitted to be false, even by those who maintain it in 
 words. Men do not, in general, marry, when, as a neces- 
 sary consequence, they must permanently sacrifice their 
 position in society, and adopt a mode of life greatly in- 
 ferior to that to which they have been accustomed. An 
 Irish beggar, who being already at the bottom of the 
 social scale, cannot sink lower, and whose means of 
 livelihood cannot well become more defective or pre- 
 carious, runs no risk of this kind, and need not hesitate 
 to take a wife from among the companions of his 
 wretchedness, as soon as he is rich enough to pay the 
 wedding fees, and to buy potatoes and whisky for the 
 wedding feast. But those to whom fortune has been 
 more bountiful are, in general, proportionably careful 
 not to forfeit her favours by matrimonial imprudence. 
 There are exceptions to all rules, but the son of a man of 
 five thousand a year is seldom content to marry upon a 
 thousand a year, nor the son of a man of a thousand a 
 year on two hundred a year ; neither does the son of a 
 proprietor of twenty acres undertake to bring up a family 
 on the produce of five acres, or the son of an owner of 
 five acres on the produce of one acre. Even the very 
 slight acquaintance with the conveniencies of life which 
 the person last mentioned might be supposed to possess, 
 would probably endow him with the requisite modicum 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 55 
 
 of prudence. If he had been brought up sufficiently well 
 to have discovered that there is such a thing as domestic 
 comfort, he would not recklessly throw away his chance 
 of attaining it. If he had passed his youth in a substan- 
 tial cottage, and had been fed at a tolerably well covered 
 table, he would not be satisfied with Mr. M'Culloch's 
 magnificent dowry of a hovel and a sufficiency of potatoes. 
 He would have a standard of comfort ; not a very high 
 one indeed, but still one below which he would, never- 
 theless, be anxious not to fall : for peasants, as well as 
 peers, are little disposed to forfeit, by their rashness, 
 advantages to which they have been accustomed. Indeed, 
 the owner of a small piece of ground, yielding little 
 more than enough for his own maintenance, is the 
 less likely to marry without adequate means, as he, of all 
 men, is in least danger of over-rating his resources. If 
 his farm were larger, or if he were a day-labourer, his 
 gains would depend, in a great measure, on changes in 
 the market, or in the rate of wages, and his income being 
 uncertain, might be reckoned at more than its real 
 amount. But as it is, he is liable to no such mis- 
 take. He knows pretty accurately what is the annual 
 average produce of his land, and how much, if at all, it 
 exceeds the quantity required for his own use. He has 
 no accidental sources of increase to look to, and no 
 excuse for trusting anything to luck. He cannot expect 
 that two stalks of corn will, by mere chance, grow where 
 but one grew before. He can calculate, without risk 
 of serious error, the amount of his income, and whether 
 or not it will enable him to maintain a family ; and if it 
 
56 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 is insufficient for that purpose, it would be pure insanity 
 in him to marry. It is more charitable to suppose that 
 he would remain single until some favourable change 
 should take place in his circumstances, until he could 
 captivate some village heiress, or obtain an accession to 
 his little territory by the death of a relation. Until then, 
 he would have no adequate motive for requiring a parti- 
 tion of the property held by him in common with his 
 brothers ; and when he did demand his separate share, he 
 would do so in order to annex it to the other lands which 
 he had acquired by marriage or inheritance. In this 
 manner, properties when divided might immediately be 
 recomposed, and their average size might remain undi- 
 minished. 
 
 This question does not, however, depend entirely 
 upon argument, and need not be determined merely 
 according to the balance of probabilities. It has been 
 submitted, over and over again, to Actual experiment. 
 Ever since the Flood it has been almost constantly under 
 trial, and abundant evidence whereon to found a confi- 
 dent judgment may be procured, either from the records of 
 the past, or from observation of the present. 
 
 The pastoral tribes, by which most civijized countries 
 were at one time occupied, have almost invariably been 
 followed, either immediately, or after a certain interval, 
 by a race of peasant proprietors. The revolution has 
 taken place at different stages of national progress, but 
 scarcely an instance can be mentioned in which it has not 
 occurred sooner or later. In territories of very small ex- 
 tent, very barren, or much divided by mountains, rivers, 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 57 
 
 or other natural barriers, it has commonly been effected 
 as early as the first appropriation of land by individuals. 
 In such situations, the tribes or clans constituting the as 
 yet nomade community, must necessarily be small for 
 want of pasture ; and the same cause must prevent any 
 individual from acquiring very great numbers of cattle, 
 and from very greatly surpassing his companions in wealth 
 or power. There can be no great inequality of rank, nor 
 any authority save that of the assembled heads of families, 
 which a freeman, after emancipation from parental control, 
 need acknowledge. The chief of the tribe himself holds 
 merely honorary office, is simply primus inter pares , and 
 unable to take any public action in peace or war without 
 consent of the other heads of families, since these, by 
 combination, could effectually resist his commands. 
 Whenever, therefore, the members of this tribe, after 
 having partially exchanged pasturage for tillage, find it 
 convenient to divide part of their land amongst themselves, 
 instead of holding it all in common, every family has a 
 voice in the partition, and makes goocf its claim to a 
 share to be held in fee simple. If, on the other hand, there 
 be abundance of good pasture, a tribe may expand in- 
 definitely, and the cattle of a single herdsman may be 
 counted by thousands and tens of thousands. Such an 
 one may be raised by a concurrence of fortunate circum- 
 stances far above his companions in wealth and power, 
 and may become their chief in reality as well as in name. 
 Successful wars, first with other tribes, and then with 
 other nations, may extend his dominion, and increase 
 the disparity between himself and his subjects, until his 
 
58 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 authority becomes as absolute as that of the Genghis 
 Khans and Tamerlanes, who have from time to time 
 succeeded in reducing all the wandering tribes of Tartary 
 under their sway. Even if no individual be able to exalt 
 himself in this manner, and though there be instead a 
 considerable body of rich herdsmen pretty nearly on a 
 level, the existence of such an aristocracy is fraught with 
 equal danger to the liberty of their inferiors. Each of its 
 members must maintain a number of dependents, captives 
 taken in war, or poor clansmen of his own, to look after 
 his cattle, and as these have no means of subsistence but 
 what their master furnishes, so neither have they any 
 law but their master's will ; nor dare they refuse to 
 assist him in any act of oppression, or among others, in 
 that of bringing smaller herdsmen into subservience to 
 him. Suppose now the tribe to pass from a migratory 
 and pastoral to a stationary and agricultural condition 
 every wealthier herdsman acquires complete suzerainty 
 over all the land allotted to himself and his followers. 
 Part of the land is appropriated by such of these latter as 
 possess a few cattle of their own ; but these continue to 
 acknowledge their allegiance to him as leader, and, from 
 clients of a patron, are insensibly converted into vassals 
 of a lord. As for his more immediate retainers, the 
 slaves or servants fed and clothed by his bounty, they 
 are settled on the demesnes reserved by him for himself; 
 and besides tending his flocks and herds as before, are 
 required to till portions of his land, accepting in payment of 
 these services certain other portions assigned to them, to be 
 cultivated for their own behoof. Their previous subjection 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 59 
 
 to their master is exchanged for a bondage still more strin- 
 gent ; from servants they become serfs, bound to the soil 
 by ties of personal attachment, and also by consciousness 
 of having lost the facilities for escape which they pos- 
 sessed when dwelling in a camp. It was in this manner 
 that the bulk of the wandering Goths and Scythians of 
 antiquity degenerated into German and Russian serfs, as 
 completely at their master's disposal as any other part of 
 his live stock. So too, in all probability, had the nomade 
 races of Gaul and Spain been long before degraded \ and, 
 if the serfdom in which the peasantry of these countries 
 were found at the date of Roman annexation was sub- 
 sequently alleviated during the period of Roman domi- 
 nation, it was certainly restored in all its rigour by the 
 barbarians who overran the Roman provinces. 
 
 Although, however, the earlier generations of serfs may 
 hold neither property nor life by any better tenure than 
 their lord's permission, their successors imperceptibly 
 acquire in the course of ages important rights and privi- 
 leges. Their lord may, if he please, deprive them en- 
 tirely of the fruits of their labour ; but in a thinly-peopled 
 country, in which manufactures have made little progress, 
 and foreign commerce is unknown, a great landowner 
 would be simply encumbered by larger contributions of 
 raw produce than his household can consume. His own 
 proper demesnes, together with the prescribed dues of his 
 tenantry of various grades, supply him with fully as much 
 as he requires, and leave him without motive for extor- 
 tionate demands on the lower orders of serfs. These 
 latter, if the country remain long in a nearly stationary 
 
60 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 condition, may equally long continue without having their 
 rents sensibly raised, and be left undisturbed in possession 
 of their respective holdings from sheer want of any reason 
 for ejecting them. In process of time customs become 
 confounded with rights, so that at length it would be 
 looked upon as a piece of injustice to assess a serf at an 
 advanced rate, or to oust him from his tenement, as long 
 as the old rate was punctually paid. If, while this was 
 the state of feeling, an influential middle class were to 
 grow up, or if the Crown became desirous of curbing the 
 power of the nobles, the rights of the peasantry would be 
 more boldly asserted and more generally recognised, until 
 at length they became formally established. Their pro- 
 prietary title, at first merely prescriptive, would be 
 eventually legalised, either by judicial decisions or statu- 
 tory enactments ; and thus villains and serfs would be 
 metamorphosed into independent and high-spirited 
 yeomen. 
 
 In one or other of these ways, almost every country 
 on the face of the globe which has passed regularly 
 through the various stages that separate barbarism from 
 civilisation, has been at some period, as many are still, 
 occupied partially by peasant proprietors. Ample oppor- 
 tunity must consequently have been afforded for the 
 development of those evils by which every community so 
 constituted must, it has been said, be inevitably over- 
 whelmed. Let us inquire, then, whether the apprehen- 
 sions of certain writers have ever been realised ; whether 
 one single country can be named in which landed 
 property has been so minutely divided that the produce 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 6 1 
 
 barely sufficed for the consumption of the cultivators ; in 
 which there were no towns, no manufacturers, no artisans, 
 none but a rural and agricultural population, and that 
 plunged, as it assuredly would be, in the circumstances 
 supposed, in destitution and barbarism. 
 
 Our first example shall be taken from Jewish history. 
 It is evident from the Scriptural account of the occupa- 
 tion of Canaan by the Israelites, that the land was 
 divided among the whole people, and that, although the 
 partition was made without perfect regard to equality, still 
 every head of a family obtained a share. Moreover, 
 extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent an allot- 
 ment from ever passing away from the descendants of the 
 first grantee. If poverty compelled any one to sell part 
 of his domain, he might at any time redeem it by return- 
 ing what would remain of the purchase money, after 
 deduction of the annual profit which the purchaser had 
 made while the land had been in his possession. Even 
 if the land were not redeemed, it could only be retained 
 by the purchaser until the jubilee, which took place once 
 in fifty years, and was then to be restored unconditionally 
 to the seller. Thus the consolidation of estates was very 
 anxiously guarded against, since it could not legally occur 
 except when a family became extinct; but no precautions 
 were adopted against the opposite evil of excessive sub- 
 division, to which indeed the law afforded every facility. 
 The only inequality which was sanctioned in the partition 
 of an inheritance, was that the eldest son should obtain 
 a double portion ; the remainder of the property was to 
 be divided equally among the other sons, or among the 
 
62 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 daughters, if there were no sons. Thus were united the 
 conditions required by the theory we are examining 
 peasant proprietorship, and a custom of inheritance 
 differing very slightly from gavelkind yet the conse- 
 quences were the very opposite of those which, it is said, 
 should have ensued. Landed property among the Israel- 
 ites never became too much subdivided; on the contrary, 
 the prophets inveigh loudly against its unjust consolida- 
 tion; and as long as the Mosaic law on the subject was 
 strictly administered, poverty was almost literally un- 
 known. Five hundred years after the death of the law- 
 giver, when ample time had been allowed for the de- 
 velopment of whatever germs of evil his system contained, 
 few or no instances could be found of destitute persons 
 whose indigence was not the result of their own miscon- 
 duct. David did not hesitate to say, that in the whole 
 of his life he had never ' seen the righteous forsaken, nor 
 his seed begging bread;' and this assertion, which might 
 otherwise be regarded as an Oriental hyperbole, may 
 very likely have been strictly correct in a country of 
 peasant proprietors. At this day, the Bailiff of Guernsey, 
 confining his observations to the natives of his own 
 island, might with perfect truth use the same and even 
 stronger language than that of the King of Israel. Cer- 
 tainly there is not a beggar within the limits of his jurisdic- 
 tion, and an able-bodied person very rarely, if ever, seeks 
 admittance into either of the two hospitals c r asylums for the 
 poor. The security against want possessed by the ancient 
 Israelites is expressly stated to have been of the same 
 nature as that of the present inhabitants of the Channel 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 63 
 
 Islands. To every family belonged a portion of land 
 which only needed to be diligently cultivated to maintain 
 its owners in plenty. He who tilled his land, Solomon 
 tells us, had plenty of bread. Those only who kept idle 
 company, and neglected their business suffered from 
 poverty. 1 Such was the state of things while the law of 
 Moses continued in full force; but under the later kings 
 its authority became insufficient for the protection of the 
 peasantry, whose rights were then frequently set at naught. 
 We may be sure that the tyranny of Ahab found many 
 imitators among his licentious nobles, if, even in the 
 days of good Hezekiah, the Lord * looked for judgment, 
 but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a 
 cry.' 2 The cry was the same that was heard, and the 
 oppression the same that was practised long afterwards in 
 England, in the time of the Tudors, when ' husbandmen 
 were thrust out of their own ' by their rich neighbours, 
 who, with the assistance of their ' man of law,' would 
 * pretend some title,' and sometimes ' by covin and 
 fraud,' sometimes * by violent oppression put them beside 
 it, or by wrongs and injuries so weary them, that they 
 were compelled to sell all/ 3 Even so, ages before, in 
 Palestine, did Scribes and Pharisees, whose legal know- 
 ledge gave them peculiar facilities for interfering in 
 questions of disputed inheritance, defraud the fatherless, 
 and ' devour widows' houses.' So did rich land-holders 
 
 1 Prov. xxviii. 19. 
 
 2 Isaiah, v. 7. 
 
 8 Sir T. More's Utopia, St. John's Edition, pp. 32-4, and 
 Massinger's ' New Way to Pay Old Debts.' 
 
64 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 'covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses and 
 take them away: so did they oppress a man and his 
 house, even a man and his heritage.' 1 So did they join 
 house to house,' and ' lay field to fteld, till there was no 
 place, that they might be placed alone in the midst of 
 the earth.' 2 This is something very different from the 
 minute division we were bidden to expect; and it is 
 highly deserving of notice that pauperism, which is said to 
 be inseparable from small properties, scarcely made 
 its appearance in Palestine until separate properties were 
 forcibly united. From that time, indeed, the Jews seem 
 to have had * the poor always with them,' although, as 
 the main body of the peasantry, notwithstanding the 
 grievous injustice inflicted on individuals, were never 
 probably very generally dispossessed of their proprietary 
 rights, the poor may never have formed a very numerous 
 class. Those of whom the Scriptures afford us glimpses 
 were chiefly infirm of body or mind, sick, halt, maim or 
 blind. 
 
 The primitive Romans were likewise peasant pro- 
 prietors. The ager Romanus, the original territory of 
 Rome, extended in no direction more than five miles 
 from the walls ; and as, for some time after the founda- 
 tion of the city, it constituted the entire property of the 
 three patrician tribes, who were at first the only inhabit- 
 ants, the portion belonging to each proprietor must have 
 been exceedingly moderate. So late as the third century 
 of Rome, the haughty Cincinnatus is said to have 
 
 1 Micah, ii. 2. * Isaiah, v. 8. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 65 
 
 received the news of his nomination to the dictatorship 
 in his shirt sleeves, while digging or ploughing in his 
 little farm of less than three acres ; l and the story, 
 whether true or false, proves equally, that, when Livy 
 wrote, tradition still preserved the memory of a time 
 when the noblest citizens could dispense with the aid of 
 hired labourers, and worked with their own hands for 
 their own subsistence. Nor was this mode of life peculiar 
 to the Romans j it was common at the same period 
 throughout Latium, as well as in many other parts of 
 Italy. Most of the little precipitous cliffs, in which 
 terminate so abruptly the low hilly ridges of the now 
 desolate Campagna, were once surmounted each by its 
 citadel, rising out of a collection of houses inhabited by 
 the petty freeholders of the adjoining canton. When 
 these townlets were subdued, after a succession of bloody 
 contests, the remaining inhabitants of some were com- 
 pelled to take up their residence in Rome, and Roman 
 colonies were placed in others, but in no case were the 
 conquered people allowed to retain the whole of their 
 former territory. Part was invariably confiscated, 
 nominally for the benefit of the Roman government, but 
 often in reality for the exclusive benefit of the patricians, 
 who frequently divided the so called public domains 
 amongst themselves, and became, in consequence, 
 immensely rich. But although the aristocracy were thus 
 exalted, the bulk of the nation, the Roman commons, 
 consisting of the descendants of the several conquered 
 
 1 Quatuor jugerum agrum. A juger contained 28,800 square feet. 
 F 
 
66 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 nations, retained for some time longer their ancient 
 social position, the subsistence of a family being com- 
 monly derived from the portion of land which it possessed 
 in full property. That, in the early ages of the Republic, 
 some freehold property was considered essential to 
 personal independence, may be inferred from the fact, 
 that when, soon after the sack of Rome by the Gauls, 
 four new tribes were created, a grant of seven jugers 
 (between four and five acres) was made to every family ; 
 and it also seems probable that the size of these grants 
 was determined by the average size of the plebeian 
 freeholds previously existing. The great mass of the 
 Roman commons may be presumed to have been pro- 
 prietors, possessing on an average nearly five acres each. 
 In many other parts of Italy, landed property was not 
 less divided than in Latium. In Samnium, Sabinum, 
 and generally in the highlands of the Apennines and 
 Alps, the peasantry were undoubtedly freeholders ; and 
 even in Etruria, where the native Pelasgi had been 
 reduced to vassalage by foreign conquerors, they retained 
 at least the same proprietary rights as the serfs of modern 
 Europe. Held either by a free or by a servile tenure, 
 the lands cultivated by the native peasantry throughout 
 the peninsula, seem to have belonged to themselves. It 
 must be added, that the Roman Jaw of inheritance 
 resembled that of Moses, so far as to require the property 
 of a man dying intestate to be equally divided among 
 all his children, Such having been the distribution of 
 land in ancient Italy, and such the facilities for its further 
 partition, what consequences ensued? Did the land 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 become continually more and more subdivided, and did 
 the proprietors, daily growing more numerous, sink daily 
 deeper and deeper into indigence and misery ? On the 
 contrary, the lordly usurpers of the public domain 
 rapidly displaced their humble neighbours, and annexed 
 fields and gardens to their own overgrown estates. This 
 is, indeed, the danger really to be apprehended in all 
 similar circumstances. Comparatively little care is 
 required to prevent the division of peasant properties ; of 
 that there need be no fear, provided they be in the first 
 instance of a suitable size, and provided, also, that their 
 owners enjoy the protection of equitable law. The true 
 difficulty is to save them from the grasp of the rich and 
 powerful, who have everywhere too many expedients for 
 seizing upon the possessions of small landowners. Open 
 violence and legal fraud, or, where neither of these can 
 be resorted to, the temptation of a high price, are 
 influences which peasants are frequently unable to resist ; 
 and thus it is that so many tracts, once divided among 
 several, have been brought under the sway of a single 
 master. One hundred and forty years before the birth of 
 Christ, as Tiberius Gracchus returned from a campaign 
 in Spain, he found remaining in Italy neither peasant 
 properties nor even a native peasantry : both had utterly 
 disappeared. The scene which presented itself to him 
 was that of a country whose only cultivators were foreign 
 slaves. Landed property was engrossed by a small 
 number of rich men, and the labourers employed upon it 
 were captives, taken in war, who were shut up at night 
 in dungeons, and who worked by day in gangs under 
 *F 2 
 
68 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 task-masters, like negroes in the West Indies. The 
 Campagna, which, while tenanted by men working for 
 themselves, those 'most intelligent, most industrious, 
 and most successful' of all improvers, had resembled 
 Flanders in fertility and garden-like cultivation, with 
 much more variety and picturesqueness, had been left to 
 slaves working listlessly for rich and careless absentees, 
 and had already begun to wear its present wild and 
 desert aspect. Houses had been thrown down and 
 fruit-trees rooted up ; the decay of agriculture had been 
 followed by the generation of malaria, which rendered 
 the climate unfit for human residence ; tillage was 
 ultimately superseded entirely by pasturage, and cattle 
 browsed on the site of many a happy homestead, and 
 many a little town renowned in story. Meanwhile, what 
 became of the former inhabitants, the displaced culti- 
 vators ? After their removal had cleared the ground for 
 the operations of men of greater capital, enterprise, and 
 skill, did they betake themselves to some new business, 
 in which their industry, becoming more productive, 
 proved more beneficial to the rest of the community, as 
 well as more profitable to themselves ? Did they, after 
 their dismissal from agriculture, obtain more liberal 
 earnings in handicraft or trade ? Truly, a very different 
 fate awaited them. When, together with their portions 
 of land, they lost also their habitual source of livelihood, 
 they did indeed betake themselves to Rome in search of 
 other means of subsistence, but, finding none, they 
 presently became dependent on charity. Thenceforward 
 the metropolis was infested by a crowd of beggars, whom 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 69 
 
 the state was compelled, for its own security, to maintain. 
 Ten years after the death of the elder Gracchus, his 
 brother Caius caused a law to be passed, ordaining a 
 monthly distribution of corn among the populace, and 
 ever afterwards, until the final destruction of the empire, 
 the expense of providing the poor of the capital with 
 amusement as well as food, panem et circenses, continued 
 to be one of the most serious drains on the treasury. 
 A ' pauper- warren,' on a scale of unexampled magnitude, 
 was formed ; but its situation was in the city, not in the 
 country, and its foundations were laid simultaneously 
 with the consolidation, not with the subdivision, of 
 landed property. The progress of pauperism, not less 
 than the decline of agriculture, might have prompted 
 Pliny's celebrated exclamation, * Latiftmdia perdidere 
 Italiam] 'Overgrown estates have been the ruin of 
 Italy.' 
 
 Compare the condition of this idle, dissolute, turbulent 
 mob, with that of the Roman commons while they were 
 still landed proprietors. It cannot be denied that even 
 then their situation was sufficiently precarious, that they 
 were liable to sudden reverses of fortune, and were 
 frequently plunged into deep distress. It is equally 
 certain, however, that their misfortunes had no connexion 
 with the size of their farms, but arose from very different 
 and very peculiar causes. In the incessant warfare 
 carried on with the neighbouring states, their lands, lying 
 nearer the frontier than those of the patricians, were 
 peculiarly exposed to the ravages of an invader; and 
 when their crops were destroyed, or their cattle carried 
 
70 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 off, they were compelled to borrow money of the 
 patricians, whose most valuable estates were nearer the 
 city, and who had besides some sources of revenue 
 independent of the land. Or they might be reduced to 
 the same necessity by the enormous taxation required to 
 meet the expenses of war, which fell with more than 
 ordinary weight on the lower classes ; and, if any one 
 after borrowing were unable to satisfy his creditor at the 
 appointed time, his debt was speedily raised by the accu- 
 mulation of interest to an amount which he could never 
 hope to pay. The atrocious law with respect to bankrupts 
 then left him no choice, but either ,to surrender his 
 patrimony, or himself to become his creditor's slave. 
 Many submitted to the latter alternative ; but this very 
 circumstance seems to show that, notwithstanding the 
 severe calamities which occasionally overwhelmed them, 
 the ordinary condition of the commons was sufficiently 
 comfortable. It has been much debated by some of the 
 most eminent political economists whether the employ- 
 ment of slave or of hired labour be the more advan- 
 tageous ; and the question has received very different 
 answers, as indeed was no more than natural, for the 
 truth itself is very different in different situations. The 
 maintenance of a slave (provided his master understand 
 his own interest) may be expected always to cost the 
 same sum just so much as will keep him in the most 
 perfect state of health and strength, and neither more or 
 less. But the wages of free labour vary with the supply, 
 being sometimes a great deal more and sometimes con- 
 siderably less than the expenses of a slave's subsistence ; 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 and in the former case only can slave labour deserve a 
 preference. In thinly-peopled countries, such as America 
 for example, in which wages are very high, the tempta- 
 tion to employ slaves may be too strong for human 
 virtue ; while in a densely-peopled territory like England, 
 (to say nothing of Ireland), no man would take a slave 
 as a gift, for he could procure the more efficient service 
 of a freeman at a much lower price. Now the wealthy 
 Romans began very early to employ their enslaved 
 debtors in rural labour, for numbers of such bondsmen, 
 working on their creditors' lands, were released by the 
 mutinous soldiers on their march from Campania towards 
 Rome, in the famous sedition of the year 340 B.C. There 
 could have been no motive for this employment of insol- 
 vent debtors if free peasants could have been persuaded 
 to undertake the same work on moderate terms ; but the 
 latter, no doubt, demanded higher wages than it suited 
 the masters to give. Their little farms furnished them 
 with full occupation, and remunerated them so liberally 
 that they were little inclined to accept employment else- 
 ' where. Possibly, it may be thought that these proofs of 
 their prosperity in ordinary times, when neither im- 
 poverished by war nor ground down by taxation, might 
 have been dispensed with ; and a less elaborate argument 
 might no doubt have sufficed to render it probable, that 
 a man cultivating his own portion of five acres, would 
 derive from it a much larger income than a large farmer 
 could allow to a hired servant. 
 
 A very brief reference to Greece will suffice to show 
 that her small proprietors of the heroic and republican 
 
72 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 periods never multiplied into a swarm of paupers. Poly- 
 bius remarked that, in his time, although one of concord 
 and comparative prosperity, afflicted neither by wars nor 
 by epidemic diseases, population was fast diminishing, so 
 that houses were left empty, and cities resembled aban- 
 doned hives. Strabo, who visited Greece about a century 
 after its incorporation with the Roman Empire, was sur- 
 prised by nothing so much as the scarcity of inhabitants. 
 Messenia was for the most part deserted ; Laconia con- 
 tained but thirty of the hundred small towns for which it 
 had once been celebrated ; Arcadia, ^Etolia, and Acar- 
 nania were solitudes. Of the towns of Doris and of the 
 ^Enianes scarcely a trace was left. Of all save three of 
 the Boeotian cities nothing remained but ruins and names. 
 In the reign of Trajan, according to Plutarch, the whole 
 of Greece could not furnish more than three thousand 
 heavy armed men the number raised by Megara alone 
 for the Persian war. 1 Bishop Thirl wall, adopting in part 
 the opinion of Polybius, attributes this remarkable de- 
 population to universal luxury and depravity of morals ; 
 but these are plagues whose contagion seldom extends 
 beyond the wealthy classes and the inhabitants of cities. 
 A better explanation is afforded by what Strabo says of 
 the accumulation of property in few hands. The whole 
 island of Cephalonia formed but a single estate, and, in 
 continental Greece, scarcely any land was in tillage, almost 
 the whole being occupied by vast sheepwalks, or by 
 pastures for cattle and horses. Desolation had evidently 
 
 1 Thirlwall's Hist, of Greece, vol. viii. pp. 460-7. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 73 
 
 run the same course in Greece as in Italy. Many small 
 farms had been united to form a few enormous estates. 
 The new landlords had expelled the remains of the ancient 
 peasantry, and having cleared their domains of men, had 
 supplied their places with herds of beasts. Certain 
 modern improvers may perhaps be glad to learn that 
 their own clearances can be justified by such illustrious 
 precedents. 
 
 Descending from remote antiquity to times compara- 
 tively recent, we may collect from the records of our own 
 country evidence similar to that which has been already 
 produced. England was never, strictly speaking, a coun- 
 try of peasant proprietors, but always possessed among 
 her inhabitants a considerable class of extensive land- 
 owners. Interspersed with large estates, there were, how- 
 ever, throughout the middle ages, a far greater number of 
 cottage farms held on various conditions. Some were the 
 freeholds of their cultivators ; others, though scarcely 
 less the property of the tenants, were held by servile 
 tenure ; some again were leasehold, and some held at will 
 by labourers who had obtained them in payment of their 
 services, and in lieu of wages. So general was the tenancy 
 of land by the English peasantry previously to the ac- 
 cession of the first Tudor monarch, that the converse of 
 Goldsmith's well-known distich might then have been not 
 inapplicable. Although every rood of ground did not 
 maintain its man, there were few rustics who were not 
 either owners or tenants, not merely of a rood, but of 
 several acres. Of the adequacy of these possessions to 
 supply their occupants with abundance of the necessaries 
 
74 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 of life, we have the most satisfactory proof, and for the 
 hundred and fifty years ending with the fifteenth century, 
 the chain of testimony is particularly complete. Fortescue, 
 Lord Chief Justice to Henry VI., dilates with contagious 
 exultation on the plenty enjoyed by the lowest class of 
 his countrymen. * They drink no water,' he says, ' unless 
 it be so that some for devotion, and upon a zeal of 
 penance, do abstain from other drink ; they eat plentifully 
 of all kinds of flesh and fish. They wear fine woollen 
 cloth in all their apparel : they have also abundance of 
 bed coverings in their houses, and of all other woollen 
 stuff. They have great store of all hustlements and im- 
 plements of household. They are plentifully furnished 
 with all instruments of husbandry, and all other things 
 that are requisite to the accomplishment of a quiet and 
 wealthy life, according to their estates and degrees/ l 
 Fortescue was an avowed panegyrist, and his statements 
 might require considerable abatement if they stood alone, 
 but their perfect accuracy is placed beyond dispute by 
 those most unimaginative and matter-of-fact of all com- 
 pilations, the statutes at large. Repeated enactments, 
 passed during the period we are examining, use language 
 quite as strong, and still more precise and circumstantial 
 than that of the patriotic Chief Justice. In addition to 
 laws designed to keep down the wages of agricultural 
 labour, others were directed against the luxury of the 
 peasantry. In 1363 2 carters, ploughmen, and all other 
 farm servants, were enjoined not to eat or drink ' exces- 
 
 1 Fortescue de laud. Leg. Anglise, pp. 85-6. 
 * 37 Edw. 3, c. 14. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 75 
 
 sively,' or to wear any cloth except ' blanket and russet 
 wool of twelve pence/ Domestic servants were at the 
 same time declared to be entitled to only one meal a day 
 of flesh or fish, and were to content themselves at other 
 meals with ' milk, butter, cheese, and other such viands.' 
 In 1463 l servants in husbandry were restricted to clothing 
 of materials not worth more than two shillings a yard, and 
 were forbidden to wear hose of a higher price than four- 
 teen pence a pair, or girdles garnished with silver. The 
 price of their wives' coverchief or head-dress was not to 
 exceed twelve pence. In 1482 a these restrictions were 
 loosened, and labourers in husbandry were permitted to 
 wear hose as dear as eighteen pence a pair, while the sum 
 which their wives might legally expend on covering for 
 the head was raised to twenty pence. This legislation, 
 considering the fall which has since taken place in the 
 value of money, was really much as if a law should now 
 be necessary to prevent ploughmen from strutting about 
 in velvet coats and silk stockings, with silver buckles in 
 their shoes, and their wives from trimming their caps with 
 Brussels lace. It exhibits agricultural labourers in a con- 
 dition which was probably never attained by the same 
 class in any other age or country, unless, perhaps, by the 
 emancipated negroes of the British West Indies. Yet the 
 description applies only to the lower order of peasants 
 to those who worked for hire, and had either no land, or 
 none but what was allowed them in part payment of 
 wages. What, then, must have been the prosperity of 
 the small freeholders and cottage farmers ? 
 
 1 3 Edw. 4, c. 5. 2 22 Edw. 4, c. I. 
 
76 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 It is true that, in the midst of this abundance, the 
 English peasantry of the middle ages ate off wooden 
 platters, never knew the luxury of a cotton shirt or of a 
 cup of tea, and slept on straw pallets within walls of 
 wattled plaster, and that in some counties they used barley 
 instead of wheaten bread. But it is absurd to imagine 
 that, because they had to put up with these inconveniences, 
 their situation, in more important respects, was not im- 
 measurably superior to that of their living descendants. 
 Nothing more is to be inferred than that certain modern 
 refinements and conveniences were unknown and un- 
 coveted by them. Many advantages of an advanced 
 civilisation, which are now within every one's reach, were 
 once equally unthought of by rich and poor. Our Plan- 
 tagenet kings, as well as their courtiers, were fain to drink 
 beer at every meal, and to drink it, too, out of wooden 
 bickers ; they were as ill-provided with under-linen as the 
 meanest of their subjects ; and so little did they regard 
 what are now considered the most indispensable requisites 
 of domestic comfort, that the bedchamber furniture of so 
 magnificent a monarch as Henry the Eighth consisted 
 only of a couple of joint cupboards, a joint stool, two 
 hand irons, a fire fork, a pair of tongs, a fire pan, and a 
 steel mirror covered with yellow velvet. 1 At this day, 
 little, if any, grain besides oats is used in many respectable 
 
 1 Pict. Hist, of Eng. , vol. ii. p. 880. The Spaniards who came 
 to England in Queen Mary's time wondered when they saw the 
 large diet used by the inmates of the most homely-looking cottages. 
 4 The English,' they said, ' make their houses of sticks and dirt, but 
 they fare as well as the king.' 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 77 
 
 families in Scotland ; and many a continental baron, whose 
 domain stretches for miles around his princely chateau, 
 seldom eats any but rye bread. This is mere matter of 
 taste, and no one would think of mentioning it as a mark 
 of social inferiority ; but it would be quite as reasonable 
 to do so as for a modern day-labourer at eight shillings a 
 week to look back with pity on his well-clad, beef-fed 
 ancestors, because some of his own rags are made of 
 cotton, and because the baker, of whom he now and then 
 buys a loaf, sells only wheaten bread. 
 
 It is also true that the peasantry of the Anglo-Norman 
 period suffered grievously from feudal oppression, and 
 from private and civil war ; and that a bad harvest was 
 invariably followed by a local famine, which, aided by 
 pestilence, its first-born son, committed ravages unheard 
 of in later times. It is even possible that the evils 
 arising from these sources, although only occasional, 
 may have been as intolerable as the habitual privations 
 of agricultural labourers of the present day ; and that the 
 latter living in peace under equitable laws, and possessing, 
 in the extension of commerce, an assurance that their 
 supplies of food will not be utterly cut off, have, on the 
 whole, little cause to regret the change which has taken 
 place in the condition of their class. This, however, is 
 not the question. We are not balancing the advantages 
 of rude and precarious plenty against those of civilised 
 and uniform penury ; we have only to satisfy ourselves 
 that this plenty was anciently the portion of the English 
 peasantry, and that the latter, in ordinary times, obtained 
 from their lands the means of amply supplying their 
 
78 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 homely wants. This is the only point with which we are 
 at present concerned ; and surely, if any dependence can 
 be placed on history or national records, it has been 
 established beyond the possibility of dispute. 
 
 No argume'nt can be required to prove that English 
 peasant properties, though subject to the custom of 
 gavelkind, escaped the evil of excessive partition ; for 
 consolidation, the reverse of subdivision, must have been 
 everywhere adopted before the face of the country could 
 be covered almost entirely, as it actually is, with large 
 estates. To relate how the consolidation was effected, is 
 but to repeat, with slight variations, the story already 
 told of Palestine and Latium. In the latter part of the 
 fifteenth century, pasturage began to be regarded as a 
 more profitable employment of land than tillage, and, in 
 order to afford room for its adoption on a sufficiently 
 extensive scale, many farmhouses and cottages were 
 pulled down, and the fields belonging to several were 
 sown with grass and let to a single tenant. Not only 
 were * tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon 
 most of the yeomanry lived, turned into demesnes ' 1 in 
 this manner, but freeholders also were ejected from their 
 lands by force or fraud, or were harassed or cajoled into 
 a sale of them. 2 Simultaneously with this social revolu- 
 
 1 Lord Bacon's Hist of Henry VII., Works, vol. v. p. 61. 
 
 2 Massinger's Sir Giles Overreach describes very graphically one 
 of the ways in which this might be done : 
 
 ' I'll buy some cottage near his manor ; 
 Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences, 
 Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night 
 Set fire to his barns, or break his cattle's legs. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 79 
 
 tion, a new social malady made its appearance. As long 
 as the connection of the peasantry with the land remained 
 unbroken, England was perfectly free from every 
 symptom of pauperism, and the supply of labour, instead 
 of exceeding the demand, was so deficient as to induce 
 parliament to interfere to keep down its price. But 
 almost immediately after the consolidation of small farms 
 commenced, legislation took a different turn, and par- 
 liament, instead of striving to curtail the labourer's 
 honest earnings, had to exercise its ingenuity in providing 
 for a rapidly increasing crowd of destitute, for whom no 
 work could be found. The progress of pasturage and 
 augmentation of farms seem not to have attracted much 
 notice until the year 1487, when an act was passed to 
 restrain them, and, just seven years later, commenced a 
 series of statutes which attest the rapid spread of desti- 
 tution. For a time, misled by the experience of the 
 preceding age, parliament imagined idleness to be still 
 the fruitful parent of the evil, and punishment its most 
 effectual cure : no other asylum, therefore, was offered to 
 able-bodied vagrants than the stocks, and no milder 
 treatment than whipping at the cart's tail. After being 
 
 These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses, 
 
 Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him. 
 
 When I have harried him thus two or three years, 
 
 Though he sue in fortnd pauper is, in spite 
 
 Of all his thrift and care he'll grow behind hand. 
 
 Then, with the favour of my man-of-law, 
 
 I will pretend some title ; want will force him 
 
 To put it to arbitrement : then, if he sell 
 
 For half the value, he shall have ready money, 
 
 And I possess his land.' New Way to Pay Old Debts. 
 
80 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 ' admonished ' in this way, they were to be sent to the 
 place of their birth, there to set themselves to work * as 
 true men ought to do.' Such were the provisions of the 
 law of the year I494. 1 In 1535, however, it was dis- 
 covered that the aforesaid * valiant vagabonds,' after 
 returning home, could find no work to do, and the 
 parish authorities were in consequence enjoined to 
 collect voluntary contributions for the purpose, not only 
 of relieving the impotent and infirm, but of enabling the 
 strong and lusty to gain a living with their own hands. 2 
 In 1547, the number of beggars still rapidly increasing, 
 in spite of the ' godly acts and statutes ; already directed 
 against them, another was passed, which, though repealed 
 two years afterwards, deserves to be mentioned, not 
 merely on account of its astonishing barbarity, but as 
 showing how genuine the distresses of the lower classes 
 must have been which even such atrocious measures 
 could not induce them to conceal. It was enacted, that 
 every able-bodied person found loitering about should 
 be branded with a hot iron, and adjudged to two years' 
 slavery to the man by whom he had been apprehended, 
 during which time he might be fed upon bread and 
 water and refuse meat, and forced to work by beating or 
 otherwise ; that, if he ran away, he should be branded a 
 second time, and should be condemned to slavery for 
 life, and that if he absconded again, he should suffer 
 death as a felon. 3 Threatened with slavery, stripes, 
 and death, men chose to run every danger in seeking to 
 
 1 2 Hen. 7, c. 2. 
 2 27 Hen. 7, c. 25. 8 I Edw. 6, c. 3. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. . 8 1 
 
 better their condition rather than pine with hunger at 
 home, and beggars and vagabonds continued daily to 
 increase. In 1562, voluntary alms being found insufficient 
 for the relief of the poor, the parish authorities were 
 empowered to assess persons obstinately refusing to 
 contribute. 1 Mendicancy and vagabondage continuing 
 still unabated, in 1572 2 power was given to tax all the 
 inhabitants of a place for the relief of its poor. Other 
 acts followed ; and, in 1601, the necessity of providing 
 employment for the able-bodied poor by means of paro- 
 chial assessments was formally admitted, the famous 
 Elizabethan law was passed, 3 and, thanks to the abandon- 
 ment of the ' cottage system ' that first step, as many 
 imagine, in the improvement of agriculture England was 
 saddled with a permanent poors' rate, which has now be- 
 come an annual tax of some six or seven millions sterling. 4 
 We have now seen, that in ancient Palestine, Italy, 
 and Greece, and in England, peasant proprietorship did 
 not conduce to pauperism, but that, on the contrary, as 
 long as it continued in vigour, pauperism was utterly 
 unknown, not making its appearance until small pro- 
 perties began to be united. But we are not dependent 
 upon history for our proofs of the enduring prosperity of 
 peasant proprietors. They still form the bulk of the 
 
 1 5 Eliz. c. 3. 2 14 Eliz. c. 5. 3 43 Eliz. c. 2. 
 
 4 Most writers on the subject have attributed the growth of 
 pauperism, at the period in question, to the dissolution of monasteries 
 by Henry VIII. ; but this opinion seems to be refuted by the single 
 fact, that monasteries were not abolished till 1535, many years after 
 the continual increase of vagrancy had become a standing topic of 
 parliamentary lamentation. 
 
 G 
 
'82 SOCIAL EFFECTS 0>F 
 
 niral population in many territories, to any one of which 
 we may turn with full assurance of discovering unmis- 
 takeable signs of rural happiness. The bonder of Norway, 
 for instance, have, from time immemorial, been owners 
 of their respective farms, which, moreover, have always 
 been legally liable to division among- all the children of a 
 deceased proprietor ; yet the division of land has made 
 so little progress in the txmrse of many centuries, that 
 very few estates are under forty acres, and very many are 
 above three hundred acres, independently of an extensive 
 tract of mountain pasture belonging to every farm. Some 
 idea of the condition of the farmers may be formed from 
 the following particulars respecting the- farm servants. 
 These, if unmarried, are lodged in an outhouse adjoining 
 their master's dwelling, which it resembles- in appearance, 
 neatness, and comfort; they are allowed four meals a 
 day, consisting of oat or bean-meal, rye bread, potatoes, 
 fresh river and salt fish, cheese, butter, and milk ; and 
 once or twice a week they have meat, sometimes fresh, . 
 but more frequently in the shape of salt beef or black 
 puddings. At one of their meals they have also beer or 
 a glass of potato spirits. Their money wages, in addition 
 to all this, are about fourpence halfpenny a day. A mar- 
 ried labourer lives on the outskirts of the farm in a 
 cottage of his own, generally ' a good log house of four 
 rooms with glass windows,' which is held on lease for the 
 lives of himself and his wife, together with a piece of 
 land large enough for the keep of two cows or a corres- 
 ponding number of sheep and goats, and for the sowing 
 of six bushels of corn and three quarters of potatoes. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 83 
 
 The usual rent of these tenements is from four to six 
 dollars, and is commonly paid for by work on the main 
 farm, each day's work being valued at a fixed rate of 
 threepence or thereabouts. After the labourer has paid 
 his rent, he is allowed his food as well as the usual 
 money-payment for every additional day's work. It 
 need scarcely be said that a houseman, as a married 
 labourer of this kind is called, is in a very comfortable 
 situation ; in fact, he wants few, if any, of the comforts 
 which his master possesses ; his house, though smaller, 
 is as well built; his food and dress are of the same 
 materials. The peasant proprietors, like their servants, 
 are satisfied with articles of home growth, and are little 
 desirous of foreign luxuries. They build their own 
 houses, make their own chairs, tables, ploughs, carts, and 
 harness. Their wives spin their own flax and wool, and 
 weave their own linen and woollen cloth ; almost every- 
 thing they use is the produce of their own farms, except 
 glass, pottery, iron ware, sugar, coffee, spices, and tobacco. 
 The accumulation of so many tasks upon the same 
 person no doubt cause* them to be unskilfully per- 
 formed, and marks, besides, a rather backward stage of 
 civilisation. It must not, however,, in this instance, be 
 mistaken for a sign of poverty. A Norwegian peasant 
 does not content himself with homemade goods because 
 he has no surplus agricultural produce to exchange for 
 the manufactures of towns : but the nature of the climate 
 confines him within doors for many months of the year, 
 when he is compelled to seek some sedentary employ- 
 ment, if only for a. pastime. Whatever were his means, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 and however cheaply he might buy the articles he 
 requires, he obtains them still more cheaply if he can get 
 them made at home, for they then cost nothing but 
 labour, which if not so employed would be utterly wasted. 
 In such circumstances, division of labour, instead of 
 increasing the productiveness of industry, would condemn 
 industry to spend half her time in idleness, and that 
 instinctive knowledge of political economy, usually 
 termed common sense, accordingly prevents its adoption. 
 But although the mode of life of the Norwegian country 
 people may be somewhat rude, it would be difficult to 
 find a happier race ; they enjoy plenty, and are content ; 
 they care little for outward show, and are exempt from 
 the painful desire to outvie their neighbours, which 
 makes many wretched in the midst of wealth. Almost 
 the only thing in their condition which is much to be 
 regretted, is the deficiency of mental culture, which 
 prevents their turning their leisure to the best account 
 and heightening their material enjoyments with intellectual 
 pleasures. Would to God that labourers on large 
 estates in other countries had as little to sigh for! 1 
 
 1 Laing's Norway, passim. I may perhaps be here permitted 
 to transcribe, as not altogether irrelevant, the following passage 
 from an early work of my own, long since forgotten. 
 
 ' The happiness of the Swiss and Norwegian peasantry dates 
 from a very early period, and seems indeed to have resulted from the 
 physical characters of their respective countries. A glance at the 
 map of Switzerland may suffice to show that, in a territory so curiously 
 intersected by mountains, lakes, and rivers, there can be few, if any, ex- 
 tensive tracts of good land, and that the first settlers must consequently 
 have been both too much dispersed and too poor to allow of their be- 
 coming divided into the classes of masters and slaves. In Nonvay, it 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 85 
 
 The Swiss peasantry, although almost universally 
 landed proprietors, may be divided into two classes : 
 those who are principally or exclusively agriculturists, 
 and those who gain a livelihood chiefly by manufacturing 
 industry. The farms of the former, except in the cantons 
 of Berne and Tessin, and a few other districts, seldom 
 
 seems impossible that serfdom ever existed. The peninsula of which 
 that country forms part, is inaccessible by land, except at the north- 
 eastern corner, where the rigour of the climate is endurable only by 
 reindeer and Laplanders. Its Arian colonists must therefore have 
 approached by sea. But a pastoral people could not effect an ex- 
 tensive migration in boats without leaving most of their cattle behind, 
 and, if they had waited till the winter, when the Gulf of Bothnia is 
 frozen over and may be crossed on foot, their cattle would have 
 peiished from exposure and want of food. Most probably, therefore, 
 the emigrants were not numerous tribes, ranged in regular subordi- 
 nation under their chiefs, but little bands of adventurers, all poor 
 and nearly equal in rank ; and this equality would long remain un-. 
 disturbed in their new territories. Great part of Norway is merely 
 a narrow slip between a chain of mountains and the sea, and the 
 whole is traversed laterally, not only by numerous offshoots from the 
 main range, but also by a succession of inlets of the sea which run 
 many miles inland. The soil, too, even of the valleys, is for the 
 most part sandy and poor, so that altogether there was as little room 
 as in Switzerland for the increase of flocks and herds, or for the growth 
 of great differences of wealth between their owners. Moreover, 
 the need of substantial shelter for themselves and for their cattle, 
 which in so cold a climate require to be housed in winter, must 
 veiy soon have compelled the herdsmen to lay aside their wandering 
 habits and to provide themselves with permanent habitations. The 
 appropriation and partition of the soil must, therefore, have taken 
 place while all the inhabitants were still free and entitled to demand 
 their shares, the bulk of the colonists assuming in consequence, 
 almost simultaneously with their entrance into the country, the status 
 of peasant proprietors.' Over-Population and its Remedy, 1846, 
 pp. 142-3. 
 
86 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 exceed forty or fifty acres, but they are as rarely of less 
 size than ten acres, and the poorest farmers, having rights 
 of pasturage on the common lands belonging to every 
 parish, can afford to keep two or three cows. Members 
 of this class are always in the enjoyment of competence, 
 and many of them possess considerable wealth. Besides 
 these, however, there is a more numerous body of smaller 
 proprietors, whose territorial possessions consist only of 
 a field or two, altogether not larger than an ordinary 
 garden, and much too small for the maintenance of the 
 family to which they belong. Here there may seem to 
 be an instance of excessive subdivision. But the owners 
 of these patches of land are almost invariably manufac- 
 turers rather than husbandmen ; they constitute, indeed, 
 the bulk of the manufacturing population of a country 
 which has but two superiors in manufacturing importance. 
 Most of the cotton and silk goods of Switzerland are pro- 
 duced in the rural districts of Zurich, Basle, St. Gall, 
 Appenzel, and Argovia; and, even of those famous Swiss 
 watches, so much admired for their delicacy and beauty, 
 as many come from chalets among the mountains of Neuf- 
 chatel as from the workshops of Geneva. In England, 
 the makers of these articles would have been pent up in 
 towns, and compelled to pass their days in close dismal 
 factories ; but in Switzerland, a happy combination of 
 circumstances permits them to practise their business 
 without forfeiting the use of fresh air or other advantages 
 of a country life. Still although retaining the name, and 
 all the privileges of peasants, they gain their living princi- 
 pally as manufacturers ; land is valued by them as afford- 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 87 
 
 ing a means, not so much of employment as of amuse- 
 ment, and they require no more of it than will suffice to 
 occupy their leisure. This affords a clue to the true 
 explanation of the minute partition which has taken place. 
 The ancestors of the rural manufacturers were, no doubt, 
 originally agricultural peasants, possessing farms of suit- 
 able size ; but the climate, which confined them much 
 within doors, led them to choose some manufacturing 
 occupation for the winter months, which, proving equally 
 or more profitable than husbandry, was eventually adopted 
 by many as their chief pursuit. On the death of a peasant 
 artizan, his children would very probably divide their 
 patrimony, and each might build a separate cottage ; but 
 they would do so, not with the intention of subsisting on 
 the |aroduce of their respective portions, but because, in- 
 dependently of that produce, they possessed other means 
 of subsistence. In the outskirts of one or two English 
 towns, patches of garden ground are rented by a few 
 operatives, who are not the less operatives because they 
 amuse themselves with gardening and grow their own 
 vegetables ; neither is the smallness of their allotments 
 regarded as a mark of inferiority in their social position. 
 The difference between such operatives and those of 
 Switzerland is, that the latter, besides possessing more 
 land, and besides being owners instead of mere renters, 
 are not confined to towns, but are spread over the whole 
 country, and have their fields and gardens immediately 
 adjoining their dwellings. They are manufacturers, 
 deriving from land a small addition to the earnings of 
 their principal occupation, and it would be strange if the 
 
SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 accession of income so obtained were otherwise than 
 beneficial to them. In reality, it is not merely beneficial, 
 it may be acknowledged to be often indispensable to 
 supply the deficiency of their other sources of revenue. 
 Situated as they are in the centre of Europe, and paying 
 an enhanced price for the raw materials of their fabrics, 
 they are placed at a great disadvantage with respect to 
 manufacturers of other countries, with whom they are 
 enabled to compete only by accepting lower wages. 
 Their wages, indeed, would scarcely suffice for their sub- 
 sistence. As their plots of land are too small to 
 afford them a livelihood without the aid of their manu- 
 facturing earnings, so would their wages be insufficient 
 for their maintenance without the addition of the garden 
 produce, while both united secure to them the enjoyment 
 of ample comfort. To this every one who has inquired 
 into the subject bears testimony. ' It is impossible/ says 
 Dr. Bowring, * to mistake the value of a policy whose 
 results are to be traced in general content, in general 
 prosperity. I am acquainted with no country in which 
 prosperity has descended so low, and spread so widely, 
 as among the laborious classes of the Swiss manufacturing 
 districts. I was surprised to find what large proportions 
 of them had by their savings acquired landed property ; 
 how many of them dwelt in houses and cultivated fields 
 and gardens which their industry had made their own. 
 In the mountains of the Jura and Appenzel, along the 
 borders of the lakes of Zurich and Constance, everywhere, 
 indeed, where the operatives are settled, I found in their 
 habitations a mass of enjoyments, such as are possessed 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 89 
 
 by few of similar station in other countries.' l A weaver 
 in Argovia, 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 strewed over the hills and dales, and exhibit in the 
 interior every degree of comfort and ease. The meals 
 of the semi-agricultural, semi manufacturing population of 
 Zurich are as good as they themselves desire, and their 
 clean and comfortable houses bespeak their easy circum- 
 stances. The cottages of St. Gall and Appenzel 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 beyond 
 description, and are we'l furnished with every article of 
 cottage comfort Appenzel is in fact the Arcadia of 
 Switzerland, and it would be hopeless to expect any 
 person who had not witnessed the circumstances of the 
 peasantry, and the aspect of their abodes, to appreciate 
 from mere description the exceeding beauty, social and 
 scenic, which it exhibits. In the Orisons, wages are, 
 as far as mere money goes, extremely low, and if taken 
 as a standard of condition, would indicate a degree of 
 poverty beneath the Irish peasant, whilst the real condi- 
 tion of the population is decidedly preferable to that of 
 
 1 Bowring's Report on the Commerce and Manufactures of 
 Switzerland, pp. 3-6. 
 
90 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 English farm labourers.' * Mr. Symons sums up by ex* 
 pressing his conviction, 'that it would require thirty 
 shi lings per week in England to place a man with a wife 
 and three children on a footing with the average of Swiss 
 peasants, having the same family.' Mr. M'Cu'loch 
 objects to this as 'a very exaggerated statement)' but 
 Mr. Symons appears to have anticipated the objection, for, 
 after specifying the various articles which an Englishman 
 might be expected to purchase with thirty shi lings a 
 week, he adds, ' I fearlessly assert that this amount of 
 comforts a.nd necessaries, mutatis mutandis, is enjoyed by 
 the bulk of Swiss artizan fami ies, in the German cantons 
 of Switzerland. This is an assertion which cannot be set 
 aside by mere ipse dixit. They who desire to do so, can 
 alone ascertain its validity by personally visiting the 
 homes of the Swiss peasants, at different hours, and in 
 various cantons. I am not afraid to submit this state- 
 ment to any one who has thus qualified himself to pro- 
 nounce an opinion on the subject.' 2 The language of 
 Mr. Laing, though not quite so circumstantial, is equally 
 strong. * The peculiar feature,' he says, ' 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.' 3 
 Switzerland, however, notwithstanding the general happi- 
 ness of her people, is not absolutely free from pauperism 
 
 1 Report on Swiss Handloom Weavers, passim. 2 Ibid. p. no. 
 8 Notes of a Traveller, p. 354. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 91 
 
 a disease which would almost seem to be inherent in the 
 constitution of manufacturing communities. But even 
 the pauperism of Switzerland furnishes additional proof 
 of the excellence of peasant proprietorship, for paupers 
 are most rare where landed property is most divided, and 
 are found in the greatest number in those districts which 
 contain the largest estates. In the whole of the Engadine, 
 the land belongs to the peasantry, and ' in no country in 
 Europe/ says Mr. Inglis, ' will be found so few poor as 
 in the Engadine.' l In the Valais, the land belongs to a 
 few great proprietors, and, according to Mr. Bakewell, 
 the peasantry are among the poorest in Switzerland. 2 
 Inglis, however, assigns the ' bad pre-eminence ' to the 
 canton of Berne, in which he says the greatest landowners 
 reside, and which, ''for this reason, contains the greatest 
 number of poor.' 3 
 
 The relative tendencies of large and small proprietor- 
 ship to promote pauperism cannot, however, be better 
 exemplified than by a comparison of Upper with Lower 
 Tyrol. In the former province the inhabitants cultivate 
 their own lands, but their properties are in general very 
 small, not enabling them to keep more live stock than a 
 cow and a pig or two. Inglis indeed carelessly observes, 
 that the land of an Upper Tyrolean peasant seldom 
 produces more than enough for the consumption of his 
 family, and that the owner, * though in one sense inde- 
 pendent, treading and labouring his own soil, and eating 
 
 1 Inglis's Switzerland, vol. i. pp. 109, 1 10. 
 
 2 Travels in the Tarentaise, Switzerland, &c., vol. ii. p. 227. 
 
 3 Inglis's Switzerland, voi. i. p. 223. 
 
92 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 the produce of his own industry, is yet poor, and lives 
 worse than a day-labourer in many other countries.' 1 
 These, however, are evidently hasty conclusions, founded 
 upon superficial observation or upon hearsay, and are 
 directly contradicted by information subsequently ob- 
 tained. Inglis, one day, took refuge from a storm in the 
 house of a peasant of the class just referred to, and was 
 invited to wait for dinner, which was almost ready. His 
 host's estate consisted of no more than four acres, and he 
 possessed only one cow, two pigs, and some poultry, yet 
 the meal prepared for his family of six persons consisted 
 of soup made of Indian corn and milk, a piece of boiled 
 bacon five pounds in weight, a salad, bread two-thirds 
 Indian corn and one-third wheat, butter, and wine of 
 Botzen. This is expressly stated to have been the 
 regular dinner of the house, except once a week, when 
 fresh meat was substituted for the bacon. t Besides the 
 crops raised for home consumption, a good deal of wheat 
 and barley was sent to market ; and from the proceeds, 
 after coffee, sugar, and clothes were bought, there re- 
 mained a small surplus in money, which had gradually 
 amounted to a considerable purse. 2 Perhaps this may 
 be too flattering an example 3 of the mode of life of the 
 Northern Tyrolese, and the food of the majority may 
 consist only of bread, Indian corn, and milk. Still it is 
 
 1 Inglis's Tyrol, vol. i. p. 177. 
 
 2 Ibid., vol. li. pp. 3-7- 
 
 * I have since become enabled, by personal observation, to say that 
 it is not at all so, and that the peasantry of Upper Tyrol live quite 
 as well as Inglis represents them as doing. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 93 
 
 certain that their diet, though simple, is both plentiful 
 and nourishing, for a finer, more athletic race, does not 
 exist. This shows very convincingly that they are amply 
 supplied with mere necessaries; but it must be admitted 
 at the same time, that they have not the same command 
 over the conveniences and luxuries of life as their Swiss 
 neighbours. We need not stay to inquire the causes of 
 this comparative poverty, whether it proceed from 
 Austrian misgovernment or from a want of the mountain 
 pastures, which, in Switzerland, enable cattle to be kept 
 at a trifling expense. We need only ascertain that it has 
 no connexion with peasant proprietorship, and in order 
 to be satisfied on that point we have only to cross the 
 line which separates Upper or German from Lower or 
 Italian Tyrol. ' The moment we leave Botzen and travel 
 towards Trent, a new order of things is perceptible; the 
 same noble-looking peasantry are no longer to be seen ; 
 poverty begins to show itself, and the air of comfort 
 about the dwellings, and independence about the in- 
 mates, are no longer visible. All the land in Southern 
 Tyrol belongs to great proprietors, and the peasantry 
 have no longer an interest in the soil. It seems to the 
 traveller, at first sight, a strange inversion of what might 
 be expected that in the fertile vales and finest plains 
 in Europe, he should see so much poverty, and that on 
 the contrary, when he journeys among mountain regions, 
 where excessive labour forces from the soil an unwilling 
 crop, he perceives every appearance of comfort and ease. 
 The condition of the people in the most fertile plains of 
 Italy, Germany, France, or England, will bear no com- 
 
94 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 parison with that of the inhabitants of the Grison valleys, 
 or of the Oberland Bernois, or of the Upper Tyrol. But 
 the difficulty is at once explained when we learn that the 
 former are labourers for hire, and that the latter labour 
 their own soil.' } 
 
 Many similar examples might be produced, but not 
 to exhaust the reader's patience, I will, before concluding 
 this chapter, only refer to the history and present state of 
 the Channel Islands, respecting which I am the more 
 desirous of mentioning a few particulars, both because 
 they bear in a very remarkable manner on the subject 
 under consideration, and because a recent 2 visit to the 
 islands has enabled me to test the accuracy of some of 
 the statements of preceding writers. Both Guernsey and 
 Jersey, like the rest of the Duchy of Normandy, with 
 which they were incorporated, were once subject to 
 feudal government. The former island was distributed 
 by William the Conqueror amongst sixteen tenants in 
 chief, who were aot only entitled to military service from 
 their vassals or serfs, but had their tables supplied and 
 their lands cultivated by them, and moreover, exercised 
 over them, ' la haute justice,' or the right of hanging on 
 occasion. The steps by which this order of things was 
 subverted cannot now be traced, but it is clear that the 
 feudal system must have been deeply undermined before 
 the charter of King John could substitute jurats, to be 
 chosen by the people at large, for the supreme court of 
 chevaliers who had previously exercised hereditary juris- 
 
 1 Inglis's Tyrol, vol. ii. pp. 100-4. 
 
 2 ' Recent/ that is, in 1848, the date of the 1st edition of this work. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 95 
 
 diction; and it further appears, from a petition presented 
 to the Protector Cromwell, that in the seventeenth century, 
 land in Guernsey was held by the cultivators on no other 
 condition than that of paying * chief rents, homages, 
 services, tithes, and campart/ the amount of which, 
 though sufficiently burthen some, was, and apparently had 
 long been, fixed and invariable. Some of these feudal 
 dues are still exacted, though, in consequence of the fall 
 in the value of money, and of the improvement of agricul- 
 ture, they constitute at present a very inconsiderable 
 deduction from the annual produce; but, except in so far 
 as their right to the title; may be affected by this circum- 
 stance, the tillers are likewise in general owners of the 
 soil, and have been so. for at least two hundred years. 
 The law of inheritance requires land to be divided among 
 all the children of the last owner, daughters as well as 
 sons; though it treats the latter in general more liberally 
 than the former, and permits the eldest son, besides 
 sharing equally with his- brothers, to, take in addition his 
 father's principal dwelling-house^ and about sixteeen 
 perches of ground adjoining it. So insignificant a con- 
 cession to primogeniture cannot have sensibly impeded 
 the partition of land, for which, moreover, if any tendency 
 to it really existed, ample time has been allowed in the 
 course of two centuries. Is then land in Guernsey 
 actually too minutely subdivided ? and is the agricultural 
 population redundant, and consequently poor ? 
 
 When political economists speak of estates or farms 
 as too small, they mean, either that the gross produce is 
 less than it would otherwise be^. or at least, that a, smaller 
 
9$ SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 portion is set apart for the use of the non-agricultural 
 classes. When they say that an agricultural class is too 
 numerous, they mean, either that it consumes food which 
 should be reserved for other classes, or that its own 
 wants are inadequately supplied. We have already seen 
 that in Guernsey neither the partition of land nor the 
 number of cultivators is such as to produce any injurious 
 effect on the rest of the community, for not even in 
 England is nearly so large a quantity of produce sent to 
 market from a tract of such limited extent. This of itself 
 might prove that the cultivators must be far removed 
 above poverty, for, being absolute owners of all the pro- 
 duce raised by them, they of course sell only what they 
 do not themselves require. But the satisfactoriness of 
 their condition is apparent to every observer. ' The 
 happiest community,' says Mr. Hill, 1 'which it has ever 
 been my lot to fall in with is to be found in this little 
 island of Guernsey.' ' No matter/ says Sir George Head, 
 ' to what point the traveller may choose to bend his way, 
 comfort everywhere prevails.' 2 What most surprises the 
 English visitor in his first walk or drive beyond the 
 bounds of St. Peter's Port is the appearance of the habi- 
 tations 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 much too good in every respect for 
 
 1 Tail's Magazine for June, 1834. 
 
 2 Home Tour through various Parts of the United Kingdom. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 97 
 
 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 attention 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 Guern- 
 sey cottages. They are always substantially built of 
 stone, and being generally of two stories, contain plenty 
 of accommodation. The interior is not unworthy of 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, 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 repre- 
 sentation of the generality of the dwellings of the pea- 
 santry. 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. This assertion will startle many who, using 
 their prejudices instead of their eyes, still believe in the 
 reality of what has long ceased to exist, except in tradition 
 or fancy. The poets and ro'mance writers who so highly 
 
 H 
 
98 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 extol the comfort and beauty of English cottages, are 
 pseudo-enthusiasts, parading only simulated raptures. 
 They themselves never beheld what they 'describe. 
 Their descriptions are not indeed purely imaginative, 
 for they are copies of pictures of old date, which, when 
 first painted, were very possibly true to nature. The 
 original artists lived while cottagers had a permanent 
 interest in their tenements, and means, as well as taste 
 and leisure, for adorning them. All this has long been 
 changed. When the cottagers were deprived of their 
 gardens, their rights of common, and their cows, they 
 were considerately removed from their picturesque homes 
 to others more suitable to their altered circumstances. 
 Hear what is said of a modern day labourer's habitation, 
 by one who will not be suspected of depreciating anything 
 English. ' There is his tenement of one or two rooms, 
 his naked walls, bare brick, stone, or mud floor, a few 
 wooden or rush-bottomed chairs, a deal or old oak table, 
 a simple fire-place with its oven beside it, a few pots and 
 pans there you have his whole abode, goods, and 
 chattels/ And this is a sketch from ' cottage life in its 
 best estate, in its unsophisticated and unpauperised 
 condition.' 1 Yet still, in spite of the evidence of our 
 senses, we cling to the memory of the past, as if it were 
 a faithful representation of the present. Admiration of 
 the dwellings of our peasantry is part of our national 
 creed : we force ourselves to admire what we are told is 
 admirable, and readily acquiesce in the assurance that 
 
 1 Howitt's Rural Life of England, vol. ii. pp. 128-9. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 99 
 
 our ploughmen and cowherds are very commodiously 
 lodged. Strangers are not always so complaisant. 
 * Look,' says a late Bailiff of Guernsey, Mr. de 1'Isle 
 Brock, ' at the hovels of the English, and compare them 
 with the cottages of our peasantry; ' and, in truth, his 
 contempt, however strange and impertinent it may sound 
 in English ears, would be completely justified by the 
 comparison. It is to the Channel Islands or to Switzer- 
 land that we must look if we would see realised those 
 pleasing poetical descriptions, the materials for which 
 were once to be found in our own country. 
 
 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, is not indeed very becom- 
 ing, but it is never ragged; and on Sundays they don a 
 suit of broad-cloth, while their wives and daughters, of 
 course, make an at least equal display of the outward 
 symbols of respectability. 
 
 What makes the evident affluence of these islanders a 
 still more gratifying spectacle is its almost universal 
 diffusion. Beggars are utterly unknown, and their ab- 
 sence cannot be wholly accounted for by the interdict 
 enacted against them ; for in England, where their pro- 
 fession is equally illegal, not a day passes without your 
 meeting several, whereas in the Channel Islands not one 
 is ever seen. 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 names, serve also as poor-houses and 
 H 2 
 
IOO SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 houses of industry ; yet the inmates of all descriptions in 
 the Town Hospital, at the time of my visit, were only 
 eighty men, one hundred and thirty women, fifty-five 
 boys, and thirty-nine girls, and I was assured that every 
 one of the adults was incapacitated from earning a liveli- 
 hood by some mental or bodily defect, or by bad charac- 
 ter. 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 eighteen 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, is 
 one hundred and forty-six. The Savings Banks' Ac- 
 counts also bear witness to the general abundance 
 enjoyed by the labouring classes of Guernsey. In the 
 year 1841, there were in England, out of a population of 
 nearly 15,000,000, less than 700,000 depositors, or one 
 in every 20 persons, and the average amount of the 
 deposits was 3o/. In Guernsey, in the same year, out of 
 a population of 26,000, the number of depositors was 
 1,920, and the average amount of the deposits 4o/. Being 
 exempt from poverty themselves, the Channel Islanders 
 are foremost in their contributions to the relief of misery 
 in less favoured lands. In the year 1822, the inhabitants 
 of St. Peter's Port raised by subscription about 7oo/. 
 for the relief of their famishing brethren in the west of 
 Ireland, and in 1831, 6oo/. were raised for the same 
 purpose in Guernsey and Alderney; upon which occasion 
 an Irish newspaper, while gratefully acknowledging the 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. ioi 
 
 contributions received from England, ' felt bound espe- 
 cially to notice the transcendent liberality of Guernsey.' 
 That island had, in proportion to its extent, done more 
 on behalf of the famishing poor of Mayo than any other 
 place from which relief had been furnished. 1 
 
 It is especially deserving of notice, that the prosperity 
 of Guernsey is not only great, but has long been steadily 
 advancing ; in other words, that the progress of population 
 has been less rapid than the progress of wealth. In the 
 year 1615, the number of houses in the island was 1,355 > 
 in the year 1821, it was 3,032, from which it may be in- 
 ferred that the number of inhabitants had doubled in 
 about 180 years. In 1797 the total population was 
 15,500, and in 1836 had risen to 24,500. But, in the 
 petition presented to Cromwell soon after the close of the 
 Civil War, it is stated that only one-twentieth of the in- 
 habitants . had any substance; that only two or three 
 persons had 2oo/. a, year, not ten ioo/., and not thirty 
 5o/. a year; 2 whereas, in 1797, the annual income of the 
 island was assessed for the purpose of taxation at 
 97,6917., or 61. 6s. per head; and in the year 1836 at 
 2i2,44o/., or 8/. 13,$-. per head. Thus, in thirty-nine years 
 population had increased fifty-eight per cent., while wealth 
 had increased one hundred and seventeen per cent. It 
 should be added, that the largest augmentation of pro- 
 perty had taken place in the country parishes, while two- 
 thirds of the increased number of inhabitants belonged to 
 the town ; and it moreover seems probable that the in- 
 
 1 Duncan's History of Guernsey, p. 304. 2 Ibid. p. ioo. 
 
IO2 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 crease of population, both in town and country, was pro- 
 duced principally by immigration, for, at the census of 
 1841, the number of inhabitants, not natives, was not less 
 than 6,517, equal to the whole addition made to the 
 population since the year 1818, when settlers from Great 
 Britain first began to resort to the Channel Islands. If 
 no other example could be given, this alone might be ac- 
 cepted as a decisive proof that peasant proprietorship has 
 no tendency to create a redundant and poor agrarian 
 population, but is rather calculated to make each suc- 
 ceeding generation wealthier than that which immediately 
 preceded it. 
 
 The general resemblance between Jersey and Guern- 
 sey renders it unnecessary to enter into much detail re- 
 specting the former. Land there has not been so much 
 divided as in the sister island, owing to the influence of a 
 law of inheritance, which might be advantageously adopted 
 in the latter, and which permits the eldest son to take the 
 principal dwelling-house and thirty perches of ground 
 adjoining, besides sharing equally with his brothers in the 
 rest of the property, and, moreover, allots to him the 
 whole of the estate if it do not exceed four vergees. 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 deserve to be styled 
 farm-houses. Some of them, indeed, have so much ar- 
 chitectural 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 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 103 
 
 parlour windows, 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 ap- 
 parently without cement. Their inferiority, however, is 
 probably only external, for, though I did not myself enter 
 any of them, the well-dressed people whom I saw leaving 
 them on Sunday were evidently not prevented by want of 
 means from making themselves comfortable. The an- 
 tiquity of the cottages may probably afford an explanation 
 of their uninviting appearance, for most of them seem to 
 have been built one or two centuries ago, when every 
 peasant was perhaps his own mason, and not very deeply 
 skilled in the art. All recent buildings, and all new 
 additions to old ones, are in a very much better style. 
 Mendicancy and pauperism are at present as rare as in 
 Guernsey, and the improvement which time has wrought 
 in the condition of the people is still more remarkable. 
 Dr. Heylin, who accompanied the Earl of Danby to the 
 Channel Islands in the year 1629, and who says, that in 
 Guernsey he ' did not see one beggar/ describes the Jersey 
 men as 'more poor, and therefore more destitute of 
 humanity/ and their children as ' continually craving alms 
 of every stranger ; ' whereas, at present, some tact would 
 be requisite to prevent any of them from being affronted 
 by an offer of money. Jersey seems to have been very 
 thickly peopled at a pretty early period. Heylin, in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, speaks already of the 
 * multitudes of people/ whom he estimates, though very 
 
IO4 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 extravagantly, at 30,000 ; but there are good grounds for 
 supposing that, in 1734, their number was as high as 
 20,000. During the next seventy years, population made 
 little progress, for at the census taken in 1806, it was found 
 to be only 22,855 > but it has since advanced rapidly, 
 having reached to 36,582 in 1831, and to 47,544 in 1841. 
 As in Guernsey, however, by far the greater part of the 
 additional number of inhabitants reside in the town. 
 From the map prefixed to Falle's History, it appears that, 
 in the year 1734, there were 354 houses in the parish of 
 St. Helier's, and 2,594 in the eleven country parishes. 
 In 1831, St. Helier's contained 1,917 houses, or one for 
 every 8 '5 inhabitants, and the country parishes contained 
 3,073 houses, or one for every 6*7 inhabitants ; so that in 
 the interval between 1734 and 1831, the population of 
 the town would appear to have been more than quin- 
 tupled, while that of the country had increased only 1 7 
 per cent. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great and increasing prosperity 
 of Jersey, there are some, even among the inhabitants, 
 sufficiently modest to prefer the ingenious fancies of 
 theorists to the realities of their own observation, who 
 imagine they can see in the division of land the symptoms 
 of approaching pauperism. Thus Colonel Le Couteur 
 declares that 'the too minute subdivision which takes 
 place, frequently drives several branches of a family to 
 beggary ; and the elder branch, by being deprived of too 
 considerable a portion of the land, instead of being able 
 to carry on improvements, purchase manure, or work the 
 land properly, can scarcely extract a miserable subsistence 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 10$ 
 
 from his estate.' l Colonel Le Couteur's authority is de- 
 servedly very high, yet, in answer to the opinion thus 
 expressed by him, it may be sufficient to quote a parallel 
 passage from Falle, who, more than a century earlier, was 
 tormented by the same groundless apprehensions. ' The 
 custom of gavelkind,' says that local historian, ' destroys 
 many fine inheritances by dividing them into so many 
 small portions, which are again subdivided in the follow- 
 ing generation, and so on progressively, till the parts of 
 the inheritance are reduced almost to nothing.' 2 Since 
 Falle wrote, the peasantry have grown richer instead of 
 becoming continually more impoverished, but though they 
 should continue to advance in the same manner for 
 another hundred years, someone will still be found to take 
 the same gloomy .view as the writers just quoted, drawing, 
 like them, his conclusion from a few exceptional cases 
 of minute partition, without noticing how their effects are 
 counterbalanced by other instances of consolidation. 
 
 I refer to Alderney only in order to notice a mis- 
 representation of the late Mr. Inglis, which, if suffered to 
 remain uncontradicted, miglit be cited in support of one 
 of the gravest charges against peasant proprietorship. 
 * The appearance of the cultivated district,' he says, ' is 
 singular, owing to the very minute properties, and the odd 
 way in which the proprietors have sown their crops. It 
 is all laid out in narrow strips of different sorts of grain, 
 
 1 Agricultural Survey of Jersey, in Guernsey and Jersey Maga- 
 zine for July, 1838, pp. 238-9. 
 
 2 Falle's History of Jersey, chap. ii. Not having the original 
 work at hand, I have extracted the passage in the text from a French 
 translation. 
 
106 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 and in lucerne, potatoes, clover, &c. These all lie in 
 
 different directions, straight across and transversely, and 
 to so great an extent has the division of property des- 
 cended, that, in looking at a proprietor ploughing his 
 strip, it is difficult to see how he will find room to turn 
 his plough.' l This strange mis-statement, for which there 
 is scarcely a tittle of foundation, can only be explained by 
 the shortness of Mr. Inglis's visit to Alderney, which, I 
 was informed on the spot, did not much exceed twenty- 
 four hours. The actual aspect of Alderney is sufficiently 
 curious to render exaggeration or distortion of its features 
 altogether superfluous. The dwellings of the cultivators 
 are not scattered over the face of the island, but are col- 
 lected together on a spot about a mile from the beach, 
 forming a little metropolis of three or four streets, in 
 which all the peasantry, with the exception of some half- 
 dozen families, reside. Close to the town is a plain of 
 some extent, the original territory of .the rustic citizens, 
 and, between it and the sea, is a belt of what until recently 
 was common land, but which, in the year 1830, was 
 divided equally among all the resident inhabitants. Many 
 of the allotments on this external belt are separated from 
 each other by stone walls ; but the central plain adjoining 
 the town is perfectly open, without a tree, a bush, or a 
 fence of any kind upon it, and is divided into strips, not 
 however, too narrow to prevent a plough from turning, 
 but varying in width from three to twenty yards, and in 
 length from one hundred to several hundred yards. Here 
 and there may certainly be seen a patch of potatoes or 
 
 1 Inglis's Channel Islands, vol. ii. p. 162. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. IO/ 
 
 parsnips, of perhaps only a few square yards, but on in- 
 quiry it will invariably be found to belong either to the 
 proprietor of other land, or to a shop-keeper, to whom it 
 serves as a kitchen-garden. Of the larger strips, each 
 belongs to one person, but does not necessarily constitute 
 the whole of his property, for he may, and almost always 
 does, possess one or more pieces of ground situated else- 
 where. Compactness is a quality possessed by few 
 estates, most of them consisting of scattered members 
 lying far apart. This disjointedness seems to result 
 from the absence of inclosures, and from the complete 
 separation of the houses from their respective portions of 
 land. The owner of a cottage situated amidst its own 
 ground, would, on becoming possessed by marriage or 
 inheritance of a detached field, endeavour to exchange it 
 for one nearer his place of abode, more especially if he 
 would otherwise be required to make a fence to mark the 
 bounds of his new acquisition. But an Alderney man, 
 whose property lies perfectly open, and who must walk 
 some distance from home before he can reach any part 
 of it, has not the same motive for wishing to see the 
 whole brought near together. The inconvenience arising 
 from the dispersion of its several portions, is not sufficient 
 to induce him to run the risk of being over-reached in a 
 bargain. Although separately small, the landed posses- 
 sions of an Alderney man are quite sufficient, when united, 
 for his maintenance. In fact, although land may be more 
 minutely divided than in the other islands, the properties 
 of the peasants, if by property be understood all the land 
 belonging to one man, are considerably larger, and the 
 
108 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 proprietors live proportionably better. Considering their 
 station, they may even be called affluent. Their honses, 
 being arranged in rows, have no picturesqueness, but what 
 is wanting in beauty is amply compensated in more im- 
 portant respects. They are too large to be termed 
 cottages, being almost invariably two-storied erections, 
 equal in external appearance to the dwellings of shop- 
 keepers in English villages ; and the rooms are furnished 
 with carpets, sofas, and other articles equally rare in a 
 husbandman's abode. Dress and diet correspond with 
 the style of the habitations, all the habits of the inmates 
 being marked rather by profuseness than by the parsimony 
 characteristic of the same class in the neighbouring 
 islands. It is only fair to add, that their means of in- 
 dulging in so much larger expenditure are not derived 
 entirely from agriculture, but originally arose in part from 
 the profits of contraband trade, which was at one time very 
 actively carried on by them. But to whatever cause 
 attributable, the ease and abundance in which they live 
 are, at least, sufficient to show that Alderney is the last 
 place in which to seek for the poverty which peasant 
 proprietorship is said to engender. 
 
 The most specious argument that I have met with, 
 adverse to the general tenor of this and the preceding 
 chapter, is one urged with much force by my honoured 
 friend, Mr. Norman, and by Judge Longfield, who 
 contend that .'it is not for a man's interest to be a 
 peasant proprietor.' l In a merely pecuniary sense, this 
 
 1 Papers on Various Subjects, by George Warde Norman, 
 pp. 154-6, 189, and 224-6; and Tenure of Land in Ireland, by 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 may possibly be to some small extent true, though I do 
 not think it is. Suppose a cultivator to be owner of ten 
 acres of the sort of land which in England would be let 
 to a large farmer at 30^. an acre, and to employ in their 
 cultivation, at io/. an acre, a farming capital of ioo/. ; his 
 net returns, it is argued, would then be no more than 
 257., consisting of i5/. rent and io/. interest on capital ; 
 whereas by selling the land at thirty years' purchase, for 
 45 o/., he would become possessed of a capital of 55o/., 
 wherewith he might rent and stock a farm of 55 acres, 
 and make thereon, at the rate of ten per cent, a net 
 profit of 55/., or more than twice what he had made while 
 a peasant proprietor. In these calculations, however, an 
 important circumstance is overlooked. As shown by 
 abundant evidence, adduced from Belgium, Switzerland, 
 and the Channel Islands, land, for which a large English 
 tenant could not afford to pay more than $os. an acre, 
 intelligent small farmers are, by their habit of utilising 
 odds and ends of time and material which the large 
 farmer wastes, and by their use of the spade in lieu or in 
 aid of the plough, enabled to take, at rents ranging from 
 4/ T to 6/. Such then are the rates, and not a paltry 30.5-. 
 per acre, with which a peasant proprietor ought to be 
 credited as rent ; and according to the higher of these 
 rates, our cultivator of ten acres of his own would 
 obtain 6o/. ; or with the addition of profit on his capital 
 (not at the English rate of ten, but at the rack-rented 
 Belgian tenants' rate of only three per cent.), 6$L 
 
 the Rt. Hon. M. Longfield, in Cobden Club Essays, ist series, 
 P- 33- 
 
HO SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 altogether, or S/. more than if he had taken fifty-five acres 
 on lease. At the lower rate of 4/., indeed, his total net 
 receipts would be only 437. altogether, or i2/. less, instead 
 of 8/. more, than they would have been in the other case ; 
 but, for this difference he would probably receive 
 adequate compensation in the increasing value given to 
 his land partly by the improvements wrought in it by 
 himself, partly by the increasing prices of agricultural pro- 
 duce which increased value would belong permanently 
 to himself, whereas a tenant would, in consideration of 
 it, have his rent raised at the end of his lease. And even 
 though the compensation in this shape were not fully 
 adequate, even though comparison of a small proprietor 
 with a tenant of equal substance, should show some small 
 balance of gain in favour of the latter, it is still to be 
 considered that the value of landed property is not 
 exclusively pecuniary. Just as a capitalist is, for the 
 sake of the social distinction and political influence con- 
 nected with landlordship, content to invest in an estate, 
 which will repay him at most only three per cent., money 
 for which, on equal good security, he could readily 
 obtain five per cent, or more, so may a peasant perceive 
 it to be for his interest to submit to some small 
 pecuniary sacrifice for the sake of the security, the sense 
 of independence, and the delight in labour, which appertain 
 to the privilege of tilling one's own acres instead of 
 those of another. 
 
 If here it be demanded, as it very fairly may, why 
 then an English tenant farmer so seldom exhibits any 
 desire to purchase a small farm, and why one after 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP, 
 
 another of our few remaining English yeomen so readily 
 yields to the temptation of a liberal price for his patri- 
 mony ? the answer is easy. For one thing there is the 
 expense of verifying titles to land ; for another the want 
 of successful examples of small farming in the neighbour- 
 hood that might serve as types or models. The average 
 English peasant has had no opportunity of learning 
 
 what hidden treasure lies 
 Deep in the soil of Peasant Properties. 
 
 He has no suspicion of the wealth beneath his feet, 
 waiting there for a delver to lay it open. It will not suffice 
 to translate for him the Flemish proverb, De Spa is de 
 Goudmijn der Boeren^ or the Italian, Se faratro ha il 
 vomero d'argento, la vanga ha la punta d'oro. Experience 
 and observation are needed to enable him to understand 
 how * The spade can be the peasant's gold mine/ and how, 
 ' Though the plough has a silver share, the spade has a 
 golden edge.' 1 
 
 1 'You,' writes Southey to Henry Taylor in January 1829, 
 ' think of the plough, I of the spade ; you of fields, I of gardens ; 
 you of corn-land, I of grass-land. . . . The land on which this is 
 going on in Germany and Holland is worse than the worst of our 
 wastes. The spade works wonders.' Life and Correspondence of 
 Robert Southey, vol. vi. pp. 20, 21. 
 
1 2 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP ' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP IN FRANCE. 
 
 IT may have been thought not a little extraordinary, that, 
 of the examples hitherto cited in support of the arguments 
 used in the preceding chapters, scarcely any have been 
 taken from France, a country which, as abounding more 
 than any other in peasant proprietors, might seem 
 deserving of especial reference. The reason for the 
 omission was, that the evidence with respect to France is 
 sufficiently ambiguous and inconsistent to have led 
 different reasoners to directly opposite conclusions. If 
 the advocates of peasant proprietorship imagine that it 
 furnishes fresh proofs of the correctness of their views, 
 their opponents appeal to it with not less confidence, as 
 affording a practical illustration of the soundness of their 
 theory. The difference of opinion does not merely 
 regard the inferences to be drawn from admitted facts ; 
 the facts themselves are disputed ; and while their real 
 character remains doubtful, no one can be expected to 
 be convinced by them. It would have been mere 
 trifling to have attempted to deduce anything from the . 
 condition of the French peasantry, until it had been 
 settled what that condition is, by a cross-examination of 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 the evidence on the subject ; and it was thought more 
 convenient to reserve that operation for a separate 
 chapter. 
 
 It should be premised, that it is an error to suppose 
 that peasant proprietorship in France dates only from the 
 Revolution. As in other parts of Europe, it probably 
 grew out of the decay of feudalism, and may have been 
 in existence for several centuries \ but at any rate it had 
 become very general much earlier than is commonly 
 imagined; for in the years 1787, 8 and 9, while the 
 danger impending over the crown and nobility was 
 suspected by few, Arthur Young found reason for sup- 
 posing that one third of the kingdom was occupied by 
 peasant properties. 1 It must be confessed that the 
 picture which Young draws of these little estates, is far 
 from flattering. He speaks enthusiastically of the 
 industry he observed upon them, but there his eulogy 
 ends. Their cultivation he describes as l execrable.' So 
 it was indeed generally throughout France, on farms of 
 all sizes ; but Young declares, that he ' never saw a 
 single instance of good husbandry on a small farm, 
 except on soils of the greatest fertility/ such for example 
 as that of Flanders, where, however, it does not appear 
 to have occurred to him that the fertility he admired 
 might be the effect of the good husbandry of which he 
 assumed it to be the cause. The social position of the 
 small proprietors he describes as corresponding with 
 their agricultural skill. In Flanders, Alsace, on the 
 
 1 Travels in France, vol. i. p. 412. 
 
 I 
 
114 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 Garonne, and in Beam he found many in comfortable 
 circumstances, and in Basse Bretagne he heard that many 
 were reputed rich ; but in general, he says, they were 
 poor and miserable, owing, in a great measure, to the 
 equal division of land among all the children of a 
 deceased owner. Young's honesty is unimpeachable : 
 what he represents as having come under his own 
 observation, he doubtless either saw, or fancied he saw. 
 Appearances may sometimes have deceived him, but with 
 a few unimportant deductions, his description may be 
 accepted as substantially correct, and we may believe, 
 upon his assurance, that French peasant proprietors 
 generally were, in his day, ignorant, unskilful, and 
 miserably poor. 
 
 A condition, however, so opposite to that of persons 
 of the same class in other countries, must have arisen, not 
 from the proprietary character common to all, but lather 
 from some circumstances peculiar to France ; and Young 
 himself unconsciously informs us what the peculiarities 
 were. The fiscal and feudal oppression under which the 
 peasantry groaned, would be sufficient of itself to 
 account for their depression. Among other grievous 
 taxes were those on land and on the profits of farming, 
 to which they alone were subject, the clergy and gentry 
 being exempt. These taxes, besides being very onerous, 
 were not even of fixed amount. The rates were altered 
 from year to year, at the discretion of the intendants and 
 their deputies, who, in assessing districts or parishes, 
 professed to be guided by the appearance of the crops, 
 and in assessing individuals, by the stock upon their 
 
IN FRANCE. i i 5 
 
 farms. It was the interest, therefore, of every farmer, to 
 appear to have as little stock as possible, and conse- 
 quently to employ as little as possible in its cultivation, 
 and none in its improvement. 1 The game laws were still 
 more outrageous than those relative to the collection of 
 the revenue. There were numerous edicts which pro- 
 hibited weeding and hoeing, lest the young partridges 
 should be disturbed ; steeping seed, lest it should injure 
 their health ; manuring with night soil, lest their flavour 
 should be spoilt by their feeding on the corn so treated \ 
 mowing hay before a certain time, or removing stubble, 
 lest the birds should be deprived of shelter. 2 Add to 
 this, the forced labour imposed by government, and the 
 fines and services arbitrarily exacted by lords of manors, 
 and it need not again be asked why the French peasantry, 
 even such of them as cultivated their own lands, were in 
 every sense of the term miserable farmers. The only 
 wonder is that their industry could survive such manifold 
 discouragements. From the same causes proceeded, 
 indirectly, that minute division of land so frequently 
 remarked by Young, and which had been carried so far 
 that, in more than one instance, * a single fruit tree stand- 
 ing in about ten perches of ground constituted a farm, 
 and the local situation of the family was decided by the 
 possession.' 3 At the time of Young's visit, France was 
 greatly over-peopled in the only sense in which that 
 phrase is ever appropriate ; that is to say, the supply of 
 
 1 Smith's Wealth of Nations. M'Culloch's Edit. vol. ii. p. 196. 
 
 2 Young's Travels in France, vol. i. p. 600. 
 8 Travels in France, vcl. i. p. 402. 
 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 PEASANT 'PROPRIE TORSHIP 
 
 labourers greatly exceeded the demand. The connubial 
 improvidence, invariably attendant on wretchedness like 
 that to which the peasantry had been reduced, had had 
 the usual effect of increasing their numbers. ' The 
 swarms of people were incredible.' 1 The inheritor of 
 the smallest scrap of ground had scarcely an alternative 
 but to attempt to subsist upon its produce. To sell it 
 would in general have been to deprive himself of his 
 only means of livelihood ; for he could not hope to 
 obtain employment as a hired labourer. It was natural, 
 then, that the sons of a peasant proprietor should divide 
 his farm amongst them, and settle down each on his 
 separate portion. Very natural too, that although a 
 man's property were barely sufficient for his own support, 
 he should take a wife to participate in his indigence. 
 Why not ? The usual dissuasive from such matrimonial 
 indiscretion could not influence him. If he had been 
 brought up in the enjoyment of something like com- 
 petence, he would have feared to lose the comforts he 
 had been accustomed to ; but, having been early 
 habituated to privations seemingly as bad as they well 
 could be, he might look with equanimity on a chance so 
 infinitesimal as that of their growing worse, and have no 
 dread of their continuance. There seems no reason to 
 doubt that in France, under the old government, peasant 
 proprietorship was attended by all these evils ; but it is 
 not on that account to be condemned. What its 
 advocates contend for is, that peasant properties, 
 sufficiently large when created to afford their owners a 
 
 1 Travels in France, p. 404. 
 
IN FRANCE. I I 7 
 
 competent maintenance, are at least as likely as larger 
 estates to preserve the same average size for an 
 indefinite period ; but it is not denied that peasant pro- 
 prietors are affected by misery in the same manner as 
 other men, or that, when reduced to poverty by wicked 
 laws, poverty will extinguish in them the virtue of prudence. 
 Peasant proprietorship did not obtain a fair trial in 
 France until the worst abuses of tyranny and feudalism 
 were swept away at the Revolution, and its history since 
 that period is consequently deserving of especial atten- 
 tion. The evil with which Young imagined it to be 
 fraught, was attributed by that writer to the practice of 
 the partition of an estate among all the deceased owner's 
 children, and he strongly urged the enactment of a law 
 placing certain restrictions on the division of land. 
 Without such a law, he imagined that the most dreadful 
 consequences must inevitably ensue, and that the popu- 
 lousness of France would eventually ' exceed the popu- 
 lousness of China, where/ he says, ' the putrid carcasses 
 of dogs, cats, rats, and every species of filth and vermin 
 are sought with avidity, to maintain the life of wretches 
 born only to be starved.' It need not be said that 
 no such law has been passed, but that, on the con- 
 trary, what was before a custom, has now become an 
 obligation, and that one-half at least of all property, 
 whether real or personal, must, on the owner's death, be 
 equally divided among his children. Moreover, to the 
 large body of peasant proprietors who previously occupied 
 one-third of the kingdom, were added, in the course 
 of the Revolution, one million two hundred and twenty- 
 
I J 8 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 two , thousand more, among whom were divided a 
 considerable proportion of the forfeited lands of the 
 clergy, of corporations, and of emigrants. l Let us inquire, 
 then, what effect time has wrought in the condition of 
 these small proprietors, and whether the lapse of nearly 
 half a century has brought them 'any nearer to the 
 dismal fate which we are assured is awaiting them. 
 
 For the last thirty 2 years a succession of witnesses 
 have been asserting Young's prediction to be in course of 
 fulfilment. The Due de la Rochefoucault, on revisiting, 
 after the Restoration, what had once been his estate of 
 Lianeourt, found it parcelled out into a number of proper- 
 ties, most of which, he says, occupied less than two-thirds 
 of an acre ; and he adds that these properties, small as 
 they were, were always subdivided by the heirs of the 
 last owners. M. de Bonald represents the morcellement 
 the piecemealing of the land in the south of France, as 
 proceeding in a geometrical ratio. He describes a farm 
 as divided first among all the last owner's children, and, 
 at the end of a second generation, among as many sets of 
 his grand-children, every one of whom is so much attached 
 to his little fragment of patrimony that he would work 
 the flesh off his bones in striving to procure a wretched 
 subsistence from it, rather than resort to a profession in 
 which he might earn a more abundant livelihood with 
 less trouble. M. Rainneville, referring to the north of 
 
 1 Mourner, De 1' Agriculture en France, vol. i. p. 78. See also, 
 as to the extent of forfeited land actually sold, Lavergne's Economie 
 Rurale de la France, p. 25. 
 
 2 The reader is requested to bear in mind that this chapter was 
 first printed in 1848. 
 
IN FRANCE. 119 
 
 the kingdom, denounces with more vehemence than 
 perspicuity of metaphor, the ' division whose fatal action 
 devours the soil of the fields with afflicting rapidity.' 
 M. Bosc declares that he has noticed in Lorraine numbers 
 of fields only four yards long by two broad, reduced to 
 that size by the passion of co-heirs for dividing every 
 piece of ground, however small. Mr. Birkbeck speaks 
 of the country people as ' poor from generation to genera- 
 tion, and growing continually poorer as they increase in 
 numbers, by the division and subdivision of property ; ' 
 and M. Lafitte asserts that a considerable portion of them 
 eat neither bread nor meat, but feed solely on coarse 
 roots, and have no other covering but rags. 1 Finally, 
 Messrs. Mounier and Rubichon assert the great body of 
 the peasantry to be on the brink of starvation ; and this 
 opinion, having been adopted by a leading contributor to 
 the most dignified of English periodicals, has been ac- 
 cepted as an article of faith by a large proportion of 
 English readers. 2 
 
 Happily it is not necessary to put every one of these 
 witnesses to the question. All, save the two last-named, 
 profess to describe the state of affairs previously to the 
 year 1827 ; Messrs. Mounier and Rubichon alone, whose 
 book was published in 1846, treat of things as they are, 
 and we may therefore confine our scrutiny to them and 
 
 1 The statements of the several writers quoted may be found 
 more at length in Mr. M'Culloch's edition of the Wealth of Nations, 
 vol. iv. pp. 466-470. 
 
 2 See Quarterly Review, No. 157, Art. 7. The writer of the 
 article was understood at the time to be the late Rt. Hon. John 
 Wilson Croker. 
 
I2O PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 to their English expounder. These have given us, not 
 only their opinions, but also the statistical reports and 
 tables upon which those opinions are founded, and have 
 thus furnished us with the means of testing the soundness 
 of their judgment Their representations, as they may 
 prove to be true or false, will confirm or refute the state- 
 ments of their predecessors. According to the latter, 
 the division of land had not only been carried too far, 
 but was proceeding with accelerated speed ; the agricul- 
 tural population was daily becoming more numerous and 
 poor. To prove that .their reasonings were false, it will 
 be sufficient to show that since they wrote, things have 
 not become worse ; that land is not more divided, nor 
 pauperism more general. If it shall, moreover, appear 
 that during the interval, the average size of estates has 
 increased instead of diminishing, or that, instead of dete- 
 rioration, a very sensible improvement has taken place 
 in the condition of the peasantry, their refutation will be 
 still more complete. But in either case it will be evident, 
 either that they were misled by superficial observation, 
 or that they began to theorise without having first laid a 
 sufficient foundation of facts. 
 
 France, in 1835, contained 33,326,573 inhabitants, 
 composing about seven millions of families, of whom, 
 according to M. Mounier, nearly five millions and a half 
 (5,446,763) were families of landed proprietors. This 
 last statement, however, is nothing more than a guess, 
 for nothing certain is known on the subject. What is 
 known, is the number of properties assessed to the land- 
 tax, which in the same year was 10,893,528, or almost 
 
IN FRANCE. 121 
 
 exactly double the supposed number of proprietors. All 
 the lands or buildings possessed by the same person in 
 one commune, are assessed as a distinct property ; but 
 many persons possess many such properties in different 
 communes. It has been assumed, that, on an average, 
 every proprietor possesses two, and in order to obtain 
 the number of proprietors, the whole number of proper- 
 ties assessed has been divided by two. A result so 
 obtained is evidently worth nothing, and it is accordingly 
 disregarded by M. Mounier's own coadjutor, M. Rubichon, 
 who is content to reckon the proprietary families at four 
 millions, and the whole number of agricultural families at 
 5,200,000, or at three-fourths of the entire population. 1 
 That the second of these estimates, although so much re- 
 duced, is yet far beyond the truth, will instantly appear, 
 on reference to the statistical tables of houses, of which 
 very considerably more than one-fourth are situated in 
 towns containing not less than 1,500 inhabitants, 2 so that, 
 if every resident in towns of smaller size and in the rest 
 of the country were engaged in husbandry, the number 
 of agricultural families would still be much less than 
 M. Rubichon imagines. Even if his estimate were 
 correct, and if -the inhabitants of the rural districts were 
 really thrice as numerous as those of towns, the propor- 
 tion of the rural to the whole population would be found 
 to have diminished within the last sixty years ; for, in 
 1793, the inhabitants of the towns were 5,709,270, while 
 
 1 De 1'Agric. en France, torn. i. p. 117. See also p. 266. 
 
 2 Systemes de Culture, par M. Hippolyte Passy, p. 163. 
 
122 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 those ofthe country were 20,521,538; or much more nearly 
 four times than three times as numerous as the former. 1 
 It is obvious, however, that notwithstanding this 
 change in the proportion between the agricultural and 
 other classes, the absolute number both of agriculturists 
 and of landed proprietors may have greatly increased ; 
 and those who maintain that this is really the case are 
 able to point to one fact, which at first seems strongly to 
 favour their conclusion. This is the great increase which 
 has taken place in the number of cotes foncilres, or pro- 
 perties assessed to the land-tax. In the year 1815, the 
 number was 10,083,751; in 1826, 10,296,693; and in 
 1835, 10,893,528. Thus, in the interval between 1815 
 and 1826, there was an annual increase of 21,294, 
 and in the next decennial period an annual increase of 
 59,683 ; so that the number has not only been con- 
 tinually advancing, but has advanced with continually 
 increasing rapidity. It further appears, that in the eleven 
 years ending with 1826, the increase took place among 
 the properties most lightly taxed, while the number of 
 properties paying as much as one-thousand francs fell 
 off considerably ; and it has thence been not unnatu- 
 rally inferred, that the multiplication of the smaller pro- 
 
 1 Arthur Young's Travels in France, vol. i. p. 479. One reason 
 why the agricultural population has been so much overrated is, that 
 all the proprietors are commonly counted as cultivators (M'Culloch, 
 Geog. Diet. vol. i. p. 853) ; whereas, according to Chateauvieux, 
 only 50,000,000 acres, or considerably less than one-half of the culti- 
 vated land, are cultivated by the owners, the rest being held by 
 tenant farmers. Another circumstance deserving of notice is, that 
 as the same tenant often holds of several proprietors, the number of 
 estates must much exceed the number of farms. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 I2 3 
 
 perties was the effect of the division of large ones. M. 
 Passy has, however, furnished us with a more satisfactory 
 explanation of the phenomenon. Among other ways and 
 means of meeting the extraordinary expences of the year 
 1815, was an addition to the land-tax, which caused most 
 estates to be placed in the register in the class above 
 that to which they had previously belonged. When the 
 war taxes were removed, the old rates of assessment were 
 resumed, and from the highest class of all, consisting of 
 estates assessed at one thousand francs and upwards, more 
 than four thousand were withdrawn to be placed in the 
 class immediately below. As a proof that this was the 
 true cause of the reduction of the highest class, it may 
 be mentioned that since 1826, arid more particularly 
 since 1835, the number of estates of every class, without 
 exception, has increased, and that the increase has been 
 greatest in the highest class. Between 1835 and 1842, 
 the estates rated at 1,000 francs and upwards increased 
 in number 22^4 per cent. 
 
 Those rated at from 500 to 1,000 frs. increased n per cent. 
 100 to 500 10-3 
 
 5 to I0 9 '8 
 
 30 to 50 8-8 
 
 20 to 30 7-4 
 
 ,, 10 to 20 ,, 6-6 ,, 
 
 5 to 10 . 3-2 
 
 ,, below 5 ,, 4-5 ,, 
 
 Now, if it were the subdivision of estates which had 
 occasioned the augmentation of their number, what one 
 class had gained another must have lost ; but as an in- 
 crease has taken place in every class without exception, 
 
I 2 4 PEA SA NT PR OPR1E TOR SHIP 
 
 it has probably proceeded from other causes ; l unless, 
 indeed, the average size of the estates of the aggrandized 
 class has meantime diminished. The information sup- 
 plied by M. Passy enables us to discover what those 
 causes were. Among the cotes fonder es are included houses 
 and all other buildings, of which, between 1826 and 1835, 
 there were placed on the register 321,226, which were 
 either newly constructed, or had been omitted in former 
 assessments ; and of these, M. Passy reckons that three- 
 fifths have little or no ground attached to them beyond 
 the sites on which they stand. The construction pf such 
 buildings increased the number of cotes foncieres without 
 occasioning any perceptible partition of cultivable land. 2 
 During the same period, crown lands to the value of 
 nearly five millions and a half sterling were sold, 3 and 
 communal lands of unascertained extent were divided. 
 Add to the effects of these operations the permanent 
 division of house property in towns by co-heirs, and it 
 will be easy to understand how the whole increase in the 
 number of cotes foncieres may have taken place without 
 any sensible diminution in the size of landed estates. 
 M. Passy mentions some other facts, which are too sig- 
 
 1 It is moreover to be noted, and that very particularly, that the 
 ratio of numerical increase was greatest in the class of largest pro- 
 perties, and small by degrees, and beautifully less, as the area adopted 
 for classification diminished. It is only in the lowest class of all 
 that the ratio is slightly higher than in the class immediately above 
 it. If, then, division of area was the cause of multiplication of 
 number, it would seem that in France the larger estates are, the more 
 liable they are to be divided. 
 
 2 Passy. Systemes de Culture, pp. 162-170. 
 
 8 Mounier. De 1'Agric. en France, torn. i. p. no. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 125 
 
 nificant to be omitted. For some years past, a new sur- 
 vey and valuation of land has been in progress in France, 
 and, in thirty-seven cantons scattered throughout the 
 kingdom, the operation has been completed. At the 
 previous survey in 1810, there were in these cantons 
 154,266 cotes fonderes. There are now 163,277, the 
 difference being equal to an increase of five per cent., 
 while the population has increased at the rate of 19 per 
 cent. But not only do the cotes fonder -es, at present, bear 
 a smaller proportion to the mass of inhabitants than at 
 the date of the last survey : the small addition which has 
 been made to their number may be accounted for entirely 
 by the progress of building. The number of cotes 
 fonderes is, at present, greater by 9,011 than in 1810 ; 
 but in the same interval, an addition has been made to 
 the population of 120,000, for whom at least 22,000 new 
 houses must have been built. 1 If we suppose that these 
 new houses have led to the creation of less than one-half 
 the same number of cotes fonderes, they may still suffice 
 to convince us that landed property, properly so called, 
 is not at present divided among a greater number of 
 owners than it was thirty-seven years ago. 
 
 But although the partition of landed property ceased 
 long ago to make any sensible progress, it may, perhaps, 
 have advanced too far before its course was stopped. 
 Estates may already be too minutely divided : the ma- 
 jority of proprietors may not possess nearly enough of 
 land for their proper maintenance, and, if destitute of any 
 
 1 Pas-y, ut sttpra, pp. 171, 174. 
 
126 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 other means of livelihood, may be pining in extreme in- 
 digence. That such is actually the situation of the great 
 mass of the French peasantry is unhesitatingly affirmed 
 by Messrs. Mounier and Rubichon, and by their English 
 reviewer, Mr. Croker, all of whom affect quite arith- 
 metical precision in the details which they bring forward 
 to justify the assertion. There are 10,893,528 cotes 
 foncieres, or rated properties, and there are supposed to 
 be about half this number, or 5,446,763 distinct proprie- 
 tors. So says Mr. Croker, who, however, in the very 
 next sentence, forgets the distinction he had just drawn 
 between properties and proprietors, and finding that of 
 the former there are 5,163,000 taxed at less than five 
 francs, imagines that there must be the same number 
 of persons taxed equally lightly ; and he adds, that as the 
 French land-tax is on an average equal to tenpence the 
 English acre, there must be upwards of five millions of 
 proprietors whose average holdings are under five acres. 
 The conclusion to which his own premises should have 
 brought him is, that the class of proprietors l\e is speak- 
 ing of consists, not of five millions, but of two millions 
 and a half, taxed, not at five, but at ten francs, and 
 possessing on an average, not five, but ten acres. The 
 i credit of this mistake belongs exclusively to Mr. Croker 
 himself: into the next he only follows his leader. 
 M. Mounier informs us that there are 2,602,705 pro- 
 prietary families whose income is supposed not to exceed 
 fifty francs ; whereupon, Mr. Croker, having first gene- 
 rously increased by one-half the supposed income, cannot 
 suppress his astonishment and scorn at the idea of 
 
IN FRANCE. 127 
 
 2,600,000 families (families of proprietors, too !) having 
 but sixty shillings a year to live upon ; and he protests 
 that the ' poorest day-labourer would earn four times as 
 much.' But, surely, Mr. Croker might have known or 
 guessed that the value of the produce of five acres must 
 be somewhat more than sixty shillings somewhat more 
 than the bare price of the grain that would have been 
 required to sow that acreage with wheat but both he and 
 Mounier confound the rent for which land might be let, 
 with its gross produce, and first reducing rent to a 
 ridiculously low figure imagine that a peasant proprietor 
 receives only rent. They forget that he unites in his own 
 person the characters of landlord, tenant, and labourer, 
 and takes for his own use the shares of all three, or the 
 entire produce of his fields. If the great body of the 
 peasantry cannot subsist in comfort, although holding 
 their lands on such terms, their inability must proceed 
 from some other cause than the smallness of their hold- 
 ings. Mounier's own figures, rightly understood, assign 
 to the poorest two and a half millions of proprietors an 
 average approaching nearer to ten than to five acres ; and 
 a much better authority, M. de Chateauvieux, estimates 
 the average holdings of the 3,900,000 poorer proprietors 
 at eight acres and a half. 1 French agriculture is con- 
 fessedly very defective, but unless a French peasant 
 obtains less from an acre than an English allotment- 
 holder sometimes does from a rood, the owner of eight 
 acres and a half must, at the very least, have an income 
 
 1 Mounier, ut supra, torn. i. p. 265. 
 
128 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 of 40/. } instead of forty or sixty shillings. It is true that 
 if eight acres and a half be the average extent of the 
 smallest class of properties, many must be larger, and 
 very many smaller ; perhaps not far from a million of 
 an acre or half an acre, or even of only a few square 
 yards. There are many cottage gardens in England of 
 no greater size why not also in France? andwhy should 
 the French, any more than the English cottager, be sup- 
 posed capable of subsisting upon the produce of such a 
 scrap of ground ? Why should not he also be a day 
 labourer, depending upon wages for the chief, part of his 
 subsistence ? The Quarterly Reviewer imagines that no 
 one would employ him, for that the generality of his 
 neighbours are in the same condition as himself, each 
 tilling his own allotment, and, instead of hiring extra 
 labour, wishing himself to be hired. Indeed ! let us turn 
 again to the tables of M. Mounier. The cultivable land 
 of France is 114,000,000 acres. The cotes fonrieres of 
 less than five francs are 5,163,494, supposed to represent 
 just half that number, or 2,581,747, of united properties 
 of less than ten acres each. Their aggregate area can 
 scarcely be more than 22,000,000 of acres, leaving 
 92,000,000 of acres belonging to larger proprietors, and 
 divided into farms, of which, if the average size be as low 
 as thirty acres, there must be more than three millions. 
 Suppose that one-half of the poorest class of proprietors 
 are not fully employed on their own lands, and must seek 
 additional occupation elsewhere ; it will be hard if they 
 cannot obtain it, when for every person occasionally re- 
 quiring work, there are more than two farms occasionally 
 
IN FRANCE. 129 
 
 requiring labourers. If we prefer the calculations of 
 M. de Chateau vieux, we shall have 3,900,000 proprietors 
 of eight and a half acres each, and of a total area of about 
 33,000,000 of acres, leaving about 81,000,000 of acres to 
 be divided into 2,700,000 farms of thirty acres. Even 
 then, supposing one-half of the poorer proprietors to be 
 insufficiently employed at home, there would, for every 
 two persons requiring work, be three farms on which they 
 might obtain it. 
 
 That the condition of the French peasantry, whether 
 proprietors or field labourers, if not yet perfectly satis 
 factory, has been steadily improving for many years past, 
 is evident from the testimony of all who have themselves 
 examined it. The opposite opinion is maintained by 
 those only who have made their researches in books, in- 
 stead of amongst the people. Mr. Croker considers it 
 quite certain that the small landholders are in great dis- 
 tress, because, in the ten years ending with 1835, about 
 one-fourth part of the whole landed property of the 
 country was sold ; whereas sales of land are really the 
 most obvious and effectual means of counteracting the 
 evil tendency of the French law of succession. During 
 the same ten years, a fourth part of the land likewise 
 passed into new hands by inheritance or gift, the new 
 owners by inheritance being, of course, in the first in- 
 stance, much more numerous than those whom they suc- 
 ceeded. Most of their shares were only fractions of the 
 estates of their predecessors, and, being too small to 
 afford them what they considered a suitable livelihood, 
 were sold and annexed to other properties. Yet these 
 
 K 
 
130 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 sales, which prevented the further morcellement of land, 
 and the enlargement and consequent impoverishment of 
 the agricultural class these very sales are declared to be 
 signs of the poverty which they really prevented. A 
 similar construction is placed, without much more reason, 
 on the extent to which landed property is mortgaged, the 
 interest payable in consequence being equal to one-third 
 of the estimated rental of the' kingdom. This would be 
 a startling fact if the proprietors had become so deeply 
 indebted from the difference between their ordinary in- 
 come and their ordinary expenditure. It would then be 
 obvious that their resources had not been sufficient for 
 their permanent support, and that, in order to provide for 
 immediate necessities, they had been compelled to make 
 use of their capital, and so to ruin their prospects for the 
 future. But the Reviewer himself admits, though he does 
 not see the importance of his admission, that the debts 
 were incurred before the debtors became proprietors, or 
 rather in order to enable them to become proprietors. 
 A large proportion of the landowners obtained their pro- 
 perty by purchase, and their debts are a part of the 
 purchase-money still remaining unpaid. In this there is 
 not the smallest ground for uneasiness. In France, as in 
 other countries abounding with small estates, it is usual 
 for a person who cannot afford to buy a piece of ground 
 outright, to buy a certain interest in it, leaving it still 
 charged with an annual payment to the last owner, until 
 by industry and thrift he shall have saved enough to free 
 it from all incumbrances. Until that time arrives, he, in 
 fact, holds the land by payment of a fixed rent, the very 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 best possible tenure by which he could hold it, except 
 that of an unembarrassed proprietor. The French mort- 
 gagees are, for the most part, tenants of this description, 
 paying interest or rent, whichever it may be called, at 
 an average rate of four shillings an acre, which, being 
 no more than an English farmer frequently pays for poor's 
 rates, can scarcely be deemed sufficient to reduce a 
 French peasant to pauperism. 
 
 Again, Messrs. Mounier and Rubichon, porirg over 
 rows of figures, and comparing the amount of agricultural 
 produce of the whole kingdom with the number of inhabit- 
 ants, believe they have ascertained that a Frenchman's 
 daily average allowance of food is rather less than two 
 ounces of meat and fifteen ounces of bread or its equiva- 
 lents; and, without being stopped for a moment by the 
 marvellousness of this result, jump to the conclusion 
 that their own nation is the worst fed in Europe. Very 
 different was the opinion of the aged cultivators and 
 workmen consulted by M. Clement in different places, 
 all of whom, without a single exception, agreed that the 
 classes of the population who have only their wages, and 
 are consequently the most exposed to indigence, are now 
 much better fed, lodged, and clothed, than at the com- 
 mencement of the century. 1 Very different is the lan- 
 guage of one who has traversed great part of the Conti- 
 nent on foot, and whose evidence is the more valuable, 
 because, having no favourite theory to support, and being 
 little more than a keen and shrewd observer, his impres- 
 
 1 Recherches sur 1' Indigence, par A. Clement, pp. 84, 85. 
 K 2 
 
132 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 sions are always perfectly unbiassed. * With a tolerably 
 intimate knowledge,' says Mr. Inglis, ' and distinct re- 
 collection of the lower orders of France, I am inclined 
 to assert that, upon the whole, the French peasantry are 
 the happiest of any country in Europe.' 1 While passing 
 through Languedoc, Inglis particularly remarked the 
 * very enviable situation ' of the labouring class. Upon 
 every estate large enough to require them he found one 
 or more small separate houses, in each of which two or 
 three farm servants were accommodated. These people 
 had commonly a garden and a bit of land for Indian 
 corn, and were supplied by their master with as much 
 bacon and wine as they required, besides receiving enough 
 of wages for clothes, &c. A day labourer received two 
 francs. The people appeared to be well off, and paupers 
 were rare. He did not see one miserable between "Car- 
 cassonne and Toulouse. 2 No special allusion is here 
 made to small proprietors; but in a district in which they 
 are intermixed with hired labourers, their condition is 
 always the best of the two. The cultivators are observed 
 to be most prosperous in those parts of France in which 
 the largest proportion of them are proprietors. Mr. 
 Henry Bulwer 3 remarks, that by far the greatest number 
 of indigent is to be found in the northern departments, 
 where land is less divided than elsewhere, and cultivated 
 with larger capitals. 4 Mr. Birkbeck, noticing that on the 
 
 1 Switzerland and South of France, vol. ii. p. 269. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 80. 
 
 3 Afterwards Lord Balling. 
 
 4 Monarchy of the Middle Classes, vol. ii. p. 107. 
 
IN FRANCE. 133 
 
 road from St. Pierre to Moulins, ' the lower classes ap- 
 peared less comfortable,' found on inquiry that ' few of 
 the peasantry thereabouts were proprietors.' 1 Mr. Le 
 Quesne, who, when asking the causes of the smiling pro- 
 ductiveness of Anjou and Touraine, received for answer 
 that the land was divided into small parcels, noticed that 
 the houses of the country people there were remarkable 
 for their neatness, and indicative of the ease and comfort 
 of their possessors. They are built, he says, of fine white 
 stone, and besides being more numerous, are far superior 
 in appearance to those of Normandy, where estates are 
 larger, and where the labourers on those estates com- 
 monly live in miserable mud cottages, with heaps of dung 
 and filth in front. 2 Yet even in the districts in which 
 small properties so much abound, there would seem to 
 be no lack of larger farms to afford work to such cottagers 
 as are not fully employed at home. Inglis, in his walks 
 through Touraine, was overtaken by a countryman who 
 said that he had land enough of his own to supply him 
 with bread, and to enable him to keep a cow and a 
 couple of pigs, and that he was accustomed to earn, in 
 addition, from twenty-five to thirty sous a day by working 
 for others. These sketches are taken at random from 
 different parts of a country of which Mr. M'Culloch, in 
 1823, prophesied that in ' half a century it would certainly 
 be the greatest pauper warren in Europe, and, along with 
 Ireland, have the honour of furnishing hewers of wood 
 
 1 Birkbeck's Tour in France, p. 30. 
 
 * Le Quesne on the Commerce of Jersey : Guernsey and Jersey 
 Magazine, vol. iii. p. HO. 
 
134 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 and drawers of water for all other countries in the world.' 
 Well might Mr. Laing, as, in his tour through France he 
 read this lugubrious prediction, * look up from the page 
 and laugh' to see around him on the rivers, canals, and 
 roads, in steamboats, iron suspension bridges, new fac- 
 tories, and coal works numberless proofs of the progress 
 of industry and wealth under the very system so prema- 
 turely denounced. 1 Mr. M'Culloch's own favourite wit- 
 nesses, Messrs. Birkbeck and J. P. Cobbet, testify against 
 him whenever they descend from the oracular tripod, 
 and instead of prophesying what was to be, are content 
 to describe what actually was. * There is no advancement 
 in French society,' exclaims Mr. Birkbeck; ' no improve- 
 ment nor hope of it;' yet shortly before he had said, ' I 
 have inquired, and everybody assures me that agriculture 
 has been improving rapidly for the last twenty-five years ; 
 that the riches and comforts of the cultivators of the soil have 
 been doubled since that period, and that vast improvement 
 has taken place in the condition and character of the 
 common people. On my first landing I was struck with 
 the respectable appearance of the working class : I see 
 the same marks of comfort and plenty wherever I pro- 
 ceed. I ask for the wretched peasantry, of whom I have 
 heard and read so much, but I am always referred to the 
 Revolution; it seems they vanished then. The labouring 
 class here is certainly much higher on the social scale 
 than with us. Every opportunity of collecting information 
 on this subject confirms my first impression, that there 
 
 1 Laing. Notes of a Traveller, p. 53. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 135 
 
 are very few really poor people in France. In England, 
 a poor man and a labourer are synonymous terms ; we 
 speak familiarly of the poor, meaning the labouring class; 
 not so here.' l Mr. Cobbett's comparison between France 
 and England is equally favourable to the former. He 
 heard that unless the law of inheritance were changed, 
 * society would become degraded in the extreme,' but all 
 that he saw would have warranted more cheering antici- 
 pations. He was surprised to find that the * labouring 
 people or peasantry had usually cows of their own, some- 
 times one, sometimes two or three,' besides pigs; and he 
 could not help seeing that their dress was 'better than 
 that of labourers in England,' and that their breakfast of 
 cabbage soup, bread, and wine, was a thousand times 
 better than the ' cold potatoes and tea' with which people 
 of the same class in this country often prepare for a hard 
 day's work. He saw besides, ' a great many beggars, 
 but not more of them,' he acknowledges, ' in the country 
 parts of France than he would have seen in England if 
 travelling along the same high-road ;' and he adds, 'there 
 is this important difference between the appearance of 
 beggars in France and England: a very large portion of 
 our beggars are neither aged nor infirm, while in France 
 there is scarcely any object of this description that is not 
 old or in some way incapable of earning a living. The 
 greater part of the English beggars beg because they 
 cannot get employment, and the beggars of France beg 
 because they are unfitted for employment. It is the state 
 
 1 Tour in France, pp. 1 1-22. 
 
136 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 of society in England which creates the beggar, while in 
 France it is his inability to render society any service.' l 
 
 Compare the statements quoted above, or any other 
 account of the present or recent state of France, with the 
 pictures drawn not by Marshal Vauban, who, in Louis 
 the XIV.'s time, estimated that three-fifths of the inhabit- 
 ants were either beggars or on the verge of beggary 
 not by Arthur Young, who, at the commencement of the 
 Revolution, found the peasantry half-starved, and distress 
 and misery everywhere prevailing but with the descrip- 
 tions given since the Restoration, of a people fed with 
 roots and clothed in rags. The comparison admits of 
 only two alternatives. Either things were not nearly so 
 bad in M. Lafitte's time as that writer believed, or they 
 have marvellously improved since. Either the pauperism 
 said to be inseparable from peasant proprietorship did 
 
 1 Ride through France, p. 210. 'It is, however, certain that 
 with the exception of some departments which are suffering from 
 exceptional causes, such as inundations or failure of crops, the 
 general aspect of the French rural population shews a marked 
 improvement in the last twenty years. Every house is better built 
 and better arranged than the old cottages. The blue linen blouse 
 is not the only garment of the peasant, winter and summer, but it is 
 worn over good woollen clothing. The bread of the common 
 people is whiter and purer, and the consumption of meat increases. 
 Five and twenty years ago, in a small market town of Normandy 
 which we have sometimes visited, there lived but one butcher, who 
 earned a precarious subsistence from the neighbouring gentry. In 
 the same town there are now nine persons living by the sale of meat. 
 The same progress is even more striking in Touraine, Picardy, and 
 the environs of Paris. But this progress in wellbeing has not led 
 to any corresponding increase of population.' Edinburgh Review, 
 April, 1837. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 137 
 
 not even then exist, or it has since disappeared, although 
 its alleged cause still retains all its vigour. The assailants 
 of peasant proprietorship may choose between the horns 
 of this dilemma. By whichsoever they may prefer to be 
 transfixed, their perplexity will serve equally to refute 
 their unfounded charges. 
 
 One more remark before we leave this part of the 
 subject. Land in France sells much better when offered 
 in small than in large lots. According to the Marquis 
 Gamier, a farm which would let for about 2oo/. a year, 
 could not be sold entire for more than twenty-five years' 
 purchase ; whereas, if divided into several lots, it might 
 sell for forty years' purchase. This, whatever else it may 
 prove, proves likewise that peasants of the lower grades 
 outbid their betters, which they could not do unless, 
 besides gaining enough for their ordinary expences, they 
 were able to save money. It is true that purchases of 
 small estates are not commonly completed at once, but 
 that part of the price is left to be paid off by instalments ; 
 but the credit thus given to the purchaser shows the con- 
 fidence reposed in his ability to obtain a good deal more 
 than a livelihood from his land, and the preference given 
 to him over his wealthier competitors, shows also how 
 firm and how general is the belief that small farms are 
 more productive than large ones. Land is the bank in 
 which the peasantry invest their savings. They are the 
 highest bidders for it ; but, as they cannot aiford to buy 
 much at a time, it must, when offered for sale, be divided 
 into small lots, in order to be brought within their reach. 
 
 Enough has now been said to show that the effect of 
 
1 3 8 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 peasant proprietorship in France, as elsewhere, has been 
 very different from that of promoting pauperism ; that 
 the average size of the properties which in that country 
 are termed small, by way of distinction from large or 
 middle sized, is more than eight acres, and that their 
 average size has remained without sensible diminution 
 for more than thirty years, during which period the people 
 have been steadily advancing to a higher social position. 
 Their actual situation will surfer little from comparison 
 with that of the most favoured nations, and experience 
 justifies the strongest confidence that their prosperity will 
 be permanent at least, if not progressive. This result, too, 
 has been obtained notwithstanding the operation of a law 
 of inheritance, whose natural tendency is to increase the 
 number, and to diminish the possessions of landowners ; 
 but peasant proprietorship has diffused general com- 
 petence, competence has engendered prudence, and 
 prudence has counteracted the influence of the law. 
 Not that the law has been rendered altogether harm- 
 less. It has not been followed by the fatal conse- 
 quences expected from it, but it has produced an evil of 
 a somewhat different character, which, though of 
 secondary importance, is still exceedingly serious. This is 
 not the multiplication but the division of estates. The 
 number and the average extent of landed properties have 
 undergone little alteration, but instead of being compact, 
 an estate is frequently composed of several detached 
 portions. These parcelles, as they are technically called, 
 are to the number of properties as twenty to one, so that 
 unless parcelles belonging to the same person, although 
 
IN FRANCE. 139 
 
 entered separately in the register, are sometimes con- 
 tiguous, every estate must, on an average, consist of 
 twenty fragments in twenty different places. This is in 
 part the direct effect of the law, which not only assigns 
 to every child a certain proportion of his parent's property, 
 but permits him to insist on having a share of every separate 
 field ; but the law acts still more powerfully in an indirect 
 manner, by multiplying sales. The mischief arising 
 from it can scarcely be exaggerated. The expensive 
 litigation and ill-will, occasioned by the partition, the loss 
 of ground in the numberless paths connecting the 
 parcdles, and the loss of time in passing from one to 
 another, the mutual trespasses of cultivators whose slips 
 of ground, are sometimes so narrow that the animals 
 employed in ploughing one cannot avoid trampling on 
 the adjoining one ; the consequent disputes and law-suits 
 all these are commented on by Mounier and his colleague 
 with great but not unjust severity. But these evils, 
 although justly attributable to the French law of inherit- 
 ance, are not its necessary consequences. Such partition 
 as that alluded to, however legal, would be impracticable 
 except in a country open and unenclosed. Thus, it is 
 usual in Alderney, where fences are rare, but is unknown 
 in the other Channel Islands, where, although peasant 
 proprietorship and gavelkind equally prevail, every field 
 is enclosed with hedges. It was once common, likewise, 
 in the open plains of Germany, until experience of the 
 inconveniences arising from it, led to its prohibition, and 
 it might, of course, be put a stop to by the same means in 
 France also. As long, however, as the practice continues, 
 
140 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 it must present formidable obstacles to the progress of 
 agriculture, which, accordingly, must be confessed to be 
 in a very backward state. But that it was ever in a more 
 forward condition does not necessarily follow, nor yet 
 that it is better on large than on small farms, although 
 both propositions are affirmed more zealously than dis- 
 creetly by Messrs. Mounier and Rubichon. In support of 
 their assertions, they produce tables, which their reviewer 
 pronounces 'the most minute and accurate ever made in any 
 country/ and from which he draws the astounding conclu- 
 sion, that ' the average produce of the whole territory may 
 be about los. per acre,' or only 2s. more than the rated, and 
 2s. less than the supposed real rent. In justice, however, 
 to the French authors, this must be acknowledged to be 
 another error of their commentator's, and to be three 
 times as absurd as what they have said themselves. 
 According to them, the value of the average gross produce 
 of an acre is 30^.; but of this estimate also no more need 
 be said, than that it is founded upon the same tables as 
 those which represent the daily average ration of each 
 individual of the whole French population, (an average, 
 of course, infinitely above that of the labouring classes,) 
 to be no more than fifteen ounces of bread or vegetables, 
 and one ounce and three-quarters of meat. Arguments 
 resting on so frail a basis are not entitled to the compli- 
 ment of examination, but one or two facts may be men- 
 tioned in opposition to the conclusion at which they are 
 directed. In 1794, the cultivated area of France was 
 estimated by Arthur Young at 108 millions of acres. 
 According to Chateauvieux, it is now 114 millions, im- 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 plying an addition of about 5^ per cent. Population has 
 meantime advanced from 26 to 33 millions, or at the rate 
 of about 27 per cent. If these estimates be correct, the 
 original area of 108 millions of acres, which formerly 
 maintained only 26 millions of inhabitants, now maintains 
 31 millions, and feeds the larger number much better 
 than the smaller was fed before the Revolution. France 
 was never a large importer of provisions, and is less so 
 now than ever, many articles of food which were once 
 admitted free being now subject to heavy duties. How 
 then can an additional population of five millions be fed 
 by the produce of. the same territory, unless the land be 
 better cultivated than formerly? It is evident that, in 
 spite of the great and manifold disadvantages under which 
 the peasantry labour, in spite of the parcellemcnt of in- 
 dividual estates, in spite of the continuance of the old 
 customs of vaine pature and parcours, whereby at certain 
 seasons the cattle of all the inhabitants are let loose to 
 graze over a whole district, the characteristic industry of 
 proprietors, hampered as it is, has yet been so vigorously 
 exerted, as to create an increase of nearly one-fifth in 
 the produce of the soil. 
 
 So much for the alleged decline of French agriculture 
 generally. The next subject for comparison is the rela- 
 tive cultivation of large and small farms. M. Rubichon 
 finds that in the forty- two northern departments, there 
 are 10,079 properties paying a land-tax of 1,000 francs 
 or upwards, while in the forty-three departments of the 
 south, there are only 3,282 of such properties ; further, 
 that in the north the average rate per hectare is about 
 
142 , PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 three francs, and only two francs in the south. Whence, 
 as the rate of land-tax is regulated by the produce of the 
 soil, he concludes that those parts of France are the most 
 productive in which there is the greatest number of rich 
 proprietors. 1 The truth of this proposition is unassailable, 
 but its converse is equally true. There are more of large 
 properties in the north than in the south, by about 6,800, 
 but in the north the number of properties of the smaller 
 class is also the greatest by more than a million, whence 
 it appears, that those parts of France are the most pro- 
 ductive in which there is the largest number of small 
 properties. So far the balance is equal between the two 
 parties ; it does not appear whether the superiority of 
 northern agriculture is attributable to the prevalence of 
 large or of small proprietors. But sentence must be passed 
 in favour of the latter, when it is considered that they outbid 
 the former not only as tenants, 2 but as purchasers. If 
 they merely paid a higher rent, it might be supposed that, 
 like Irish cottiers, necessity compelled them to submit to 
 any terms, however unreasonable, in order to obtain land ; 
 but they can likewise pay a higher price, which they could 
 not do unless their business were relatively more profitable, 
 and more favourable to saving than that of larger farmers. 
 Among the supposed signs of the decay of French 
 agriculture, one is the alleged diminution of the number 
 of sheep and cattle. With respect to sheep, it is generally 
 
 1 Mounier, ut supra, vol. i. p. Ii6. 
 
 2 According to M. Passy, the average rent per hectare of large, 
 middling, and small farms, is in France, 75, 85, and 140 francs 
 respectively. Systemes de Culture, pp. 102, 103. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 143 
 
 admitted that small farms are unsuitable for the manage- 
 ment of them, and it is probable enough that sheep- 
 farming, which, as Young informs us, was very ill under- 
 stood even before the Revolution, was still less practised 
 in the period immediately following that event, and after 
 the domains of the clergy and nobility had been distri- 
 buted among forty times as many owners as before. As 
 long as the average size of estates was decreasing, the 
 number of sheep may also have decreased, but during 
 the last thirty years at least, the former has remained 
 nearly stationary, and it may fairly be presumed that the 
 latter has undergone as little variation during the same 
 period. At any rate, much stronger proofs of its having 
 recently declined are needed than those produced by M. 
 Mounier, who, in the whole kingdom, has only been able 
 to discover two communes in one of which seven flocks 
 have disappeared in thirty years, and in the other, five 
 flocks in six years. 1 
 
 Small farms do not lie under the same disadvantage 
 with respect to the breeding of horned cattle : on the 
 contrary, when well managed, they are peculiarly 
 adapted to it. In England, there are seldom more than 
 ten or twelve head of horned cattle on a farm of a 
 hundred arable acres; but a Flemish farmer of fifteen acres, 
 of which only seven or eight are under green crops, will 
 keep six beasts stall fed. 2 Yet in France, the national 
 stock of cattle is said to have diminished since the Revo- 
 lution, and the assertion, unlike mosi of those put forth 
 
 1 Mounier, ut supra , vol. ii. p. 125. 
 
 2 Flemish Husbandry, p. 80. 
 
144 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 by the same parties, is not a mere assumption, but 
 receives countenance from the unquestionable fact that 
 the supply of beef to several towns bears a smaller pro- 
 portion than formerly to the population, and that the 
 price has likewise risen considerably. The supply has 
 increased, but not so much as the number of inhabitants, 
 In Paris, for instance, the consumption of meat was 
 i5olbs. for each person in 1789 ; but in 1841, the 
 average had fallen to 121 Ibs. ; of beef, the consumption 
 per head is said to have fallen from 105 Ibs. to 54 Ibs., 
 and the price to have risen 16 per cent, in seven years. 
 Mr. Mill has given a satisfactory explanation of these 
 phenomena, without ascribing them to the substitution of 
 small for large farms, which should naturally have pro- 
 duced effects directly opposite. ' In Paris, before the 
 Revolution, there was, comparatively speaking, no produc- 
 tion at all, but only distribution ; the population consisted 
 of the great landlords, the court and higher functionaries 
 paid by the state, the bankers, financiers, government 
 contractors, and other moneyed classes, with the great and 
 small dealers and tradesmen needful for supplying these 
 opulent customers, and few labourers beyond those who 
 could not be wanting in so large a town. In such a city 
 the rich must have borne an unusually high numerical 
 proportion to the poorer consumers.' l But Paris has 
 since become one of the chief seats of French manufacture, 
 and the addition of one-third to the population is no 
 doubt principally owing to the augmentation of the 
 
 1 Morning Chronicle, Jan. 16, 1847. The article quoted was 
 shortly afterwards reprinted by Mr. Mill in his Principles of Politi- 
 cal Economy, vol. i. Appendix. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 labouring and poorer classes. As the poor eat much less 
 meat than the rich, such a change in the numerical pro- 
 portion between the classes would occasion a corre- 
 sponding reduction in the average consumption per head 
 of the whole population. This would be the case even if 
 the demand continued to be adequately supplied, a sup- 
 position, however, which is inconsistent with the rise of 
 price that has taken place. But this rise of price does 
 not necessarily imply a decrease in the number of native 
 cattle. The increasing demand of towns can only be met 
 by supplies brought from a distance, and at an expense 
 continually increasing; and in order to convey increased 
 supplies to inland towns, like Paris and Lyons, to which, 
 before the discovery of steam navigation and the con- 
 struction of railways, cattle could only be brought by 
 tedious land journeys, the increase of expense must have 
 been considerable. Again, France was formerly a large 
 importer of foreign cattle, which, until 1814, were 
 admitted free ; but, in that year, a duty of three francs 
 on every head of cattle was imposed, and, in 1822, a 
 sudden increase of the duty to 55 francs nearly put a 
 stop to the importation. ' Moreover, the octroi or town 
 custom duty, now so burthensome, did not exist at all in 
 1789, and has been largely increased at various periods, 
 both in Paris and most other towns, since its first estab- 
 lishment/ These three causes seem to be quite sufficient 
 to account for the enhancement of price without attributing 
 it to a diminution of the national stock of cattle, a sup- 
 position which, although it cannot be completely disproved, 
 for want of sufficient evidence, is contradicted by such 
 
 L 
 
146 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 partial evidence as is procurable. We have no means of 
 comparing the present number of cattle existing through- 
 out France with that existing at a remote period, but we 
 are able to make such a comparison in particular districts. 
 For the De'partement de 1'Eure, for instance, a very careful 
 statistical report was drawn up in 1800, from which and 
 from investigations made in 1837, it appears that in 
 the interval, the quantity of live-stock increased exceed- 
 ingly j horses increasing in number from 29,500 to 
 51,000; horned cattle, from 5o;ooo to 105,000; swine, 
 from 36,000 to 49,000 ; and sheep, from 205,000 to 
 5ii,ooo. 1 it maybe objected that this Department is 
 one in which large farms are more numerous than in most 
 parts of France ; but it appears that large and small 
 farms are ' intermixed, and that the relative proportions 
 have not perceptibly varied since the commencement of 
 the present century. Those, however, who may never- 
 theless think that the large farms alone are entitled to 
 the credit arising from this increase of live-stock, may be 
 induced to change their opinion by a statement of some 
 particulars respecting the commune of Vensat, in 
 Auvergne, one of the provinces in which, if anywhere, 
 morcellement of land has been carried to excess. The 
 arable land of that commune was occupied in 1790 by 
 thirty-seven farms. The present number of farms is not 
 stated, but the number of properties is 591. But in 
 1790 there were only 300 horned cattle, and from 1,800 
 to 2,000 sheep; there are now 676 of the former, and 
 
 1 Passy. Changemens survenus dans la Situation Agricole du 
 Pepartement de 1'Eure, p. 12. 
 
IN FRANCE. 147 
 
 533 of the latter ; so that it has gained 376 oxen, and 
 lost 1,300 sheep ; or, as ten sheep are reckoned by 
 French agriculturists to be equivalent to one cow or ox, 
 ,its real gain may be stated at 246 oxen. 1 A still more 
 satisfactory account is given of the arrondissement of 
 Fougeres, by its Sous-prefet M. Bertin, who tells us that, 
 between 1813 and 1844, horned cattle multiplied from 
 34,500 to 51, 900; sheep, from 6,300 to 11,000; swine, 
 from 9,300 to 26,000; and horses, from 7,400 to n,6oo. 2 
 It may be added, that, in the Departement du Nord, 
 cattle are most abundant in those districts in which 
 farms are smallest. The arrondissements of Lille 
 and Hazebrouck, besides a greater number of horses, 
 maintain, respectively, fifty-two and forty-six oxen on 
 every 250 acres, while the arrondissements of Dunkerque 
 and Avesnes, in which the largest farms are situated, 
 maintain only forty-four and forty respectively. 3 
 
 General descriptions are seldom at once both literally 
 accurate and sufficiently distinct, nor is the aspect of a 
 large country ever so uniform that in many places devi- 
 ations from the prevalent character may not be detected. 
 Taking a comprehensive survey 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 condition of the 
 peasantry and of the other labouring classes has for many 
 
 1 Passy. Systemes de Culture, p. 119. 
 
 2 Bertin. Notice sur la Baronie, &c. de Fougeres, p. 390. 
 8 Passy. Systemes de Culture, pp. 118, 119. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 years been steadily improving. But the truth of this 
 statement is not incompatible with the existence of many 
 exceptional cases. That peasant proprietorship is a well- 
 spring of poverty is a notion utterly groundless, but to re- 
 present it as a palladium against indigence would be only 
 a few degrees less absurd. Its tendency is assuredly both 
 to give and to secure to the agricultural classes the pos- 
 session of competence, but its influence may be counter- 
 acted by numberless opposing causes. Men are not 
 mere machines, to take invariably the course prescribed 
 for them ; self-will is sometimes more than a match for 
 self-interest, and, even if they were willing to be guided 
 by prudence, they could not always provide against ex- 
 traordinary accidents. Instances, no doubt, occur of a 
 peasant's sons who will not acknowledge the necessity of 
 selling their little patrimony, and who, persisting in their 
 efforts to gain a living, each from the patch of ground 
 which has fallen to his share, have to struggle despe- 
 rately for subsistence. But in opposition to such acts of 
 folly are to be set cases of more than ordinary thrift and 
 foresight, which counteract the effects of the former, and 
 maintain undiminished the proportion of the prosperous 
 to the unfortunate. The examples of poverty, how- 
 ever, are not all isolated. Both in France and in some 
 parts of Germany, the peasantry of entire villages are 
 sometimes reduced to severe and long-continued distress. 
 The causes of their misfortunes are probably somewhat 
 different in every instance, and cannot be precisely de- 
 termined without a knowledge of many local circum- 
 stances, but a reasonable conjecture may be hazarded as 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 149 
 
 to their most usual character. When the cultivators are 
 only tenant-farmers, their embarrassment may arise from 
 a fall in the market price of their produce. If, in 
 England, the cheapness consequent on an abundant 
 harvest is invariably accompa-nied by a cry of ' agricul- 
 tural distress,' and if English landlords, making a virtue 
 of necessity, are frequently obliged to take the praises of 
 the county newspapers in payment of' their irrecoverable 
 dues, it is not very wonderful if something of the same 
 kind should sometimes occur in France, and if there also 
 arrears of rent should occasionally remain long unpaid. 
 It may be thought, however, that cultivators of their own 
 lands should be comparatively unaffected by fluctuations 
 of the market j that, selling no more of their produce 
 than what remains after their own consumption is satis- 
 fied, they should at all times be equally well supplied with 
 the necessaries of life, and should suffer from no other 
 deficiency than that of the less indispensable articles 
 which they are obliged to buy. But, besides that many 
 of the so-called peasant proprietors of France have not 
 completed the purchase of their property, and are more 
 properly tenants at a fixed rent, they frequently employ 
 only a small portion of their farms in raising provisions. 
 Notwithstanding the superior productiveness of their mode 
 of husbandry when applied to grain or to esculent 
 vegetables, their superiority over larger farmers is shown 
 still more decisively in crops requiring more minute and 
 constant attention. In many districts they find it most 
 profitable tp cultivate hemp, or flax, or hops ; in others 
 their chief dependence is on their vineyards, or orchards, 
 
 it vf IHE r 
 
 [( UNIVERSITY 
 
150 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 or plantations of olive or mulberry trees. The crops thus 
 obtained are more valuable than corn or roots, but they 
 are also more liable to failure, and the demand for them 
 is much more irregular. The proprietor must sell in 
 order to buy necessaries, and, if unfavourable weather 
 have lessened the quantity or injured the quality of his 
 produce, or if a change of taste or fashion, or a super- 
 abundant supply, or an alteration of custom-house regu- 
 lations have lowered the price, the money he obtains may 
 be insufficient for his wants, and he may be compelled to 
 borrow in order to live. A succession of bad seasons 
 will plunge him deeper and deeper into difficulties, and a 
 continuance of the causes which have lowered prices may 
 ruin him irrecoverably. Many owners of small vineyards 
 in the neighbourhood of Paris have suffered much within 
 the last thirty years from the competition of the vine- 
 growers of the south : owing probably to some similar 
 cause, some of the smaller proprietors in the arrondisse- 
 ment of Fougeres are obliged to borrow seed for sowing 
 their fields ; and, since the accession of Nassau to the 
 Zollverein, and the consequent abolition of the monopoly 
 they formerly enjoyed, some of the inhabitants of at least 
 one village in that Duchy have been compelled to sur- 
 render their lands to their creditors. 1 But would these 
 disasters have been escaped by larger farmers similarly 
 situated, or would not they have been equally affected 
 by a permanent depreciation of their produce ? Their 
 losses might not indeed have been so extensively felt. 
 
 1 Passy. Systemes de Culture, pp. 72-75 ; Bertiru Notice sur 
 la Baronie, &c. de Fougeres, p. 336. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 V/hen they ceased to fulfil their engagements to their 
 landlords, they would have been removed to make way 
 for fresh tenants at reduced rents, who might have con- 
 tinued to employ as many labourers as their predecessors ; 
 whereas, where properties are much divided, the owners 
 are themselves both farmers and labourers, and their mis- 
 fortunes are those of the whole agricultural body. But 
 this does not prove that peasants are necessarily more 
 secure as hired servants than as proprietors. It proves 
 only, if it proves anything, that they should not trust to 
 the sale of their produce for the means of subsistence, 
 but should raise their own provisions ; but it would be 
 difficult to show why this obligation should be imposed 
 upon them more than upon artisans and handicraftsmen, 
 and the multitudes of other labourers who live by the 
 sale of their work. 
 
 The foregoing pages were written before the publi- 
 cation of the ' Treatise on Succession to Property/ by Mr. 
 M'Culloch, who, in the Chapter on Compulsory Partition, 
 treats at some length of peasant proprietors, and par- 
 ticularly of those of France. What he there says on the 
 subject (though he avails himself of the opportunity to 
 retract or modify one or two of his early opinions) is for 
 the most part a repetition either of statements made in 
 former works by himself, or of the fallacies of Messrs. 
 Mounier and Rubichon, and has already been brought 
 before the reader's notice. One of his arguments, how- 
 ever, is sufficiently novel to deserve a distinct examination. 
 It is drawn from the dearth of the year 1846-7, the 
 distress consequent on which was, according to Mr. 
 
152 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 M'Culloch, 'wholly confined to the countries in which 
 subdivision has been carried to excess that is, to 
 Ireland, France, parts of Belgium, and of Rhenish 
 Prussia;' whence it is inferred that, ' even in the best years, 
 occupiers of small patches have but little produce to part 
 with ; and that, in unfavourable years, they are themselves, 
 as well as those who depend on them for supplies, usually 
 involved in the greatest difficulties.' l Here premises and 
 conclusion appear to be equally erroneous The distress 
 of the period referred to was not confined to countries of 
 small farms, nor are the peasantry of such countries 
 peculiarly disqualified for contending with the calamities 
 of adverse seasons. It is true, that during the recent scar- 
 city, England suffered less than some of her neighbours ; 
 but it is not true that no countries suffered except those 
 in which land is minutely divided. The dearth extended 
 over almost the whole of Western Europe, from the 
 Baltic and North Seas to the Mediterranean and Atlantic ; 
 and from the unexampled price to which bread rose at 
 Lisbon, would seem to have been still more acutely felt 
 in that capital of a kingdom of large farms than at Paris 
 or Brussels. Neither was the comparative exemption of 
 Britain owing to the excellence of her agricultural 
 arrangements : it is to be ascribed entirely to the fact of 
 her having escaped one of the visitations that afflicted 
 her neighbours. In common with them she suffered 
 from the failure of the potato, but the loss in her case 
 was partially compensated by an abundant wheat 
 
 1 M'Culloch on Succ. to Prop. pp. 130, 131. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 153 
 
 harvest; whereas, in theirs, it was aggravated by a 
 deficiency of all grain crops, especially of rye. Having 
 thus less to bear she was able to bear it better ; but 
 there is no reason to suppose that she would have 
 exhibited greater patience if subjected to the same trial. 
 Whenever on former occasions her wheat crops have 
 actually failed, the peasantry have suffered at least as 
 grievously as those of other countries ; and it is indeed 
 difficult to understand how the fact of their being hired 
 labourers, instead of small landowners, should enable 
 them to bear up better against their difficulties. The 
 latter, unless their farms be unusually small, raise in 
 ordinary years more produce than they require for their 
 own consumption, and in bad seasons can, if they please, 
 retain the whole for their own use instead of sending any 
 to market; so that the worst evils of scarcity must be felt, 
 not by themselves but by their customers, the non- 
 agricultural part of the community. Even if their farms 
 be so small as in ordinary years to produce no greater 
 quantity of provisions than they themselves require, their 
 position is still at all times at least as good as that of the 
 hired labourer. If in a bad year they obtain only half a 
 crop, they must place themselves on half rations ; but the 
 labourer at the same time receiving his usual wages, 
 would not, on account of the rise of prices, be able to 
 buy more than half his usual allowance of food, nor 
 indeed nearly so much; for, as is well known, the price of 
 provisions always rises much more than in proportion to 
 the deficiency of the supply. The comparative security 
 against want enjoyed by small proprietors and by 
 
I 5 4 PEA SA NT PR OPRIE TORS HIP 
 
 labourers may be estimated from the degree of their 
 dependence on public charity. Thousands of English 
 labourers are supported during a part of every year at 
 the public expense ; and it is the aid which they derive 
 from the poors' rates that prevents them, in periods of 
 distress, from breaking into open violence more frequently 
 than they actually do. The French peasantry, on the 
 other hand, are in general self-dependent ; and the 
 interference of the government last year, 1 in order to 
 procure for them additional supplies of food, was a step 
 almost without precedent. What amount of money may 
 have been expended for this purpose is not very generally 
 known ; but it was certainly nothing like ten millions 
 sterling, to which sum it must nevertheless have reached 
 in order to correspond with the amount annually 
 expended on the relief of the poor of the much smaller 
 population of England. Yet the condition of peasant 
 proprietors is pronounced to be peculiarly unfortunate, 
 because, on an occasion of extraordinary exigence, such 
 as does not occur once in a century, exertions were 
 required for their relief, very inferior to those which are 
 annually made in a country where peasant proprietors 
 are scarcely known. 
 
 Besides, if we had more minute information respect- 
 ing the distress recently experienced in France, we 
 might very possibly find that among the multitudes fed 
 at the public expense were very few peasant proprietors, 
 and no great number of peasants of any description. It 
 
 1847. 
 
IN FRANCE. 
 
 155 
 
 is certain that the sympathies of the government were 
 principally excited by the clamours of the populace of 
 the capital and other large towns, and it is likely enough 
 that in this as in many other instances, Paris and France 
 have been confounded, and that distress has been hastily 
 assumed to be national, which, if analysed, would have 
 proved to be much more urban than rural. It may be 
 recollected that during the last winter the tranquillity of 
 the usually contented and peaceable Channel Islands was 
 partially disturbed, and that food riots took place in 
 Jersey. The rioters were, however, exclusively towns- 
 people, and the greater part of them were labourers on 
 the public works. The peasantry not only took no part 
 in the tumult, but never seemed to suffer anything more 
 than inconvenience from the unusually high price of pro- 
 visions. Scarcely an instance occurred in any of the 
 isla.nds of the owner of a piece of ground, however small, 
 condescending to apply for parochial relief. 
 
 In one province, however, of one of the countries 
 mentioned by Mr. M'Culloch the distress was certainly 
 felt most acutely in the rural districts. In Flanders, it 
 was the very small landholders who , suffered most; nor 
 has their distress disappeared with the causes which for 
 awhile aggravated its symptoms. Although the dearth of 
 1846-7 has been followed by a plentiful harvest, many of 
 the Flemish peasants are. still in great want; pauperism 
 and mendicancy are making progress amongst them, and 
 the Belgian legislature has for some time been anxiously 
 debating by what means these plagues can be arrested. 
 Of course, this state of things is triumphantly referred to 
 
156 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP 
 
 as corroborating the doctrines of the opponents of peasant 
 proprietorship, although peasant properties cultivated by 
 their owners are in Flanders rather the exception than 
 the rule, and though it does not really deserve to be 
 cited as testimony even against small farming. Under 
 this latter system the Flemings have confessedly 
 flourished for ages, yet no sooner does a calamity befal 
 them, than what had previously been regarded as the 
 source of their prosperity, is pronounced to have occa- 
 sioned their ruin. For ages, they have lived in com- 
 petence on small farms, which have been transmitted 
 from generation to generation without diminution of 
 size ; yet the occupation of these farms is suddenly 
 discovered to have always contained the germs of pauper- 
 ism. By those who are unwilling to believe that effects 
 so directly opposite can have proceeded from the same 
 cause, a more reasonable explanation may be easily found. 
 Land has long been more minutely subdivided in 
 Flanders than in other parts of Belgium. Among the 
 farmers properly so called that is to say, among those 
 holding land sufficient for the occupation and maintenance 
 of a family are interspersed many smaller occupiers, 
 whose territorial possessions correspond closely with what 
 in England are called cottage allotments; and it is this 
 class whose condition has lately undergone so deplorable 
 a change. But these men could never be properly called 
 husbandmen. Their situation closely resembled that of 
 the rural artisans of Switzerland. The produce of their 
 plots of ground formed only a small part of their means 
 of subsistence; the spade enabled them agreeably to vary 
 
IN FRANCE. 157 
 
 their employments, but their chief dependence was on 
 the wheel or loom. Most of them were spinners of thread, 
 or weavers; and, as long as the articles made by them 
 kept up their price, their earnings were sufficient for their 
 decent maintenance; but latterly they have been subjected 
 to a rivalry with which it is in vain to struggle. Their 
 manual labour has had to compete with steam, and has 
 of course been outdone the factory has been raised at 
 the expense of the cottage. The rural spinners and 
 weavers have thus been deprived of their principal re- 
 source; but theirs is evidently a case, not of agricultural, 
 but of manufacturing distress. Their connexion with 
 the land may, and no doubt does, alleviate their misery, 
 but cannot in any conceivable manner have helped to 
 produce it. If they had been landless operatives, they 
 must, in losing their occupation, have lost everything. 
 As it is, they are saved from utter destitution by the 
 possession of their plots of land. In either case they 
 must have been reduced to poverty; but it is surely a 
 strange perversion of the truth to impute their ruin to the 
 very cause which prevents it from being complete. 1 
 
 1 So far as Flanders is concerned the distress adverted to in the 
 text arose from temporary causes, and has now (1874) completely 
 disappeared. Taking a walk last summer in the neighbourhood of 
 Ypres with a well-known Belgian economist, I inquired how 
 pauperism is provided for in his commune. ' There is none, ' was 
 the reply, ' either here or in any of the purely rural communes. 
 Nowhere in Flanders, outside the great towns, will you see a beggar 
 holding out his hand. It is very different in Namur and some of 
 the other provinces. ' This is quite in accordance with my own 
 subsequent experience. 
 
158 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP THE 
 SUBJECT RESUMED. 
 
 EXCEPT that here and there some slight corrections have 
 been made, a word or two changed, a sentence or two 
 erased or introduced, and a few notes added, the last two 
 chapters have been reprinted as they were originally 
 written. They present what at that time seemed to me 
 to be the entire truth of the case, and what I still believe 
 to be all truth; but I am now aware that some additional 
 remarks must be added to make that truth complete. 
 
 In respect to the special phenomena exhibited by 
 France, I have little, if anything, to qualify. M. de 
 Lavergne's valuable work on the Rural Economy of that 
 country was published in 1860, and it is not a little satis- 
 factory to me to find the views I had put forward twelve 
 years previously confirmed as to every essential point by 
 so high an authority. M. de Lavergne shows that French 
 population, instead of advancing with the rapidity appre- 
 hended by numerous prophets of evil, slackened its pace 
 very remarkably during the decade immediately subse- 
 quent to the latest date to which I had occasion to refer. 
 Between 1815 and 1846 the annual rate of increase had 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP RESUMED. 159 
 
 averaged 200,000; from 1847 to 1856 its average was 
 only 60,000. l In no less than twelve out of fifteen north- 
 eastern departments to wit, in Haute-Saone, Meurthe, 
 Bas Rhin, Meuse, Vosges, Jura, Cote d'Or, Yonne, 
 Haute-Marne, Doubs, Ardennes, and Moselle the number 
 of inhabitants had even decreased within five years, and 
 that, by no less than 212,695, one-fourth of the decrease 
 moreover being due to excess of deaths over births. 2 
 But indeed it has now become superfluous to insist that 
 no fear was ever more misplaced than that of France 
 becoming a * pauper warren.' Her danger in regard to 
 population is now perceived to be of an opposite charac- 
 ter. ' La plupart des Normands/ says M. de Lavergne, 
 * n'ont pas lu Malthus, mais ils pratiquent instinctivement 
 ses conseils/ and it is well understood that a similar 
 remark would be perfectly applicable to the bulk of the 
 French peasantry. 
 
 M. de Lavergne does not profess to state with any 
 precision what changes took place, during the decade in 
 question, in the numbers either of the whole body of 
 landed proprietors, or in the various classes of which that 
 whole body was made up. It is not, however, at all 
 likely that, with a total population so nearly stationary, 
 
 1 Economic Rurale de la France, p. 47. A serviceable supple- 
 ment to M. de Lavergne's treatise is a paper by Mr. Cliffe Leslie 
 on the ' Land System of France ' in the first series of Cobden 
 Club Essays. 
 
 2 Lavergne, ut supra, pp. 174-5. Seven other departments in 
 other parts of France are mentioned, which had lost altogether 
 257,627 inhabitants between 1790 and 1856, but whether any part 
 of this loss took place within the last ten years is not stated. 
 
160 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 with so insignificant an addition to the number of persons 
 among whom the land could possibly be divided the 
 landowners could have increased to any extent beyond 
 what the reclamation of land previously waste would 
 fully account for, without help from any supposititious 
 subdivision of land already occupied. M. de Lavergne 
 does, however, point out that, whereas in 1789, out of a 
 total population of 26,500,000, 20,500,000 were rural and 
 only 6,000,000 urban, in 1861 out of a total of 36,000,000, 
 15,000,000 were urban and no more than 21,000,000 
 rural, 1 the rural population having thus remained nearly 
 stationary for 70 years. He bears witness, too, to the 
 accelerated improvement, due mainly to the simul- 
 taneously increasing productiveness of the soil, which, 
 during the latter portion of the same period, had been 
 going on in the material condition of the cultivators, and 
 calculates that of the 100 per cent, added to the wages of 
 
 1 In one place M. de Lavergne, after giving 50,000 as the number 
 of large proprietors in 1861, and 500,000 as that of the middling- 
 sized, reckons the small proprietors at no less than 5,000,000, and 
 seems to admit that they had increased in number by 1,200,000 
 since 1815 (pp. 49-51). I suspect, however, that this must have 
 been a slip of the pen on his part ; for the statement, independent 
 of other objections to it, is irreconcilable with the following on 
 page 454. ' 500,000 fermiers avec leurs families, 500,000 metayers, 
 2,000,000 de journaliers et domestiques, les une et les autres petits 
 proprietaires pour la plupart, avec 2,000,000 de proprietaires 
 ruraux independants, telle est & peu pres la decomposition de notre 
 population rurale.' The million of fermiers and metayers had 
 previously been described as tenants of a ' million d'exploitations ' 
 belonging to the large and middling landowners, so that, these 
 tenants being abstracted, there would remain less than 4,000,000 of 
 landowners of every degree, large and small. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIE TORSHIP RESUMED. \ 6 1 
 
 agricultural labourers between 1789 and 1856,* 80 per 
 cent, were added subsequently to i8i5. 2 Also he ad- 
 verts to a cause which for some years past has sensibly 
 checked the sale of rural estates, and which is likely to 
 have henceforward more and more influence of the same 
 kind the recently awakened willingness of the country 
 people to invest their savings in the public funds and 
 railway and other stocks. Together with the incalculable 
 evil of Louis Napoleon's sway, there will have been some 
 enduring good if, by his ingenious expedient of emprunts 
 nationauX) he shall have taught the French peasantry 
 other uses for their spare francs besides that of tempting 
 their neighbours to part with strips of their petty patri- 
 monies. 
 
 Apart, however, from any special reference to France, 
 the credit given to peasant proprietorship in general, 
 requires some not unimportant qualifications. Even that 
 particular virtue which most frequently accompanies 
 such proprietorship, is not its invariable characteristic. 
 ' Wealth,' M. de Lavergne remarks, ' as well as poverty, is 
 contagious,' and so too are the industry which alone can 
 create the one and the laziness which, in husbandry at 
 least, has commonly the other for its punishment. A man 
 who, tilling his own fields, is his own employer, and is 
 assured of having for his own use the whole fruit of his 
 labour, has the strongest possible incentive to exertion; 
 still, if the majority of his neighbours are in the habit of 
 taking things easily, he is only too likely to follow their 
 
 1 Lavergne, ut supra, pp. 417 and 420. 
 
 2 Ut supra, p. 58. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 example, while no one can be reasonably expected to 
 trouble himself to raise more produce than he expects 
 to find demand for. Perhaps it may be for the first of 
 these reasons that the few isolated specimens still to be 
 found in our midland and southern counties of the old 
 yeoman class men tilling and living upon their own three 
 or four scores of ancestral acres often contrast rather 
 unfavourably than otherwise with the tenant-at-will 
 farmers with whom they are intermingled. It is not in 
 human nature for these latter to take extraordinary pains 
 in order to suggest to their landlord the expediency 
 of raising their rents ; and it is the practice of these 
 which the yeoman adopts as his industrial standard, 
 while ambition to play the part of a squireen is apt to 
 prevent his acting very steadily even up to that. It 
 may have been for the second reason that Wordsworth, in 
 the pleasing picture he has drawn of the * statesmen ' of 
 Cumberland and Westmorland, was unable to add to the 
 other praises he has bestowed on his favourite peasantry, 
 that of model cultivators. 
 
 Besides, no one of the praises passed upon peasant 
 proprietors must be understood to be applicable except 
 on one obvious condition, that, namely, of the peasants 
 being themselves the cultivators of the fields they own. 
 Peasants who let their land to be cultivated by others 
 are, of all landlords, the most griping. Their one object 
 in that capacity is to obtain the highest possible rent ; and 
 they never hesitate to accept the utmost that competition 
 causes to be offered, unless from doubt whether the 
 offerer may be able to pay. They have nothing of the 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP RESUMED. 163 
 
 sense of patronage which, in England, is invariably felt 
 by hereditary owners, and, even by recent purchasers, 
 of extensive domains ; nothing of the intelligent self- 
 interest or kindly sympathy by which these are so often 
 prompted to co-operate with their farmers in costly 
 improvements, or to build model cottages for labourers, 
 or to contribute largely to schools for the village children. 
 They are themselves of the same social class as the 
 cultivators who hold of them ; their dealings with these 
 are regarded by them purely as matters of business, and 
 they have no more notion of letting their lands for a 
 farthing less than can be screwed out of the tenants, 
 than the tenants have of taking less than the market 
 price for their milk and butter. Neither, if they had any 
 taste for such liberality would they fancy themselves able 
 to afford to indulge it ; for, with them as with other 
 people, to live is the prime necessity, and the rent of a 
 score or so of acres, however high the rate, is not much 
 to live upon. Every penny is of consequence, and 
 accordingly every obtainable penny is sternly exacted. 
 Anything but satisfactory, therefore, is the condition of 
 the actually cultivating class, wherever, on the one hand, 
 landed property is minutely divided, and, on the other, is 
 not occupied by its owners. Such is the case throughout 
 Flanders generally, and more especially in the Pays de 
 Waes : and quite saddening are some of the details given 
 by M. de Laveleye with respect to Flemish tenant 
 farmers. Rents, according to official statistics, increased, 
 between 1830 and ]846, 21 per cent, in Western, and 30 
 per cent, in Eastern, Flanders ; and the augmentation, 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 instead of slackening, became accelerated between 1846 
 and 1860, so that the total average rise was 40 per 
 cent, in thirty years, although during the same period 
 com advanced in price only 3 per cent. And still the 
 rise of rent goes on ; the certainty of its taking place 
 every ninth year, at the expiration of the lease, meanwhile 
 filling the farmer with anxiety and poisoning his existence. 
 By continual sacrifices and unintermitted toil he has 
 almost doubled, within the space of a single generation, 
 the net produce of his fields; but it is only very transitorily 
 indeed that he is permitted to benefit by the additional 
 fertility he has created, the effect of which, so far as he 
 is concerned, speedily becomes simply an enhancement 
 of the demands upon him. So he distrusts everyone who 
 asks him for information on the state of agriculture, and 
 replies with reluctance to questions on the subject, dissem- 
 bling the productiveness he has contrived to communicate 
 to the soil, for fear of its being discovered that the farm 
 which his management has so much improved, can in 
 consequence bear a proportionably heavier rent. 1 
 
 Is there, then, inherent in peasant proprietorship any 
 tendency to degenerate into this worst and most 
 offensive form of landlordism ? Colonel Mure, in some 
 able letters addressed by him to the Editor of the 
 Times, 2 has forcibly contended that there is. He sees a 
 glaring example of such degeneracy in Flanders, and he 
 considers the same result inevitable in every country 
 
 1 Laveleye. Economic Rurale de la Belgique, pp. 71 and 72, 
 also 233, c. 8. 
 
 2 In December, 1869, and January, 1870. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP RESUMED. 165 
 
 having its land parcelled out among a multitude of small 
 owners, and being at the same time subject to the law of 
 equal division of property among the children of a 
 deceased owner. He argues that, ' in such circumstances, 
 as generations succeed each other, and population 
 increases, and with it competition, the proprietor finding 
 it impossible without excessive labour to extract from 
 the land a fair return for his capital, and unable to resist 
 the temptation of high offers, soon learns to prefer the 
 ease and petty power of the landlord to the toil of the 
 husbandman.' If I thought Colonel Mure right in this 
 view, I should at once throw up my brief ; peasant pro- 
 prietorship should have no advocate in me. It would, in 
 my eyes, be no compensation for the evil of a system which 
 condemned the bulk of the agricultural population to 
 such sorry fare as blackbread and potatoes, that it caused 
 twice as much milk and butter as would be forthcoming 
 under another system, to be supplied for the nourishment 
 of the rest of the community. Whenever the labourer is 
 worthy of his hire, it is plainly desirable that the hire should 
 be worthy of the labourer, particularly when the labour to 
 be recompensed is agricultural, upon which, as its basis, 
 rests whatever of comfort or luxury any class enjoys. 
 But, in order to be able to agree with Colonel Mure, it is 
 necessary to look nowhere but in the direction in which 
 he points. In the Channel Islands, in France, in Switzer- 
 land, in the Rhenish Provinces of Germany, nay, even in 
 Belgium elsewhere than Flanders, we shall not find that 
 any large proportion of the petty land-holders are village 
 shop-keepers, or attorneys, or the like. The vast 
 
1 66 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 majority are their own tenants, occupying and tilling 
 their own fields ; and, so far from finding it t impossible 
 without labour' more 'excessive than formerly to 
 extract from the land a fair return for their capital,' 
 finding, on the contrary, that ' as population increases/ 
 and with it the price of every kind of produce, the 
 reward of their labour likewise goes on increasing, and 
 with it the inducement to continue tilling their land 
 instead of selling it. To make Flanders an exception to 
 this general description some special influences must of 
 course have been at work, and it is not very difficult to 
 conjecture what they were. From the earliest times the 
 Flemish peasantry have been accustomed to combine 
 industrial pursuits with husbandry. As defined by the 
 English chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 who saw their sovereigns bringing over colonists from 
 Flanders to settle on their domains every cultivator of 
 that country was a man knowing how to make cloth and 
 to handle arms. 1 In regard to cloth many of them do 
 so still, though the majority of weavers are now 
 congregated in villages ; almost every one of them, how- 
 ever, hiring, if not owning, a few perches, at least, of garden 
 ground. To villagers of this sort who had prospered in 
 their various callings, land might naturally seem the most 
 suitable bank wherein to invest their savings, and thus 
 may have arisen those petty non-resident landlords with 
 whom the Pays de Waes unhappily swarms. But men's 
 notions on the subject of investment will no doubt ere 
 
 Laveleye. Econ. Rurale de la Belgique, p. 13. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP RESUMED. 167 
 
 long change in Belgium, in the same manner and for the 
 same reasons as M. de Lavergne informs us they are 
 already changing in France ; and, whenever it becomes 
 generally understood that the highest rackrents realisable 
 from land are lower than dividends from funded and 
 other equally good securities, a general transfer of petty 
 freeholds may be expected to take place, from burghers 
 who are not themselves disposed to cultivate, to peasants 
 who are. 
 
1 68 MORAL EPFECTS OF 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MORAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 UNLESS the preceding pages have been written in vain, 
 peasant proprietors may now, perhaps, be acknowledged 
 to deserve the praise of industry and foresight ; but, to 
 complete their portraiture, others of their characteristics 
 must be mentioned, and (since even they are not alto- 
 gether faultless monsters) some defects as well as excel- 
 lencies must be included in the list. Among the latter, 
 honesty, sobriety, and loyalty, duly combined with in- 
 dependence of spirit, are pre-eminent, as might indeed 
 have been expected, for circumstances could scarcely be 
 more favourable to the development of those virtues. 
 Honesty, in the most common if not the most exalted 
 acceptation of the term, signifies little more than respect 
 for the rights of property, and none are so likely to pay 
 such respect as those who have property of their own 
 which they wish to see respected. Where there is no 
 feeling there cannot well be sympathy. An Arab meeting 
 you in the desert will bid you undress, because your 
 aunt (his mother) is without a garment, and because so 
 dutiful a son as himself is, of course, little better pro- 
 vided. If he had been accustomed to wear good clothes, 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 169 
 
 he would be more scrupulous about stripping a cousin so 
 unceremoniously. Nowhere does the national reputation 
 for probity stand higher than in England, and nowhere is 
 it better deserved. Among so commercial a people 
 mutual confidence is indispensable ; the quality on which 
 alone confidence can securely rest has (in nice accordance 
 with the principles of political economy) come forward to 
 meet the demand, and the puritanical spirit which still 
 influences us so strongly, both for good and evil, has 
 helped to strengthen and foster it. But, although cer- 
 tainly one of our national virtues, honesty is no longer a 
 characteristic of the poorest classes of our countrymen . 
 Take a rustic, for example a man working at fourteen 
 or fifteen pence a day, 'and himself the son of a day 
 labourer, not more liberally remunerated. Perhaps he 
 has received some sort of education, and at a National or 
 Sunday school may have been made acquainted with the 
 Divine commandment against stealing. He does not 
 presume to dispute the authority of the precept, but he is 
 not convinced of its justice. It meets with no echo in 
 his breast. Why should he not steal? He may be 
 answered that he should do to others as he would have 
 them do to him ; but he has himself no fear of being 
 robbed, for he has nothing worth taking, and, having 
 scarcely ever experienced the feelings of ownership, he 
 cannot readily understand them or the pain occasioned 
 by their violation. The law offers him nothing, save a 
 protection which he does not require, while it forbids him 
 from benefiting at other people's expense. He is strongly 
 tempted, therefore, to evade it whenever he can do so 
 
MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 with impunity. He is too closely watched to have many 
 opportunities of the kind, but he is likely to avail himself 
 of such as occur. He will break down fences for fire- 
 wood, take tithes of all fruit-trees within his reach, and 
 appropriate to his own use whatever waifs and strays may 
 come across his path. These are trifles ; but as straws 
 show how a stream flows, trifles will serve well enough to 
 mark a man's disposition, and to declare whither it would 
 urge him if freed from restraint. English field labourers 
 are probably understood by none better than by their own 
 employers, and what the latter think of them may be in- 
 ferred from one of the most common objections to cottage- 
 allotments, which farmers are opposed to, because, they 
 say, it would be impossible to distinguish between the 
 produce which an allotment-holder had raised and that 
 which he had plundered. It is far otherwise in countries 
 in which the same persons are cultivators and owners of 
 the soil. A peasant proprietor may be said to feel, as 
 well as to understand, his moral obligations. His anxiety 
 to preserve his own rights from invasion informs him that 
 his neighbours are similarly solicitous, and he knows that 
 unless he abstains from molesting them, he cannot reckon 
 upon their forbearance. He teaches his children the 
 same wholesome lessons. In England, if you catch an 
 urchin in your garden filling his pockets with apples and 
 pears, you may perhaps box his ears before dismissing 
 him ; but your choler will have been excited principally 
 by a sense of personal injury, for the offence is of too 
 common occurrence to move your indignation very greatly 
 by its intrinsic turpitude. It may possibly remind you of 
 
PEASAN7' PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 some events of your own schoolboy days, and that ' boys 
 will be boys/ may be the most serious of your moral 
 reflections. But in France and Germany, the fruit on 
 the wayside trees is left untouched by boys and beggars, 
 and, in the Channel Islands, many a tempting orchard is 
 not much more effectually barricaded than used to be 
 those of Cimon the Athenian. In the same islands, what 
 robberies take place are for the most part committed by 
 strangers, the purer natives being very rarely in fault. 
 Of 2,107 offenders of all descriptions tried in Jersey, in 
 the ten years ending with 1845, only 670 were natives of 
 that or the neighbouring islands, 1,264 were English, 
 Scotch, or Irish, and 173 foreigners. 1 Distribute the 
 tenth part of 670 among a population of 33,000, and 
 there will be annually but two offences cognisable by a 
 court of justice for every thousand of the native in- 
 habitants. 
 
 Mr. M'Culloch employs a somewhat arbitrary process 
 in order to convict small farmers of dissipated habits. 
 They cannot, he argues, have full occupation at home, 
 nor can they obtain employment from their neighbours ; 
 they must consequently, perforce, be often idle, and, as 
 
 ' Satan finds some mischief still 
 For idle hands to do/ 
 
 they must, from sheer listlessness, have frequent recourse 
 to the bottle, when a train of consequences will ensue 
 which only the pencil of a Cruikshank can adequately 
 
 1 Report on the Criminal Laws of Jersey, by the Commissioners, 
 Messrs. Ellis and Bros. 
 
\J2 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 delineate. To be sure, a man who must work with his 
 own hands for his living and yet wastes half his time, 
 cannot well have a vast sum from his earnings to spare 
 for liquor ; but this is treated as only a slight impediment 
 to the indulgence of his propensity. ' The small farmer/ 
 we are told, ' must have his porter and gin, as well as the 
 extensive farmer/ and need not be prevented by emptiness 
 of purse from drinking as becomes his rank. ' The want 
 of time and opportunity/ it seems, ' still more than the 
 want of money, prevents a hired labourer from aping the 
 conduct of his employers ; ' but a small farmer, however 
 penniless, has at least time enough at his disposal, 
 and can therefore get as drunk as a lord whenever he 
 pleases. 1 
 
 Here is a curious tissue of gratuitous assumptions. 
 It is first decided that small farmers have not half enough 
 to do ; next, that forced inactivity makes them lazy ; and 
 finally, that they while away their hours of idleness by 
 getting drunk ; whereas, in reality, they are the most 
 hard-working of mortals, and having no unoccupied 
 leisure, have no need to resort to the pastime so con- 
 siderately proposed for them. In their fields and gardens, 
 their outhouses, looms or workshops, they find where- 
 withal to fill every vacant minute, whether in summer or 
 winter, and idleness offers them neither temptation nor 
 excuse for dissipation. Not that their sobriety is without 
 merit, as being the result of necessity. Provided they 
 hold their land by a secure tenure, incessant diligence 
 
 1 Compare Statistical account of British Empire, vol. i. p. 451 ; 
 and Encyclop. Brit., vol. vii. p. 389. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 173 
 
 commonly rewards them with the competence they 
 deserve ; and, busy as they are, they could, no doubt, if 
 so disposed, steal a minute now and then to take a 
 dram ; but they value money too highly to squander it 
 on intemperance, either in meat or drink. Their fault is 
 rather to be too sparing in their diet. What most fre- 
 quently sends a man to the alehouse is the discomfort of. 
 his home. The ill-paid day labourer flies from his dreary 
 hovel and the wan looks of his wife and children, to his 
 snug seat in the chimney-corner of the inn parlour, and 
 the merriment of his boon companions ; but the peasant 
 proprietor, or leaseholder, has a blazing hearth and a neat 
 parlour of his own, and sitting there, with his family about 
 him, has no wish for a change of scene or company. 
 That a British writer should impute habits of intoxication 
 to small occupiers of land is the more extraordinary as no 
 peasantry on earth are so strongly addicted to the vice as 
 the landless labourers of his own country. The French 
 paysan or German bauer can spend a holiday in dancing 
 and singing, and yet return from the village wa.ke as 
 decorously as he went to it; but, with an English rustic, 
 festivity and beer-swilling are synonymous terms. And 
 the system which has so degraded the descendants of the 
 'noble yeomanry,' once 'the honour and strength of 
 England,' is held up for admiration ! 
 
 It is wonderful how long a time must elapse before 
 changes in national characteristics are generally acknow- 
 ledged. Yeomanry, as a class, have long been almost 
 entirely rooted out from amongst us; but they are spoken 
 of as familiarly at agricultural dinners as if they were still 
 
MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 as numerous as ever. We walk between two lines of 
 hovels scarcely good enough for cows of any tenderness 
 of nurture, and we are called upon to admire the conve- 
 nience and beauty of English cottages, by an imaginative 
 companion whose thoughts have strayed from the objects 
 before him to the ' peasant nest ' and picturesque huts, 
 
 ' All hidden in a sylvan gloom, some perched 
 On verdant slopes from the low coppice cleared,' 
 
 described by Cowper and Wilson. So, likewise our 
 agricultural labourers are occasionally eulogised for their 
 proud self-reliance and frankness of demeanour, just as if 
 they still held it disgraceful to accept parish relief, or 
 could always by their own exertions avoid that shameful 
 necessity. In times past, when none who chose to work 
 were in danger of want, they were indeed distinguished 
 by the qualities referred to; which, however, it would be 
 too much to expect from men who must receive as a 
 favour employment at eight or nine shillings a week who 
 have little or no work in the winter, and no substitute for 
 it no cow, no pig, no garden stuff whose present subject 
 of anxiety is the difficulty of obtaining out-door relief, and 
 whose future prospect is that of ending their days in the 
 workhouse. Independence of spirit and manner cannot 
 reasonably be sought except among those who are 
 assured of a livelihood, and no peasantry have such just 
 ground for confidence on that score as those who culti- 
 vate their own lands. Deriving their support from their 
 own resources, they can indulge in the pride of self- 
 dependence, and scorn the idea of owing their subsistence 
 \o charity. Neither desiring the favour nor fearing the 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 
 
 enmity of their richer neighbours, they can accost them 
 without servility. Not that the possession of property, in 
 giving them independence, renders them insubordinate : 
 while it permits them to respect themselves, it teaches 
 them also to respect the laws. 
 
 A mere day labourer, half-employed, and wretchedly 
 paid, who is compelled to apply to the neigbouring land- 
 holders for a livelihood, and obtains from them only a 
 miserable subsistence, not unnaturally regards his em- 
 ployers as oppressors, takes every opportunity of showing 
 his spite against them by wanton aggressions, and is ever 
 ready to listen to the harangues of seditious demagogues, 
 But a peasant proprietor has no such cause for envy or ani- 
 mosity against the owners of larger estates, but is rather 
 disposed to join with them in repelling any attack on 
 their common rights; he is deeply interested in the pre- 
 servation of tranquillity, and proportionably fearful of 
 civil convulsions, in which he might lose his all. He 
 molests no one who does not molest him; and, as for 
 politics, provided neither his privilege? nor his prejudices 
 be attacked, he cheerfully leaves them to those who 
 have more taste and capacity for their discussion. 
 Throughout western Europe, from the Polar to the Medi- 
 terranean seas, wherever there are peasant proprietors 
 there likewise is an orderly and loyal rural population. 
 In the Channel Islands, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, 
 and Germany, there are no rick-burners, no breakers of 
 thrashing machines, no riots among the country people, 
 and no secret disaffection. The peasantry are thriving 
 and content, and sincerely attached to the laws under 
 
i;6 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 which they enjoy so much happiness. Even France 
 presents no exception to the truth of this remark. 
 Popular outbreaks are certainly of frequent occurrence 
 there, but they do not take place in the rural districts. 
 The glories of the last Revolution, 1 and the glory or the 
 shame of the many subsequent attempts to imitate it, 
 belong not to France, but to Paris; and within the capital 
 and a few more of the principal towns the revolutionary 
 spirit is almost exclusively confined. The French peasant 
 'is no politician; he leaves it to the inhabitants of cities 
 to settle state affairs. He receives, indeed, with goodwill 
 the blessings of political freedom when they are tendered 
 to him, and congratulates himself upon being " un Fran- 
 cats" but such matters do not occupy his mind, and, if 
 the question were whether he should attend a political 
 meeting or a village festival, he would stick a nosegay in 
 his breast, and a ribbon in his hat, and seek the village 
 green/ 2 The countryman whom Inglis questioned on 
 the subject, no doubt spoke the sentiments of his class 
 when he said, that .' all governments were alike to him 
 so that they kept at peace, and allowed him to live at 
 home.' 3 
 
 Among the incidental advantages possessed by small 
 proprietors, should be mentioned one enjoyed by them in 
 common with small tenant farmers and allotment holders, 
 viz., the facilities which their social situation affords for 
 the moral and technical training of their children. The 
 
 1 When this was written, the last Revolution was that of 1830. 
 
 2 Inglis, Switzerland and South of France, vol. ii. p. 271. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 286. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. \y y 
 
 latter, instead of being suffered to run wild, or instead of 
 being locked up to keep them out of harm's way, are 
 almost constantly under the eyes of their parents. They 
 follow their father to his work, and think it as good as 
 play to perform the light tasks he assigns them. Garden- 
 ing, and the care of poultry and animals, favourite occu- 
 pations with all children, afford them at once exercise 
 and amusement, and afford also uses for offal and other 
 refuse which would otherwise have been thrown away ; 
 and these pursuits are not the less cheerfully followed 
 because they are perceived to be profitable, to lighten the 
 common toils and to increase the common stores. The 
 girls, besides, help their mother indoors, and in the same 
 pleasant and unconscious manner are initiated into the 
 mysteries of housekeeping, and taught the important 
 secret how to make home happy. Such constant co-ope- 
 ration of all the members of a family tightens the bonds 
 of affection and promotes domestic harmony, and more 
 directly favours the adoption of early habits of industry 
 and frugality, and imparts early instruction in those par- 
 ticular kinds of information which are most likely to be 
 practically useful in after life. Perhaps I should be 
 accused of riding my hobby too hard if I were to add, 
 that the importance of this domestic education is strik- 
 ingly exemplified in domestic servants, who were cer- 
 tainly not quite so universally regarded as ' the greatest 
 plague in life,' when the class from which they are 
 chiefly taken consisted not of mere hired labourers, 
 whether agricultural or manufacturing, but of persons 
 
178 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 who partook more or less of the character of cottage 
 farmers. 
 
 Perfection is unattainable on earth, and peasant 
 proprietorship, like everything else of human institution, 
 has its dark side ; but it was not, perhaps, to be expected 
 that its most usual defects should be those least 
 consistent with its acknowledged excellences. Extremes, 
 however, meet, and virtues, carried to excess, run into the 
 opposite vices ; and thus it is that the frugality of small 
 proprietors, though the firmest support of their inde- 
 pendence, not unfrequently passes into meanness, and 
 sometimes even oversteps the barrier of honesty. The 
 habit of saving by long practice becomes a pleasure, 
 and finally a passion, not overscrupulous about the 
 means adopted for its gratification. The Jersey peasantry 
 (differing in this, far as the poles asunder, from their 
 countrymen of higher rank) are said to be so far inhos- 
 pitable as to be unwilling to give anything, however 
 trifling, to a stranger without payment ; and, according to 
 Inglis, although generally far above stealing and 
 incapable of a breach of truth, they are not proof against 
 the temptation of overreaching in a bargain. The same 
 ubiquitous traveller tells us how, while walking from 
 Lachen to Glarus, he was beset by beggars in the shape 
 of children, who left their play to assume the whining 
 tone of practised mendicants, while their parents stood 
 by encouraging them to ask for alms which they did not 
 need : and how, in some parts of the Grisons, ' where the 
 inhabitants are accustomed to see strangers, you cannot 
 pass a hamlet without being assailed by children, while 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 179 
 
 the parents, richer, perhaps, than you are, stand at the 
 door with an air of Grison independence.' l He adds 
 some anecdotes of the petty frauds practised upon him, 
 in explanation (not, of course, in extenuation) of which it 
 may however be mentioned that peasant proprietors are 
 still more prone to impose on themselves than on others, 
 often cheating themselves even of their just allowance of 
 food. Whatever be their pecuniary circumstances they 
 very frequently condemn themselves to lenten fare. 
 Those of Norway, Belgium, and Switzerland, are except- 
 tions to the rule ; but in Jersey, even the better sort of 
 farmers do not, or at least till within the last twenty 
 years, did not, use meat except as an occasional luxury : 
 their standing dish was a soup made of cabbage, lard, and 
 potatoes, and this, with bread and butter, furnished the 
 material of every meal. The German bauers also live 
 chiefly on soups and puddings, and so likewise do the 
 French. Now, mere abstinence from meat would be by 
 no means remarkable, for meat neither is nor can be 
 much used by the working classes of any thickly-peopled 
 territory, nor is it indispensable to the attainment of the 
 highest degree of bodily vigour, for nowhere can. more 
 athletic frames be found than those fed with maize and 
 milk in the Tyrol, or with potatoes and milk in some of 
 the least wretched parts of Ireland. Provided the diet of 
 a people be sufficiently plentiful and nourishing, it does 
 not very much matter of what it is composed. But the 
 peasantry of some of the countries referred to above are 
 
 1 Inglis, Switzerland, vol. i. pp. 63,. 139. 
 
 N 2 
 
1 80 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 so much more careful of their pockets than their stomachs 
 that they stint the latter even to the injury of their health 
 and strength. Physicians attribute to low diet the pre- 
 valence both of dyspepsia and rheumatism among the 
 country people of the Channel Islands. Inglis, who had 
 often inspected the flower of the Jerseymen while going 
 through their militia exercises, says he saw few fine, well- 
 grown forms amongst them, and no one who has crossed 
 the straits of Dover can have failed to notice within what 
 diminutive bodies are compressed the gigantic souls of 
 the French soldiers. This is a matter of national con- 
 cernment. ' La destinee des nations,' says the author of 
 the Physiologic du Gout, ' de'pend de la maniere dont 
 elles se nourissent;' and a philosophic eye might 
 perhaps, distinguish, in the combats of Agincourt and 
 Waterloo, a conflict of adverse principles the triumph 
 of fibrin over gelatine and ozmazome of roast beef over 
 frogs and soupe maigre. If peasant proprietors always 
 restricted themselves to hermit's fare, they would not 
 only pay too dearly for the advantages of their position, 
 but would always be in danger of being deprived of them 
 by such of their neighbours as used a more generous 
 diet. One of those resolute theorists who are never at a 
 loss for facts to suit their purpose, goes so far as to affirm 
 that subjection to a foreign yoke has been their lot in all 
 ages. Nations d petite culture (small cultivators), says 
 M. Tapies, have always been invaded and conquered by 
 nations d grande culture (large cultivators) ; a remark 
 which needs no other reply than an expression of 
 astonishment that it should have been made by a 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 181 
 
 countryman of the small cultivators who, within living 
 memory, overran two-thirds of continental Europe. It 
 cannot be denied that peasant proprietors do, in certain 
 circumstances, become excessively penurious, but only, 
 it should seem, when no examples of liberality are placed 
 before them. Left to themselves, they contract niggardly 
 habits ; but intercourse with the classes above them 
 appears to cure them of those defects. In England, 
 people of all ranks have always been famous for their love 
 of good cheer, and the peasantry, as long as the 
 possession of land gave them the means of indulging 
 their tastes, were not less celebrated as trenchermen 
 than their betters. The reason of this was, that in 
 England the gentry, instead of congregating in towns as 
 in most continental countries, resided on their estates, 
 and keeping open house and a plentiful table, set an 
 example of profusion which was imitated by their inferiors 
 according to their ability. It may be worth mentioning 
 that in Guernsey, the smaller of the two principal 
 Channel Islands, and the one in which the residences of 
 the rich are most scattered, extreme parsimony is much 
 less frequent among the labouring class than in Jersey, 
 and the mode of living is more expensive. Even in 
 Jersey, the fare of the country people has sensibly im- 
 proved since the formation of good roads and the 
 progress of commerce have brought them into more 
 frequent communication with the inhabitants of the 
 town. 
 
 Most of the other failings with which peasant pro- 
 prietors, as such, are sometimes justly chargeable, seem 
 
1 82 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 to proceed from the same source as their inordinate par- 
 simony. Ignorant self-sufficiency, coarseness of mind, 
 and rudeness of manner, are natural to those whose days 
 are spent in incessant bodily labour, and who are cut off 
 from intercourse with classes enjoying more leisure and 
 more abundant means for intellectual cultivation. Wher- 
 ever, as in the greater part of Germany, the gentry live 
 entirely in towns, and abandon the rural districts to a 
 labouring peasantry, the latter, seeing none superior to 
 themselves, form their standard of excellence from their 
 own practice, to which they become absurdly bigoted, 
 while they conceive a stupid prejudice against all customs 
 which differ from their own. Wholly absorbed in material 
 cares, they remain in ignorance of the higher gratifications 
 of which man is capable ; they cannot aim at elegance 
 and refinement of which they have no examples, nor 
 sympathise with sensibilities which they do not understand; 
 they continue through life plodding and dull, and their 
 demeanour answers to the obtuseness of their nature. 
 Education by itself is not calculated to have much effect 
 in humanising them. They may have been taught to 
 read, but they have little time and less inclination for 
 availing themselves of the acquirement. In their brief 
 intervals of leisure they are too much exhausted by toil 
 to seek for recreation in intellectual exertion. The 
 civilisation of the lower orders of society can scarcely 
 originate amongst themselves, but must rather descend 
 from the ranks above. The rich are too often unmindful 
 of their duties, but they have an important office to dis- 
 charge. To them it belongs to encourage science, 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 183 
 
 literature, and art, to diffuse the blessings of knowledge, 
 to exhibit in their own persons the advantages of mental 
 cultivation, and to set examples of intelligence, delicacy, 
 liberality, and good taste. These are their peculiar 
 functions, the discharge of which is scarcely less necessary 
 for the attainment of the legitimate objects of human 
 society than the performance of the labours by which it 
 is fed and clothed ; but the fulfilment of these duties is 
 impossible unless the rich are intermixed with the other 
 classes, and if a class so numerous as the agricultural is 
 isolated from the rest, and consists wholly of members 
 who must work with their own hands. But this is an 
 arrangement of society very different from that which it is 
 the object of these pages to recommend. By the pre- 
 ceding vindication of small farmers and small proprietors, 
 it was not implied that all farms and all estates should be 
 small. Very little reflection will show that disparity of 
 ranks and fortunes is essential to the welfare of mankind. 
 If a community in which there are many indigent cannot 
 properly be called happy, the happiness of a community 
 in which there are none rich enough to command and to 
 avail themselves of leisure, cannot be of a much more 
 exalted character than that of cattle. To secure the 
 welfare of agricultural labourers it seems indispensable 
 that they should not be entirely dependent on the hire of 
 their services, but should be owners or tenants of pieces 
 of land sufficient to afford them occupation and sub- 
 sistence when they cannot procure employment elsewhere. 
 It is also desirable, at least, that of the holdings large 
 enough to be entitled farms some should be small enough 
 
184 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 to lie within reach of a mere labourer's ambition, and 
 stimulate him to exertion by offering him hopes of rising 
 above, his actual station. But it is not less desirable that 
 there should also be many farms so extensive as to require 
 the superintendence of men of considerable wealth and 
 proportionate instruction, who would avail themselves of 
 the discoveries of science, and effect improvements in 
 agriculture, and would also serve as models for their 
 humbler neighbours in their modes of life and general 
 habits of thinking, as well as in the conduct of their 
 business. All peasants should be landholders, but all 
 landholders should not be peasants. In the agricultural, 
 as in all other classes, the interests of the members would 
 be best promoted by a just gradation of ranks. 1 
 
 A moral blemish not yet adverted to, but much too 
 serious to be left unnoticed, is the cruelty to animals 
 involved in the species of husbandry in vogue on the best 
 managed small farms. The reproach hereby implied does 
 not indeed attach exclusively to small farmers ; on the 
 contrary, none are more obnoxious to it than the agricul- 
 tural magnates in this and other countries under whose 
 auspices high fanning has been carried to the loftiest 
 pitch and widest extension. Our own most eminent 
 stockbreeders have almost ceased to be graziers. When 
 going over their premises, you see little or no pasture, and 
 
 1 Part of this paragraph has been ludicrously falsified by time, 
 and the remainder but ill expresses my present sentiments. I have, 
 however, left the whole standing for the sake of its possible historical 
 value as a specimen of what, a quarter of a century ago, passed for 
 rather advanced thinking. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 185 
 
 look in vain for the comely, many-hued cattle, whose 
 diffusion over the flowery meads imparts to the ordinary 
 English landscape one of its most characteristic charms. 
 On asking what has become of them, you are led into a 
 spacious hall, built usually of open planking, with mats 
 that can be raised or lowered at pleasure for protection 
 against sun, wind, or rain, and with holes in the floor for 
 the droppings of the animals to fall through into a tank 
 below; there are stone troughs full of pure water, and 
 other troughs continually replenished with sliced roots, 
 bruised beans, crushed oil-cakes, chopped hay and straw, 
 barleymeal and oatmeal all more or less cooked; there 
 is good ventilation, light enough for seeing, exemplary 
 cleanliness, coolness in summer, warmth in winter : in 
 short, all the arrangements for fabricating milk, meat and 
 manure seem at first sight perfect. Nevertheless, after 
 visiting one of these factories, you are apt, like M. de 
 Lavergne, to feel that you have had your fill of meat for 
 some days to come. For there, each in his narrow stall 
 for ever pent, the poor beasts are doomed to pass their 
 whole existence from the cradle to the grave, never 
 stirring out till marched off to the slaughter and to final 
 entombment in human sarcophagi. It is bad enough to 
 have to reflect or to have to banish the reflection that 
 we are by the conditions of our nature condemned to 
 assume the relation of beasts of prey towards so many 
 beasts of the field, insomuch that, if these had minds to 
 speak and tongues to speak them, any moralists among 
 them would be fully warranted in execrating us with all 
 the horror and disgust with which we are accustomed to 
 
1 86 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 declaim against man-eating tigers and alligators. And 
 then to think of that habit of the more refined of us, of 
 sentimentalising over the innocent-looking creatures 
 destined in due season to be served up to us in the guise 
 of quarters of lamb and fillets of veal ! Is it not much as 
 if Polyphemus, with the captive Odysseans in his cave, 
 had, before making a meal of a handsome cabin-boy, gone 
 into aesthetic raptures over his soft eyes and delicate com- 
 plexion ? Of course, however, there is no use in rebelling 
 against physical necessity. E'en let us then submit, 
 with as much of reluctance as may be needful for the 
 stilling of our consciences, and resignedly kill and 
 eat, seeing that if we would live, we must at any 
 rate kill, even though we did not eat what we had killed. 
 Still, until the proper season for killing arrive, we may at 
 least abstain from torture, and vouchsafe to the respited 
 lives such alleviations as may be consistent with their 
 primary obligations of subserving human appetites ; all 
 the more, leaving to sheep and oxen what emotional 
 enjoyment they are capable of deriving from the balmy 
 air and the sun's light and warmth, because, being but 
 brutes, they are destitute of our rational and imaginative 
 capacities. Granted for argument's sake, that a good 
 deal more meat may be manufactured in prison cells 
 than can be grown naturally under the open sky, and 
 that denser human multitudes may be nourished in 
 consequence, the command on mankind to increase and 
 multiply is not after all so imperative that all other 
 injunctions emanating from the same source must give 
 way to it. Really, to listen to the insolence with which 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 187 
 
 the prerogatives of the lords of creation in respect of the 
 subject races are sometimes asserted, is almost enough to 
 tempt one to wish that the doctrine of metempsychosis 
 could come again into fashion, and so selfishness be 
 enlisted on the side of humanity. For with whomsoever 
 it was an article of faith that there are no bodies into 
 which their own souls might not possibly transmigrate 
 after death with them, also, there would possibly be 
 more scrupulousness as to the sort of experiments they 
 tried on the vilest bodies ; they would think twice 
 before sanctioning by example practices of which they 
 might chance to become ere long the subjects, and would 
 grow shy of skinning eels alive, or of thrusting liver 
 complaints down the throats of geese, or of consigning, 
 oxen to durance not many degrees less vile than Caspar 
 Hauser's. In the absence, however, of such moral 
 deterrent, a hygienic apprehension may be suggested as 
 not unlikely to come effectively home to men's business 
 and bellies. If there be one grain of truth in sanitary 
 science, it is manifestly impossible for cattle to keep 
 their health, shut up from birth to death in dusk or 
 darkness, without a solitary whiff of heaven's breath or a 
 glimpse of sunshine to cheer them, with only three 
 square yards to turn in for exercise, and with nothing to 
 do in order to kill time, but to be perpetually gorging 
 their unstinted supplies of unctuous provender. Con- 
 tinuance from generation to generation in such a 
 regimen, cannot but occasion fatty degeneration of 
 heart, liver, and lungs of every organ and every tissue 
 vitiating every secretion, and impregnating milk and 
 
1 88 MORAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 meat with germs of disease, sure, on transfer to the hot- 
 bed of a human stomach, to shoot up forthwith into 
 rankest development. No prophet is needed to warn us 
 that murrain among cattle, pestilence among cattle-eaters, 
 must sooner or later be the result : nay, with a view to 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number, almost 
 were it to be desired that both epidemics should come 
 at once, and once for all, if so and not otherwise, the 
 surviving men and beasts could obtain for themselves 
 and for posterity, guarantees these for tolerably humane 
 treatment, those for the wholesomeness of the animal 
 part of their diet. 
 
 Perpetual stabling, however, as the practice above 
 inveighed against may be called stdbulation permanente 
 being its continental designation although nowhere else 
 carried to such unmitigated excess as in the establishments 
 of great English agriculturists, is no original device of 
 theirs, but has been borrowed by them from the Flemish 
 peasantry, of whose system it is, indeed, pretty generally 
 esteemed to be a chief excellence and almost essential 
 feature. And, no doubt, it would be impossible for the 
 cultivator of ten or twelve acres to feed four or five kine 
 on the produce of only a moiety of his land, if, instead of 
 growing roots and artificial grasses to be brought to them 
 from the field, he were to let them loose in the field to 
 graze natural herbage. Even of pasture as rich as 
 that of the Vale of Aylesbury, fully three acres would be 
 needed to keep a cow in grass and hay throughout the 
 year ; nor, even if she were tethered, according to the 
 Guernsey custom, instead of being allowed to range 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP. 189 
 
 over the meadow, could much less than two acres suffice. 
 But although, if cattle are to be kept in a numerical pro- 
 portion to land at all like that of Flanders, the greater 
 part of their food must be brought to them, it does not 
 follow that it must be brought to them in the stable. 
 No farm in the Pays de Waes, however small, is without 
 an orchard or other patch of grass to which the cattle are 
 led out every morning for an hour's airing j and to 
 tether them there for the best part of the day, with their 
 fodder strewed around, would cost nothing that would 
 not be repaid ten times over by improvement in their con- 
 dition. If small farmers will not be persuaded that their 
 live stock must have air, light, and a modicum of loco- 
 motion, until a good many of the poor beasts sicken for 
 want of those essentials of salubrity, the sooner the 
 sickening takes place the better. Eventually, it cannot 
 fail to come, if practices, so eminently calculated as the 
 one in question to bring it on, be persevered in. No 
 system, agricultural or social, resting on a basis so 
 unnatural as permanent stabulation can permanently 
 endure ; and pity 'twere if it could ; nor should peasant 
 proprietorship itself receive advocacy in these pages, 
 if it really stood in need of such support. 
 
190 IRELAND; 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IRELAND j PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, 
 AS VIEWED IN 1848. 
 
 IRELAND, even more commonly and with more confidence 
 than France, is appealed to as testifying strongly against 
 small farms and small properties. The ' cottage system,' 
 it is said, has there been tried on a very extensive scale, 
 and has utterly and lamentably failed. Five-sixths of all 
 the farms in the island are less than fifteen acres in extent, 
 and nearly one-half are less than five acres ; yet in no 
 part of Europe is agriculture more defective, or the 
 peasantry more idle and thoughtless, or so miserable and 
 ill-disposed. What reply can be made to a statement 
 the truth of which is too notorious to be disputed? 
 Simply, that to Irish farms are wanting certain conditions 
 without which no farms, whether small or great, nor their 
 occupiers, can be expected to flourish. There are no 
 bounds to the tenant's liabilities, and no security against 
 his ejection. That Irish holdings should have been 
 supposed capable of furnishing any argument against 
 peasant properties, is only one among many examples of 
 the profound ignorance which prevails respecting Irish 
 affairs. Ireland is one of the few countries in which 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 there neither are, nor ever were, peasant properties. 
 From the earliest appropriation of the soil down to the 
 present day, estates have always been of considerable 
 size, and though these estates are now cut up into many 
 small holdings, the actual occupiers of the soil, far from 
 being landowners, are not even leaseholders, but are 
 rackrented tenants at will. In this single phrase may be 
 found a complete explanation of all the evils of their 
 condition, and all the defects of their character. They 
 are indolent, because they have no inducement to work 
 after they have obtained from their labour wherewithal to 
 pay their rent, and to save themselves from starvation. 
 Whatever additional produce they might raise, would only 
 subject them to additional exactions. They are careless 
 of the future, because they cannot, by taking thought, 
 improve the gloomy prospects of the morrow ; they are 
 reduced to the verge of destitution, because they are 
 permitted to retain no more of the fruits of their labour 
 than will barely suffice for their subsistence ; and they 
 set at naught all other laws, divine or human, partly in 
 obedience to the first law of nature, that of self-preser- 
 vation, and partly because familiarity with misery has 
 rendered them desperate. 
 
 Before we proceed further it may be well to inquire 
 how it is that Irish cottiers are unable to make better 
 bargains with their landlords. In other countries in 
 which the property of the soil is not vested in the 
 peasantry, the latter nevertheless obtain possession of it 
 without submitting to terms altogether unreasonable. 
 Even where leases are not granted to them, they do not 
 
I Q2 IRELAND; 
 
 suffer the landlord to fix his own rent. They will not 
 consent to pay more than they deem the land to be 
 worth, as a means of employing their capital and labour. 
 But in Ireland, they dare not venture to reject any 
 demands, however outrageous. Whatever rent may be 
 asked they readily promise to pay, perfectly heedless 
 whether they shall be able to fulfil engagements which 
 the necessities of their situation leave them no choice 
 but to undertake. In a country in which farms are in 
 general too small to afford employment for hired labour, 
 a peasant has scarcely a chance of being able to gain a 
 livelihood unless he obtain possession of land ; and in 
 Ireland, the competitors for land are so numerous that 
 the price paid for the use of it has reached a degree of 
 exorbitancy unheard of elsewhere. Such keen competi- 
 tion clearly shows that population is excessive ; that is 
 to say, that the labouring class is too numerous in pro- 
 portion to the amount of employment for it ; but it 
 would be a mistake to regard this redundancy of popu- 
 lation as a consequence of the prevalence of small farms. 
 The progress of population has, indeed, been extra- 
 ordinarily rapid since the period when nearly the whole 
 territory was given up to pasturage, and since the 
 immense grazing farms, by which it was formerly 
 occupied, have been brought under tillage, and divided 
 amongst more than half a million of cottage holdings. 
 But population, in becoming more dense, has not 
 perhaps become much more excessive. Ireland was 
 certainly never before so populous as at present ; that is 
 to say, it never before contained so great a number of 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 193 
 
 inhabitants, but it has long, perhaps, been nearly as 
 much overpeopled ; that is to say, the number of 
 inhabitants has long been nearly as much disproportioned 
 to the means of subsistence. The prodigious strides 
 which population has made of late years have rendered 
 the destitution of the poor more obvious than before, but 
 it is doubtful whether they have rendered it much more 
 severe. The mass of the people has always been 
 subjected to such extreme privations, that although the 
 number of sufferers is now far greater, the sufferings of 
 individuals have not been much aggravated. A very 
 hasty retrospect may serve to display the grounds for this 
 opinion. 
 
 From the earliest times Ireland has been noted for 
 the excellence of its pastures. Its level surface, over- 
 spread with the most luxuriant herbage, presented a wide 
 field over which the cattle of the first settlers might 
 freely range, and multiply at an exceedingly rapid rate. 
 Their owners became proportionably wealthy, but the 
 possession of great wealth by individuals implies a corre- 
 sponding disparity of ranks in the community. The 
 authority of the leader of a tribe may have depended on 
 his personal character or on accidental circumstances, 
 but whatever may have been the political position of the 
 chief with respect to his fellow-herdsmen, the latter, no 
 doubt, exercised almost unlimited power over their 
 servants and dependants. It is, indeed, a recorded fact, 
 that these retainers did, after a while, degenerate into 
 absolute bondsmen, who were attached to the manor on 
 which they dwelt, and, under the name of 'betages,' were 
 
 o 
 
IQ4 IRELAND; 
 
 as completely at the disposal of their lords as the serfs ot 
 continental Europe. The pastoral occupation of the 
 primitive Irish was not laid aside as soon as they had 
 divided their new country amongst them, and had sta- 
 tioned themselves on particular spots, but continued to 
 be practised by their descendants for many generations. 
 The principal obstacle to change was, probably, at first, the 
 nature of the climate, which, Mela says, was as unsuitable 
 for grain as it was favourable to the growth of grass : l 
 and this was, perhaps, the sole reason why, so late as the 
 twelfth century, the people could still be represented as 
 despising husbandry, and as not having departed from their 
 ancient pastoral mode ot life. 2 
 
 When greater intercourse sprang up between them 
 and more civilised nations they might have been taught 
 the advantage of cultivating the soil; but, unfortunately, 
 in the long period of anarchy which succeeded to the 
 conquest by Henry II., the incessant warfare between the 
 English colonists and the natives acted as an effectual 
 bar to agriculture, for both parties thought it wiser to 
 keep their property in the shape of flocks and herds, 
 which could easily be removed to a place of refuge, than 
 in corn stacks or standing crops, which must have been 
 left to the mercy of a successful invader. Cattle thus 
 continued to be the principal produce of the country; so 
 much so, indeed, that they were often used as a medium 
 
 1 Pomp. Mela, de Situ Orbis, lib. iii. cap. 6. So likewise 
 the poet Spenser : ' A great soyle for cattle, and very fit for breed : 
 as for corne it is nothing natural.' View of Ireland. 
 
 2 ' Gens agriculture labores aspernans, a primo pastorali vivendi 
 rnodo non recedens,' says Giraldus Cambrensis. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FbTURE. 195 
 
 of exchange, and that, even in the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century, the Book of Ballymote is said to have 
 been purchased for 140 milch cows, and that in 1595, 
 when Hugh MacMahon wanted to get a promise to be 
 settled on the forfeited estate of his brother, 600 cows 
 was the bribe he offered. Many years later, we find the 
 poet Spenser lamenting that ' all men fell to pasturage 
 and none to husbandry,' and recommending that an 
 ordinance should be issued to compel every one who kept 
 twenty kine to keep one plough going likewise. It is 
 not likely that agriculture made much progress during 
 the reigns of Elizabeth and of the first two Stuarts, or 
 during the Protectorate, periods marked by the re- 
 bellion of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, the 
 massacre of the Protestants at the instigation pf Roger 
 Moore, the equally bloody invasion of Cromwell and the 
 confiscation of five-sixths of the island; and, if it did, it 
 must have been thrown back as much as ever after the 
 Revolution of 1688, when a twelfth of the land again 
 changed masters, and in the reign of Queen Anne, when 
 a series of penal acts was directed against the Roman 
 Catholics. These atrocious laws, amongst other mon- 
 strous provisions, forbade papists to purchase lands, or 
 
 1 Moore, vol. i. p. 191. Plowden's Hist, of Ireland, vol. i. p. 
 
 325. 
 
 2 Spenser's View of Ireland. Dublin, 1763, p. 230. In 
 another place, Spenser speaks of its being an ' use amongst them to 
 keepe their cattle, and to live themselves, the most part of the 
 yeare, in boolies pasturing upon the mountaine and waste wilde 
 places, and removing still to fresh land as they have depastured the 
 former .... driving their cattle continually with them, and 
 feeding only on their milk and white meats.' 
 
 O 2 
 
1 96 IRELAND; 
 
 to hold them by lease for more than thirty-one years, or 
 to derive from leasehold property a profit greater than 
 one-third of the rent. The great majority of the people, 
 being Roman Catholics, were thus, in effect, restrained 
 from all practice of higher agriculture, and the proprietors 
 of estates had really little option but to let them to the 
 few capitalists who could legally compete for them, and 
 who could not, of course, properly superintend the 
 management of the immense tracts which fell into their 
 hands, except by keeping them almost entirely under 
 grass. This they were, moreover, tempted to do during 
 the first seventy years of the eighteenth century by the 
 extraordinary demand of England for grazier's produce, 
 landlords at the same time doing their best to prevent 
 any other use of the land, 'everywhere,' says Swift, 'by 
 penal clauses prohibiting their tenants from ploughing.' l 
 So general and so prolonged was the neglect of tillage, 
 that in the year 1727 a law was made to compel every 
 occupier of 100 acres to cultivate at least five acres; but 
 the injunction seems to have been little regarded, and, 
 until about forty years later, little additional land was 
 brought under the plough. 
 
 From the earliest times, then, until late in the last 
 century, Ireland was almost entirely a grazing country. 
 Now, it is true that, in pastoral communities which have 
 little commercial intercourse with more civilised nations, 
 every class of persons is commonly sufficiently supplied 
 with the necessaries of life. In such circumstances, a 
 
 1 Proposal for the use of Irish Manufactures. See also Plow- 
 den's Hist, of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 137-8. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 197 
 
 rich herdsman may have literally no means of getting rid 
 of his superfluous wealth, except by maintaining a large 
 retinue of servants, and he is naturally liberal enough of 
 the milk, cheese, flesh, hides, and wool, which would be 
 wasted if he did not give them away. But Ireland, from 
 a very remote period, has carried on a considerable export 
 trade, and the owners of the soil have always possessed 
 in foreign countries a market for their surplus produce. 
 It was therefore the interest of the primitive Irish herds- 
 men to restrain the consumption of their servants, and to 
 confine it within narrow bounds. When the servants 
 became serfs, they were not, according to the custom in 
 more agricultural countries, provided with portions of 
 land to cultivate for their own support ; for the estates ot 
 their lords, however extensive, could scarcely be too ex- 
 tensive for pasturage. They lived on such fare as their 
 masters chose to provide, went half-naked, and slept 
 under trees, or the scarcely better shelter of branches 
 cemented together with mud. When they became en- 
 franchised, they gained nothing but personal freedom. 
 Their condition in most other respects remained un- 
 changed. Froissart describes them as living in forests, in 
 huts made of boughs, like wild beasts. 1 There was so 
 little demand for labour that most were still glad to serve 
 for a bare subsistence, and the few who were permitted 
 to be tenants of land obtained little more from their 
 farms. * Irish landlords/ says Spenser, * do not use to 
 set out their lands in farm, or for terms of years, but only 
 from year to year, and some during pleasure ; neither, 
 
 1 Johnes's Froissart, Edition of 1839, vol. ii. p. 578. 
 
198 IRELAND; 
 
 indeed, will the Irish husbandman otherwise take his land 
 than so long as he lists himself. The reason hereof is 
 that the landlords used most shamefully to rack their 
 tenants, laying upon them coigns and livery at pleasure, 
 and exacting of them, besides his covenants, what he 
 pleaseth.' * Spenser goes on to speak of the farm-houses, 
 which he calls * rather swine-styes than houses ; ' and of 
 the farmer's ' beastly manner of life, and savage condition, 
 lying and living together with his beasts in one house, in 
 one room, in one bed that is clean straw or rather a foul 
 dunghill.' 2 Matters were not at all mended in 1672, 
 when Sir William Petty made his survey, and estimated 
 that out of 200,000 houses then existing in Ireland, 
 160,000 were 'wretched, nasty cabins, without chimney, 
 window, or door-shut, even worse than those of the savage 
 Americans.' Neither was any improvement visible fifty 
 years later, when we find Swift continually speaking of 
 the ' farmer screwed up to the utmost penny by the agents 
 and stewards of absentees, and the revenues employed in 
 making a figure at London : ' of ' the enormous rents 
 paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potato 
 plots : ' of ' the rise of rents squeezed out of the very 
 blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of tenants, 
 
 1 Of coigne and livery, which Sir John Davies says ' consisted in 
 taking of horsemeate, mansmeate, and money of all the inhabitants 
 of the country at the will and pleasure of the soldier,' he proceeds 
 to speak as follows : ' It is said in an ancient discourse of the Decay 
 of Ireland, that though it were first invented in Hell, yet if it had 
 been used and practised there, as it hath been in Ireland, it had 
 long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub. 1 
 
 * Spenser. View of Ireland, pp. 125-7. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 199 
 
 who live worse than English beggars .: ' of rents that still 
 grew higher upon every lease that expired until they have 
 arrived at their present exorbitancy.' 
 
 From these premises it may be inferred that the 
 present misery of the Irish peasantry is of no recent 
 origin, but has been from time immemorial an heirloom 
 in the race. The number of labourers has always been 
 greatly in excess of the demand for labour, and the re- 
 muneration of labour has consequently never been much 
 more than sufficient to procure the merest sustenance. 
 This was as much the case when Ireland was one vast 
 grazing farm, and contained few inhabitants beside cattle 
 and their attendants, as now that the face of the country 
 is cut up into potato gardens, and dotted with cabins, 
 each containing a separate family. The inhabitants have 
 always been as numerous as the country in its actual 
 circumstances could support, and population has only 
 advanced in proportion as the limits set to it have been 
 widened. How much soever population may have varied 
 in amount at different periods, it has always been nearly 
 equally in excess of the sphere of employment 1 and 
 
 1 A serious omission in the text is that of any allusion to 
 the factitious narrowing of the sphere of employment due to the 
 almost incredible selfishness and insolence of British commercial 
 legislation in former days. It must be difficult for any Englishman, 
 without deep shame, or for any Irishman, without bitter indignation, 
 to read the story of this class of Ireland's wrongs as told by Lord 
 Dufferin in the following effective passages : 
 
 ' From Queen Elizabeth's reign until within a few years of the 
 Union, the various commercial confraternities of Great Britain never 
 for a moment relaxed their relentless grip on the trade of Ireland. 
 One by one, each of our nascent industries was either strangled in 
 
2OO IRELAND ; 
 
 means of subsistence ; and the multiplication of the 
 people, much as it has increased the mass of misery, has 
 
 its birth, or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody 
 of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth 
 was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial 
 enterprise have perished through desuetude. 
 
 'The owners of England's pastures opened the campaign. As 
 early as the commencement of the sixteenth century, the beeves of 
 Roscommon, Tipperary, and Queen's County undersold the produce 
 of the English grass counties in their own market. By an act of 
 the 2Oth Elizabeth, Irish cattle were declared a nuisance, and their 
 importation was prohibited. Forbidden to send our beasts alive 
 across the Channel, we killed them at home, and began to supply 
 the sister country with cured provisions. A second Act of Parlia- 
 ment imposed prohibitory duties on salted meats. The hides of the 
 animals still remained, but the same influence soon put a stop to 
 the importation of leather. Our cattle trade abolished, we tried 
 sheepfarming. The sheepbreeders of England immediately took 
 alarm, and Irish wool was declared contraband by a Parliament of 
 Charles II. Headed in this direction, we tried to work up the raw 
 material at home, but this created the greatest outcry of all. Every 
 maker of fustian, flannel, and broadcloth in the country rose up in 
 arms, and by an act of William III. the woollen industry of Ireland 
 was extinguished, and 20,000 manufacturers left the island. The 
 easiness of the Irish labour market, and the cheapness of provisions 
 still giving us an advantage, even though we had to import our 
 materials, we next made a dash at the silk business ; but the silk 
 manufacturer proved as pitiless as the wool stapler. The cotton 
 manufacturer, the sugar refiner, the soap and candle maker (who 
 especially dreaded the abundance of our kelp), and any other trade 
 or interest that thought it -worth while to petition, was received by 
 Parliament with the same cordial partiality, until the most searching 
 scrutiny failed to detect a single vent through which it was possible 
 for the hated industry of Ireland to respire. But, although excluded 
 from the markets of Britain, a hundred harbours gave her access to 
 the universal sea. Alas ! a rival commerce on her own element 
 was still less welcome to England, and, as early as the reign of 
 Charles II. , the Levant, the ports of Europe, and the oceans beyond 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 201 
 
 not, perhaps, sensibly aggravated the misery of individuals. 
 The chief difference is that, whereas people were once 
 starving on a short allowance of meat, they are now 
 starving on a short allowance of potatoes. Abundance of 
 the former they never knew, nor of the latter, except 
 during one short period. This brief interval of 'com- 
 parative plenty commenced soon after the middle of the 
 last century, when the increase of tillage increased the 
 demand for farm servants ; but the increase was too 
 gradual to produce any material or permanent effect. In 
 the year 1762, the Irish parliament granted high bounties 
 on the inland carriage of grain, and in 1783 and 1784 
 granted further bounties on its exportation, and pro- 
 hibited its importation from abroad ; and the rise of price 
 which took place in consequence was further promoted 
 by the demand for foreign corn in Great Britain after 
 the commencement of the war with France, and by the 
 abolition in 1806 of all restrictions on the corn trade 
 between this country and Ireland. Inducements were 
 
 the Cape were forbidden to the flag of Ireland. The colonial trade 
 alone was in any manner open, if that could be called an open trade 
 which for a long time precluded all exports whatever, and excluded 
 from direct importation to Ireland such important articles as sugar, 
 cotton, and tobacco. What has been the consequence of such a 
 system, pursued with relentless pertinacity for two hundred years ? 
 This : that debarred from every other trade and industry, the entire 
 nation flung itself back on the land, with as fatal an impulse as 
 when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and 
 drowns the valley it once fertilized.' Irish Emigration, pp. 129-132. 
 ' Ireland,' says Swift, ' is the only country I ever heard or read of, 
 which was denied the liberty of exporting their native commodities 
 and manufactures wherever they pleased.' Short View of the State 
 of Ireland. 
 
 K , 
 UNIVERSITY } 
 
 * / 
 
202 IRELAND ; 
 
 thus given to landholders to substitute tillage for pas- 
 turage, and, as the tracts held by single graziers were in 
 general much too extensive to be cultivated by the 
 actual tenants, they were divided into farms of more 
 convenient size, and let to such persons as were willing 
 to undertake them. There was not, however, capital 
 enough in the island to meet the requirements of 
 this revolution in husbandry, and most of the new 
 race of farmers were so poor that they could not pay their 
 labourers in any other way than by assigning to them 
 pieces of ground to build cabins upon, and to cultivate 
 for their own subsistence. Together with the farmers, 
 therefore, a considerable body of cottiers sprang up, and 
 in this manner the bulk of the peasantry were converted 
 into occupiers of land; but the conversion was effected 
 much less suddenly than is commonly supposed. Al- 
 though the inland carriage bounty caused a good deal of 
 pasture to be broken up in a few counties, yet, after it had 
 been several years in operation, the proportion of tillage 
 to pasturage over the whole island was still not more 
 than one to ten; and it is certain that the Acts of 1783 
 and 1784 caused only an inconsiderable tract to be 
 brought under the plough. The inconsiderable increase 
 in the exportation of grain, which may be regarded as 
 an exact measure of the increase of cultivation consequent 
 upon those Acts, shows that the latter likewise was 
 inconsiderable. The quantity of corn exported from 
 Ireland was 211,979 barrels in 1783, and 648,884 barrels 
 in 1789, showing a difference in seven years of 436,905 
 barrels, or about 266,000 quarters; and this quantity, 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 divided by seven, gives about 38,000 quarters as the 
 annual ratio of increased exportation. But to produce 
 39,000 quarters of corn, not more than 15,000 acres can 
 have been required, and one thousand men are quite as 
 many as can possibly have been required to cultivate 
 15,000 acres in the ordinary manner. In each of the 
 seven years, then, ending with 1789, additional employ- 
 ment was created for no more than a thousand labourers 
 at the very outside. But such an increase of employ- 
 ment in the midst of a population of nearly four millions, 
 could not perceptibly raise the price of labour, nor enable 
 the peasantry to live perceptibly better than they had 
 always been accustomed to do. The usual rate of wages 
 was sixpence a day; but, after the necessary deductions 
 for Sundays, holidays, and bad weather, there remained 
 only about 270 working days in the year, and of these 
 the labourer was generally obliged to give up 60 to his 
 master in payment for his cabin and garden, and 60 more 
 in payment for the grazing of a cow. His actual cash 
 earnings were therefore not more than three pounds 
 fifteen shillings. His allotment of land, which was gene- 
 rally an acre or an acre and a half, might indeed have 
 supplied the deficiency of his money wages; but as it was 
 held at will, and as its extent was regulated by the slovenly 
 mode of tillage commonly practised, the rent would no 
 doubt have been raised if the tenant had made the land 
 more than ordinarily productive. He only troubled him- 
 self, therefore, to obtain from it as many potatoes as he 
 needed, and with these, and with milk, he was at that 
 period abundantly supplied; insomuch that Arthur Young 
 
204 IRELAND ; 
 
 was struck with the contrast between the scanty meals of 
 an English cottager, and the exuberance of an Irishman's 
 potato bowl, to which every member of his family, wife, 
 children, pig, and poultry, enjoyed free access. Plenty 
 of food was, however, the sum total of the Irish peasant's 
 advantages, even in this his short age of gold. While 
 revelling at a succession of potato feasts, his clothing was 
 little else than rags, and his cabin was the same miserable 
 hovel as at this day, consisting generally of only one 
 room, without chimney or window, and with walls, which, 
 if artificial, were built of mud and straw, but which were 
 sometimes merely the sides of a broad ditch, united at the 
 top by a roof of thatch or sods overgrown with weeds, on 
 which the pig might occasionally be seen grazing. 1 Thus 
 the increased remuneration of the labourer did not raise his 
 standard of comfort by suggesting to him new enjoyments 
 and new wants, but merely gave him ampler meals, and 
 enabled him to feed his children better. The addition to 
 the resources of the peasantry was just sufficient to give 
 a fresh impulse to population, which advanced so rapidly, 
 that, although the extension of tillage continued to in- 
 crease the demand for labour, the supply of labourers fully 
 
 1 Young's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii. App. pp. 25-27. The 
 exact words are worth transcribing. ' Mark the Irishman's potato 
 bowl placed on the floor, the whole family upon their hams around 
 it, devouring a quantity almost incredible : the beggar seating him- 
 self with a hearty welcome, the pig taking his share as readily as 
 the wife, the cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, the cur, the cat, and 
 perhaps the cow, and all partaking of the same dish. ' 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 2O$ 
 
 kept up with it, and prevented it from working any bene- 
 ficial change in the condition of the people. The partition 
 of grazing farms, and multiplication of cottage holdings, 
 enlarged the field of employment ; but the enlargement 
 was effected so gradually, that time was allowed for the 
 number of seekers for employment to increase in the same 
 proportion, and the same keen competition raised the 
 rent of land which had formerly depressed the rate of 
 wages. Thus, from the very first, land was pro- 
 curable by the peasantry only on terms which forbade 
 their deriving much benefit from the possession, and to 
 this defect in their original tenure may be ascribed all the 
 evils which have resulted from the introduction of the 
 cottage system into Ireland. Population could not 
 indeed have reached its present amount but for the 
 general distribution of land among the peasantry but, 
 neither, in all probability, would it have done so if the 
 peasantry had obtained the land on advantageous terms. 
 If their conversion into landholders had sensibly im- 
 proved their condition, the benefit might probably have 
 been permanent ; for their indigence and their improvi- 
 dence might have been simultaneously lessened. From 
 the peculiar manner in which the change was brought 
 about, it failed to relieve that ancient and inveterate 
 poverty which is not less the cause than the effect of the 
 redundancy of population in Ireland ; otherwise it might 
 have produced effects the very opposite of those which 
 have actually proceeded from it, and have established the 
 prosperity of the peasantry on a firm basis, instead of 
 
206 IRELAND ; 
 
 merely increasing the number of participators in their 
 misery. 1 
 
 It is a conclusive proof that the occupation of land by 
 the Irish peasantry does not of itself contribute to their 
 misery, that it is precisely where the distribution of land 
 amongst them is most general that population is least re- 
 dundant, and the condition of the people most tolerable. 
 In Ulster, the number of farms not exceeding five acres 
 in extent, and the proportion of inhabitants occupying 
 land, are greater than in any one of the other three pro- 
 vinces ; yet in Ulster, the competition ' for land is less 
 keen than in the rest of Ireland, and in Ulster only is the 
 English tourist occasionally reminded of the happiest 
 parts of his own country, by the comparative neatnesss 
 of the white-washed cottages, and by the appearance of 
 the comparatively well-dressed and well-fed inmates. It 
 is true that Ulster is the most densely-peopled portion of 
 the whole island, but population has not there outrun 
 subsistence in the same manner as in the other provinces, 
 and the inhabitants, though much more numerous, have 
 long preserved the same proportion between their 
 numbers and their means of livelihood. The reason of this 
 is, that they have always enjoyed something approaching 
 to a comfortable subsistence. The terms of their tenure 
 of land do not leave them just so much only of the pro- 
 duce as may suffice to keep them from starving. They 
 
 1 It is highly gratifying to me to find my friend Professor 
 Cairnes, in the interesting Fragments on Ireland, included amongst 
 his recently published Political Essays, not only adopting all the 
 foregoing views, but elucidating them by valuable sidelights of 
 his own. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 2O? 
 
 are not mere tenants in the ordinary sense of the word, 
 but possess a proprietary right which limits that of the 
 landlord, and restrains his power of raising the rent, or 
 ejecting the actual occupant. This ' tenant-right,' as it 
 is called, which is peculiar to the north of Ireland, has 
 probably grown out of the privileges conceded to the 
 English and Scottish emigrants by w r hom Ulster was 
 colonised in James the First's reign, to induce them to 
 settle in so barbarous a region. Although founded solely 
 on prescription, its operation is almost as effectual as if 
 it were recognised by law, and its value to the possessor 
 is self-evident. It stimulates him to exertion by securing 
 to him a larger portion of the produce of his additional 
 labour, and enables him to procure some few of the con- 
 veniences as well as the mere necessaries of life. The 
 natural desire to retain these advantages is only another 
 name for prudence. A cottier's sons possess still greater 
 facilities in Ulster than in Munster or Connaught for 
 dividing their father's holding, yet they have long been 
 much less in the habit of effecting such a partition. If 
 they saw that they could not maintain themselves on 
 their respective shares without sacrificing the few comforts 
 they had been accustomed to, they naturally sought for 
 some other means of livelihood. The cottage farms have 
 consequently been transmitted from one generation to 
 another without diminution, 1 and the agricultural popu- 
 
 1 In the north of Ireland, Arthur Young, in 1776, found that 
 ten acres were considered a large farm, and five or six a good one. 
 (Tour, vol. ii. App. p. 21). Farms had been reduced to that size 
 because the tenants, being rather weavers than farmers, required no 
 more land to furnish them with a competent livelihood ; but 
 
208 IRELAND ; 
 
 lation has advanced only in proportion to the increase oi 
 means for its support. The only county in Ulster to 
 which this description does not apply is Donegal, in 
 which, as the indigenous Celtic inhabitants were never 
 extirpated, tenant-right has not been introduced except 
 partially, and in an imperfect shape. The peasantry of 
 that county, ever since they became occupiers of land, 
 have been kept as poor as their brethren in the most 
 wretched districts of Connaught, and their numbers con- 
 sequently have increased as fast, and the partition of their 
 holdings been carried as far. 
 
 If it be objected that the prosperity of Ulster is, after 
 all, only relative, and that anywhere but in Ireland it 
 would receive a very different name, it may be replied, 
 that tenant-right is a very inadequate substitute for the 
 protection of leases or ownership. It has no legal sanc- 
 tion, but derives all its validity from custom ; and, having 
 grown up by slow degrees, was no doubt at first stoutly 
 contested by those to whose pretensions it was opposed. 
 If, wherever even this imperfect security exists, the condi- 
 tion of agriculture and of the peasantry is far better than 
 in other parts of Ireland, may it not be fairly concluded 
 that, with more complete security, the superiority would 
 be proportionably more striking? Is it not likewise 
 reasonable to suppose that, in order to place the peasan- 
 try of the other provinces on a level in all respects with 
 those of Ulster, nothing more is required than the con- 
 having once reached that limit, they did not afterwards fall 
 below it, being at this day quite as large as they were seventy 
 years ago. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 2OQ 
 
 cession to them of equal rights ? Yet with these grounds 
 for presuming that the small farm system of Ireland needs 
 only to be modified in order to become a source of 
 national prosperity, nothing short of its utter abolition is 
 insisted on. The consolidation of small farms is continu- 
 ally declared to be an indispensable preliminary to the 
 improvement of Irish agriculture, or to the regeneration 
 of the Irish people. This sentence is surely somewhat 
 arbitrary. The present race of cottiers, exhausted and 
 disheartened by merciless exactions, and liable as they 
 are to have their rents raised, or to be themselves ejected 
 at a moment's notice, are confessedly, for the most part, 
 wretchedly poor and shockingly demoralised. The fact is 
 decisive against rack-rents and tenancies-at-will ; but does 
 it prove anything against small leasehold farms, or small 
 properties ? Because small farmers cannot thrive without 
 security of tenure, therefore security of tenure is to be re- 
 fused them. Why not add that, because hunger cannot 
 be appeased without food, therefore a hungry man should 
 not be permitted to eat ? 
 
 Not only, however, are not small farms the cause of 
 Irish misery ; not only is their preservation quite com- 
 patible with the improvement of Ireland ; their continu- 
 ance (though on a different tenure), and a considerable 
 increase to their number, are perhaps the only means by 
 which the manifold disorders of that country can be 
 radically cured. Whatever may have been the original 
 source of the wretchedness of the Irish people, its 
 proximate cause is evidently a deficiency of employment ; 
 the supply of labour so greatly exceeds the demand, that 
 
 p 
 
2IO IRELAND; 
 
 multitudes have not adequate means of gaining a liveli- 
 hood. This being the nature of their present distress, 
 no scheme for its relief can have complete success which 
 does not furnish them with adequate occupation, and it 
 may not be difficult to show that, for the agrarian popula- 
 tion of Ireland, adequate occupation cannot be afforded 
 except on small farms. This will appear from a hasty 
 examination of the various schemes proposed. By a 
 large class of reasoners, the deficiency of employment is 
 held to be a necessary consequence of deficiency of 
 capital, and to be incapable of being supplied except by 
 the introduction of additional capital ; and, as capital 
 will not enter a country in which life and property are 
 unprotected, the first step towards improvement is 
 declared to be the repression of that spirit of outrage 
 which makes Ireland the terror of all who have anything 
 to lose. For this purpose, either coercion or conciliation 
 may be tried. But four or five millions of famishing 
 desperadoes must be almost exterminated before they 
 can be dragooned into loyalty. If force only is to be 
 used, force must create a solitude before it can establish 
 peace. Still less can be expected from conciliation, if by 
 that term be understood merely the redress of political 
 grievances. Most of these causes of complaint have 
 already been removed, without removing anything of that 
 bitterness of feeling which they were supposed to have 
 engendered, and the redress of the monster grievance 
 which remains, however desirable on other accounts, 
 would assuredly not have a much more soothing effect. 
 Should the church of the majority be at once reinstated 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 21 1 
 
 in her ancient position, and again endowed with the 
 wealth of which she has been plundered, her clergy 
 would be almost the only gainers. The mass of the 
 people would remain as destitute as ever, and would 
 have as little reason to submit quietly to their dismal lot. 
 The priests, indeed, when in the receipt of liberal 
 stipends, and when no longer dependent on voluntary 
 contributions, would, besides being no longer so eager to 
 promote improvident marriages for the sake of the fees, 
 cease to have the same motives for affecting to sympa- 
 thise with the evil passions of their hearers, and might 
 rather exert themselves for the maintenance of order. 
 Their influence has, however, been exceedingly overrated. 
 With a few disgraceful exceptions, the Roman Catholic 
 clergy are not accused, even by their most virulent 
 calumniators, of openly countenancing violence. Many 
 have used their utmost efforts to allay the violence of 
 the people, and almost all are so far mindful of their 
 sacred obligations as to remain at least quiescent : if they 
 do not labour very earnestly to prevent crime, they do 
 not directly encourage it. In truth, such encouragement 
 would be superfluous. Where the materials for spon- 
 taneous combustion exist in such abundance, no torch is 
 needed to kindle them. The flames burst forth as freely 
 without any extraneous aid. The outrages by which 
 life and property are endangered in Ireland result 
 naturally from the wretchedness and desperation of the 
 people. The law is disobeyed because, to the multitudes 
 who have nothing to lose, it affords no protection, while 
 it withholds from them everything they covet. Self- 
 p 2 
 
212 IRELAND; 
 
 preservation is the first law of nature, and they who 
 cannot keep their lives by any other means must fight 
 for them. To an Irish cottier a writ of ejectment is 
 equivalent to a sentence of starvation, and he not 
 unnaturally endeavours to retain possession of his land by 
 sending a bullet through the head of every competitor. 
 It is the fear of destitution that goads him on to crime. 
 In such a temper he is doubtless more easily led away 
 by factious demagogues, and more morbidly alive to 
 national insults ; but, independently of such additional 
 excitement, he finds in his own reflections but too many 
 stimulants to aggression and assassination. As, then, the 
 lawlessness of Ireland does not originate in priestly 
 instigation, so neither could it be repressed by priestly 
 authority. As long as the peasantry continue on the 
 verge of starvation the most -persuasive eloquence will 
 fail to keep them quiet. There will be no peace, even 
 though the priests take upon them the office of peace- 
 makers. Their counsels will be disregarded until their 
 hearers are tolerably fed, and that cannot be until work 
 is found for such as require it. For this first essential, 
 no conceivable substitute can suffice. Education would 
 avail as little as clerical authority ; it could neither give 
 the people food, nor reconcile them to the want of it. 
 Poor-laws may possibly be mentioned as providing for 
 the first of these alternatives ; but poor-laws create 
 nearly as much distress as they relieve. What they give 
 to one section of the labouring class they take from 
 another ; whatever is levied for poor-rates is subtracted 
 from wages. Besides, the gratuitous maintenance of one- 
 
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 21$ 
 
 third of the Irish people cannot be seriously proposed. 
 A compulsory provision for the poor, in order to be of 
 any avail, must be intended to have only partial oper- 
 ation, and to be combined with measures which shall 
 enable the great mass of the poor to earn their own 
 livelihood. But such measures, it is said, require 
 additional capital. If so, we have before us a complete 
 circle of difficulties, impregnable at every point. The 
 country cannot be tranquillised until the people are 
 employed, nor the people employed until capital be 
 introduced, and capital will not enter until tranquillity be 
 established. So that the end proposed must be accom- 
 plished before the requisites for its accomplishment can 
 be procured ! 
 
 But it may be urged that, although private speculators 
 are unwilling to venture their money in such a country as 
 Ireland, capital might be furnished by government, and 
 expended on public works in the construction of roads, 
 railways, canals, and bridges, on drainage, or on the em- 
 bankment of rivers. Such measures might be adopted 
 with a view to two distinct objects. The first and most 
 obvious would be that of affording facilities for the deve- 
 lopment of the resources of the country ; but it might 
 also be expected that the works, while in progress, would 
 furnish occupation for the multitudes who had been pre- 
 viously unemployed. We need not stop to inquire 
 whether the enormous expenditure requisite for this 
 purpose would be incurred by any government. Un- 
 deterred by this, or any other objection, let us suppose, 
 for the sake of argument, that government had under- 
 
214 IRELAND; 
 
 taken to provide occupation for all who required it ; that 
 the peasantry were all in the receipt of good wages, and 
 either too busy, or too well pleased at being paid for 
 idling, to think of mischief ; and that, tranquillity and 
 confidence having been established, British speculators 
 had crossed the Channel, with as large an amount of 
 capital as the country could absorb. In what manner 
 could this capital be applied? Partly, perhaps, in 
 fisheries and manufactures ; but the former could not 
 afford regular occupation, except to the inhabitants of the 
 coasts ; and the tendency of the latter seems to be less to 
 attract surplus hands from other occupations, than to en- 
 courage the growth of a fresh population for themselves. 
 A future generation of Irishmen might perhaps consent to 
 become operatives, but the existing race would exclaim as 
 loudly against being shut up in factories as in workhouses ; 
 and even if they were more tractable, few manufacturers 
 would much like engaging, for their delicate machinery, 
 hands that had only been used to the spade and pickaxe. 
 The only occupation immediately suitable for an agricul- 
 tural population is agriculture ; and, if the Irish peasantry 
 are to be adequately employed, they must be principally 
 employed in farming. Let us suppose, then, that thegreatei 
 part of the newly-imported capital had been entrusted to 
 scientific agriculturists, who, overcoming all the obstacles 
 which have hitherto impeded such operations, had removed 
 the present class of cottiers, and, consolidating their hold- 
 ings, had divided Ireland into farms of the same size as 
 those of England. Let us next calculate what proportion of 
 the peasantry could obtain employment on these enlarged 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 21$ 
 
 farms. The extent of land in Ireland, either already 
 cultivated or capable of cultivation, may be stated at 
 18,000,000 of acres, which, at the rate of one for 
 every twenty-eight acres, 1 the proportion usual in 
 England, would furnish work for 642,000 male adults. But 
 of one million and a half of families, constituting in 1841 
 the entire population, nearly 1,000,000 were chiefly en- 
 gaged in agriculture ; and of 2,400,000, the total number 
 of male adults, 1,600,000 were similarly engaged. When, 
 therefore, the new farms had absorbed all the labour they 
 required, there would remain nearly 600,000 families, 
 comprising 3,000,000 of individuals, who, after the 
 termination of the works undertaken by government, 
 would be without work of any kind. The revolution 
 effected in agriculture would have deprived them of their 
 former occupation, and manufactures, as we have seen, 
 would offer them no adequate resource. It is true that 
 those who recommend the extinction of the cottage 
 system, and the adoption in Ireland of the English mode 
 of farming, acknowledge that those measures must be 
 accompanied by others for the promotion of emigration, 
 and are not dismayed even by the necessity of trans- 
 porting across the Atlantic a colony of 2,000,000 of 
 human beings. The eminent names appended to a 
 recent scheme for that purpose, and the ability with 
 which it is drawn up, forbid its being mentioned other- 
 wise than in terms of respect ; but it may, without dispa- 
 
 1 This is the proportion of land to male adult labourers ; but of 
 agricultural labourers of both sexes and of all ages, there is one for 
 every twenty-four acres. 
 
2l6 IRELAND; 
 
 ragement, be pronounced of too startling a character to 
 be adopted by any government without much more 
 mature deliberation than the urgency of the case will 
 allow time for. The plan of improving the condition of 
 the Irish peasantry by the consolidation of farms might 
 therefore be at once rejected, if only on account of its 
 requiring, as supplemental to it, a scheme of emigration 
 on so vast a scale. 
 
 There remains no resource but that of small farms. 
 So far as Ireland is concerned, the question is not 
 whether small or large farms are preferable, abstractedly 
 considered. The former do actually predominate, and 
 have raised up a population for which they alone can 
 furnish occupation ; to what objections soever they may 
 be open, their abolition is nevertheless impracticable ; if 
 they be an evil they are a necessary evil, and the only 
 wise policy is to make the best of them. Subjoined is a 
 table, showing the distribution of the cultivated area, and 
 of the agricultural population of Ireland : 
 
 This table shows, that of 974,000 agricultural families, 
 only 40,000 are altogether without land, and that more 
 than 500,000 occupy farms of eight acres or upwards. 
 Eight acres are quite enough to enable an intelligent 
 tenant family, paying only a fair rent, to obtain a 
 competent maintenance : so that occupiers of this class, 
 in order to be enabled to thrive, require only a secure 
 tenure, or, in other words, the security of leases, with 
 such conditions as would ensure to them a fair remuner- 
 ation for their expenditure of money and labour. With- 
 out such leases, wherever the cultivators are not owners 
 
NUMBER OF PERSONS HOLDING MORE THAN 
 
 </> 
 J 
 
 AND NOT MORE THAN 
 
 10 
 
 T 
 
 fO 
 
 1 
 
 J 
 
 ro rt 
 
 CO 
 VO 
 
 5 sL 
 
 -g 
 
 If 
 
 5 i 
 
 J 
 
 ci rt 
 
 11 
 1 
 
 rf 
 
 >o 
 
 
 Number whose holdings are greater than 5,ooo-Acres . . 6 Number of Persons holding in Joint or Common Tenancy 
 
 N< ^- This Table is altered from one inserted in"^Captain Kennedy's most able Digest of Evidence on Occupation of Land 
 which cannot be too carefully studied by all who would obtain a knowledge of the actual state of that unhappy c 
 
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 A. 
 
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 M 
 
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 ajoy auo ump 3-ioui }ou Suipioq jgqumjg; 
 
 I35.3M 
 
 PUEI Suipjoq suosasjj jo jaqum^I I^joj, 
 
 00 
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 10 
 CTi 
 
 ajmjnouSv u ! ps^oidma Auaup saijTUiBj jo jsquin^j 
 
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 S; 
 
 sa-joy arjnjT^g ui -Bajy paiBApjn^ 
 
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2 1 8 IRELAND ; 
 
 of the soil, it is impossible that agriculture can flourish 
 and wise landlords are as ready to grant as tenants are 
 anxious to receive them ; but landlords are often but 
 short-sighted judges of their own interests, and with the 
 view of quickening their preceptions, it has Been pro- 
 posed to make rent irrecoverable without a lease. The 
 late Mr. O'Connell, by whom this expedient was recom- 
 mended, 1 acknowledged it to be a violent remedy; but a 
 more serious objection is, that it would probably have 
 little effect upon the disease. The value of leases depends 
 entirely on their provisions ; and the Legislature, although 
 it might require them to be granted, could not pretend to 
 regulate the demands for rent, or the other conditions to 
 be imposed upon tenants. Thus the only lease to which 
 the landlord would consent might be such as either the 
 tenant would not accept, or such as would fetter without 
 protecting him. As a substitute for leases, the propriety 
 of establishing tenant right throughout Ireland has, of 
 late, been a good deal discussed. If by the term be 
 meant the qualified proprietary -right enjoyed by the 
 peasantry of Ulster, the beneficial effect which would 
 result from its extension to the other provinces will 
 scarcely be denied by an advocate for peasant proprietor- 
 ship. The equity of such a measure is, however, a 
 different question. The tenantry of the midland and 
 southern provinces are, in general, tenants at will, 
 
 1 Arthur Young had long before suggested, as a necessary step 
 towards improvement, that ' the meanest occupier should have a 
 lease, and none shorter than twenty-one years.' (Tour, vol. ii. 
 App. p. 24.) 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 219 
 
 removable at the landlord's pleasure ; and to give them, 
 with what conditions soever, permanent possession of 
 land which they previously held by so slight a tie, would 
 be an invasion of the rights of property from which even 
 Stein and Hardenberg the boldest innovators of modern 
 times would have shrunk, and which will certainly not 
 be attempted by the statesmen of a country in which 
 reverence for vested interests is carried to the verge of 
 superstition. If, on the other hand, nothing more be 
 meant than that an ejected tenant should be entitled to 
 compensation for substantial improvements, the advan- 
 tages of a law to that effect would probably be more than 
 counterbalanced by the endless litigation to which it 
 would give rise. The only unobjectionable way of 
 enabling tenants to obtain reasonable terms from their 
 landlords, is to diminish the competition for land, by 
 lessening the number of competitors. There are at 
 present in Ireland nearly half a million of farms large 
 enough, if held on leases and at fair rents, to maintain the 
 actual tenants in plenty and comfort j and there are about 
 400,000 smaller holdings, comprehending more than a 
 million of acres, which might be consolidated and re- 
 distributed into 130,000 farms of eight acres each. More- 
 over, the farms of more than twenty acres each are 
 202,260 in number, comprehending about fifteen millions 
 of acres, which would furnish occupation for about 
 120,000 families, in addition to those of the occupiers. 
 Thus, of the whole number of agricultural families, which 
 in 1841 was 974,000, but which must have been con- 
 siderably reduced by the famine and pestilence of the last 
 
220 IRELAND: 
 
 two years, and does not probably now exceed 950,000, 
 about 750,000 might obtain a competent livelihood from 
 the land actually under cultivation, if relieved from the 
 competition of the 200,000 families remaining. These 
 last constitute a redundant population, which must be 
 withdrawn from a field of employment in which, while 
 they have not room to work themselves, they are always 
 in the way gf their neighbours. But whither can they be 
 removed? Emigration cannot dispose of such multi- 
 tudes, nor would they readily betake themselves to the 
 sedentary occupations of towns. The employment af- 
 forded to them must be agricultural, and must be pro- 
 cured in Ireland, yet not on the land already under 
 cultivation. Where, then, can they be provided for? 
 The question admits of but one answer They must be 
 transferred to the waste lands. 
 
 Of such lands, Ireland contains 6,290,000 acres, of 
 which 2,535,000 are said not to be worth the cost of im- 
 provement; but 1,425,000 acres are acknowledged to be 
 improvable for tillage, and the remaining 2,330,000 for 
 pasture. These wastes are scattered over the whole 
 island, but it fortunately happens that they are most 
 extensive in those counties in which there is the largest 
 amount of destitution. In Mayo, for example, there are 
 170,000 acres of waste land fit for cultivation; in Gal way, 
 160,000; in Donegal, 150,000; in Kerry, the same 
 number; and in Cork, 100,000; while in all Ulster, ex- 
 clusive of Donegal, there are only 269,000; and in the 
 whole province of Leinster, only 186,000. Altogether, 
 there are 1,425,000 acres classed as arable; and these, 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 221 
 
 with the addition of 175,000 acres of land, which, though 
 represented as only fit for pasture, is really, as shall be 
 presently shown, well deserving of tillage, would suffice 
 for 200,000 allotments, of eight acres each. 
 
 The waste land of the best quality is, however, far 
 from being fit for immediate cultivation. Some of it 
 may only require to be pared, burnt, and limed, but 
 much is bog or moor, which requires to be thoroughly 
 drained, and to have, the sub-soil mixed with the surface 
 mould and with lime; but these, and all other preliminary 
 operations, might be performed at very little expense by 
 the persons for whose ultimate benefit they were designed. 
 The proposed grantees are at present without employ- 
 ment, and, unless some such measure as that under 
 consideration be adopted, without any prospect of it. 
 They are now, and they must for an indefinite period 
 continue to be, supported at the public expense, and it 
 would be much cheaper to keep them usefully engaged 
 than to maintain them in idleness. It would therefore 
 be good economy to take them forthwith into pay, and 
 to employ them in draining and sub- soiling the wastes 
 selected for reclamation. After the completion of these 
 preparatory operations, the next step would be to mark 
 off districts suitable for the settlement of collections of 
 families, which would vary in size according as the colo- 
 nies were intended to constitute separate village com- 
 munities, or to be united to communities previously 
 existing, Each district should be divided into lots corre- 
 sponding in number to the number of settlers, and the 
 latter should be further required to construct a cottage, 
 
222 IRELAND; 
 
 according to an approved plan, on eveiy lot. Every 
 family should then be placed in possession of one 
 of the cottage farms, and be made perpetual lessees at a 
 fixed rent, and on certain other conditions, which will be 
 more particularly described hereafter; and having been 
 furnished with tools and some farming stock, should be 
 instructed that, after the next harvest, they would have 
 to provide for their support by their own industry. 
 
 Before we proceed to inquire what further mea- 
 sures would be necessary to ensure the success of 
 this great social experiment, one or two apparent objec- 
 tions to it must be answered. One, which will take most 
 people aback, is the enormous expense which would be 
 required. To maintain two hundred thousand families 
 for many months, to purchase land for their occupation, 
 and to supply them with materials for building, and with 
 farming implements and stock, would certainly cost an 
 immense sum. But the cost of an undertaking, however 
 great, would not justify its rejection, provided its advan- 
 tages could be shown to be commensurate ; more espe- 
 cially if, as in the present instance, great part of the ex- 
 penditure were inevitable in any circumstances, and the 
 further outlay were calculated to prevent the recurrence 
 of demands which would otherwise be perpetual. Two 
 hundred thousand destitute families must be fed at the 
 public expense, whether they be set to work or be suffered 
 to remain idle, and must continue to be so fed until they 
 are placed in a position to provide for themselves. The 
 present cost of maintaining them is an annual tax, which 
 must be levied until redeemed, and exemption from it 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 22$ 
 
 would be cheaply purchased at many times its amount. 
 At how low a price its removal might be effected in the 
 mode indicated above will appear from an examination 
 of the various items of expense. 
 
 It would be necessary, in the first place, to buy up 
 the proprietary rights possessed by private persons over 
 the waste lands required.- Of the perfect competence of 
 the Legislature to enforce the sale of such rights there 
 can be no question. An authority which compels in- 
 dividuals to part with their most valued property on the 
 slightest pretext of public convenience, and which per- 
 mits railway projectors to throw down manor-houses, and 
 to cut up favourite pleasure-grounds, need not scruple to 
 insist upon the sale of boggy meadows, or upland 
 pastures, with the view of curing the destitution and 
 misery of an entire people. But upon this point it is the 
 less necessary to dwell, as the right of Parliament to dis- 
 pose of the wastes has been asserted in the most explicit 
 terms by the first Minister of the Crown. 1 The compen- 
 sation to be made by the proprietors would depend on 
 the present produce of the land. The average value of 
 this cannot at present exceed two shillings an acre, so that 
 2/. an acre, equal to twenty years' purchase, would be a 
 very liberal payment for the fee-simple. The expense of 
 thorough drainage would scarcely reach 4/. an acre, and 
 that of sub-soiling would not exceed $os. 2 A cottage with 
 
 1 Lord J. Russell's Speech on the State of Ireland, Jan. 25, 
 1847. 
 
 2 Digest of Evidence on Occ. of Land, pp. 82-83. 
 
224 IRELAND; 
 
 its appurtenances, suitable to a farm of eight acres, might be 
 built for 4o/. ; * and the farmer on entering might manage 
 to get on without an advance of more than 2o/. The 
 whole outlay may, therefore, be stated as follows : 
 
 Purchase of 1,600,000 acres, at 2/. per acre . 3,200,000 
 
 Expense of drainage and subsoiling, at 5/. ioj. . 8,800,000 
 
 Construction of 200,000 cottages, at 4O/. each . 8,000,000 
 
 Advances to 200,000 cottiers of 2O/. each . 4,000,000 
 
 24,000,000 
 
 From which must be deducted the cost of maintaining 
 200,000 families, or 1,000,000 individuals, for the two 
 years during which the operations might be expected to 
 last. This, at 5/. per head, would be 5,ooo,ooo/. annually, 
 or for two years, io,ooo,ooo/. ; which, subtracted from 
 24,ooo,ooo/., would leave 14,000,0007. At this low price, 
 less than three years' purchase, the public would be 
 relieved from the necessity of an annual payment of 
 5,ooo,ooo/. The operation, viewed merely as a financial 
 feat, would establish the reputation of the minister by 
 whom it was achieved. The transfer to the waste lands 
 of the destitute portion of the Irish peasantry has here 
 been treated as the only feasible scheme for placing them 
 in a satisfactory position, public works of other descrip- 
 tions, as well as emigration, having been previously 
 examined, and rejected as incapable of effecting the 
 grand object. Otherwise the reader might be reminded 
 that, according to the estimates of Mr. Godley, the 
 transport to Canada of 200,000 families would occasion 
 
 1 Digest of Evidence on Occ. of Land, p. 139. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 22$ 
 
 a certain loss of 6,ooo,ooo/., and a possible loss of a still 
 larger sum ; and that, not many months ago, one hundred 
 and eighteen members of the House of Commons were 
 ready to vote sixteen millions sterling for the prosecution 
 of a railway project which, at best, could only be 
 expected to improve the condition of the people by 
 preparing the way for measures calculated to benefit 
 them more directly. Besides, the expenditure on the 
 waste lands is not to be regarded as money irrecoverably 
 sunk, but rather as a loan to the settlers, who should be 
 required to pay interest upon it. Five per cent, upon 
 fourteen millions sterling, payable by 1,600,000 acres, 
 would be something less than nine shillings an acre a 
 very moderate rent to be paid by the perpetual lessee of 
 a farm, with a substantial dwelling upon it. 
 
 These anticipations of profit may certainly be not un- 
 reasonably pronounced somewhat premature, inasmuch 
 as they take for granted the complete success of an 
 experiment of which many persons would as confidently 
 predict the total failure. The fact of land having been 
 suffered to lie waste up to this time has been cited as a 
 proof of its being unworthy of improvement ; if it had 
 promised a fair return for the application of capital, 
 capitalists, it is said, would not have delayed so long to 
 avail themselves of it. To this it may be replied, that 
 most of the resources of Ireland are acknowledged to 
 have been as yet only- very imperfectly developed, in 
 consequence either of the poverty or of the apathy of the 
 people: to these causes are o\\ing the neglect of mines 
 and fisheries, and the backward state of agriculture ; and 
 
 Q 
 
226 IRELAND; 
 
 it would be only reasonable to account for the neglect of 
 the wastes in the same manner, instead of ascribing it to 
 their inherent worthlessness. Besides, the classification 
 of the wastes adopted in the preceding pages is not 
 founded upon doubtful estimates, but is the result of 
 careful investigation by an engineer of the highest 
 eminence, Mr. Griffith, the General Valuation Commis- 
 sioner. This gentleman is so little disposed to an extra- 
 vagant appraisement, that he condemns considerably 
 more than three-fourths of all the wastes, as either 
 unimproveable, or as only improveable for pasture ; yet, 
 even after this large deduction, there remains of supenor 
 quality nearly enough for the home colonisation proposed 
 above. The land of this superior description is repre- 
 sented as capable of being prepared for tillage at an 
 expense which its increased value would fully repay, and 
 the opinion coming from an authority of so cautious a 
 character, might, even if otherwise unsupported, be 
 accepted without much hesitation. 1 An attempt will 
 presently be made to prove that it is correct, but let it 
 in the meantime be supposed to be erroneous. Let it 
 be supposed that even the best of the waste lands would 
 
 1 Upon mountain wastes, as all wastes in Ireland, that are not 
 bog, are called, 'is to be practised,' says Young, 'the most profit- 
 able husbandry in the king's dominions, for so I am persuaded the 
 improvement of mountain land to be.' (Tour, vol. ii. App. p. 69.) 
 And again, ' no meadows are equal to those gained by improving a 
 bog ; they are of a value which scarcely any other lands give rise 
 to. In Ireland I should suppose it would not fall short of forty 
 shillings an acre, and rise in many cases to three pounds.' (Ibid. 
 P 74-) 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 22/ 
 
 never yield any rent, and that it would be necessary for 
 the settlers to be placed in possession of their farms, not 
 as lessees, but as absolute proprietors. Even in that 
 case, the money expended in preparing the land for their 
 occupation, in drainage and subsoiling, and in buildings, 
 would have been most advantageously laid out, provided 
 only the settlers should thenceforward be enabled to pro- 
 vide for their own subsistence. Even this partial success 
 would be a sufficient recommendation of the scheme. 
 There would be little cause to regret the outlay, even 
 though it should do no more than raise two hundred 
 thousand families from destitution to independence ; 
 should relieve the rest of the peasantry from the ruinous 
 competition which now depresses them; and should, 
 at the same time, absolve the public from the necessity 
 of an annual payment of more than one-third its own 
 amount. 
 
 Whatever doubts may be entertained of the realisation 
 of these results must be of one of two kinds. It must be 
 supposed either that the land after every preliminary im- 
 provement would still not repay even the current ex- 
 penses of cultivation, or that the cultivators would not 
 properly avail themselves of their advantages. Now, 
 when land is said to be not worth cultivating, the meaning 
 is, that the produce would not afford to the capital and 
 labour employed so large a return as they might obtain, 
 if otherwise applied. It is not necessary to inquire 
 whether the Irish wastes are of this character, for the only 
 capital of the colonists whom it is proposed to transfer 
 to them, is labour, and that labour for which there is no 
 
 Q2 
 
228 IRELAND; 
 
 demand, and which, consequently, has no market value 
 whatever. Unless employed upon the waste lands it 
 cannot be employed at all there are no other means 
 whatever of turning it to account ; how small soever 
 may be its produce, that produce is all clear gain, 
 which could not have been acquired in any other 
 manner. The question is not whether, if otherwise em- 
 ployed, the colonists might not have obtained a larger 
 remuneration, but whether, in the only occupation open 
 to them, they are able to maintain themselves ; whether 
 the returns from the lands given to them to cultivate 
 will be sufficient for their subsistence. 
 
 Now, there is no land so poor that it may not be ren- 
 dered fertile by artificial means. Its barrenness com- 
 monly arises from the deficiency of certain substances, 
 which need only to be supplied in order completely 
 to change its character. To procure the requisite ingre- 
 dients might perhaps be a work of much time and 
 labour, to pay for which might cost so much as to make 
 the business anything but a profitable employment of 
 money. But no such objection could apply if none but 
 spare and super-abundant labour were used : the work, 
 however tedious and toilsome, would then cost absolutely 
 nothing. However great the expenditure of labour, none 
 of it would be wasted, for the labour would only have 
 acquired value by being so expended. No ground is so 
 worthless that an English labourer will not eagerly accept 
 an allotment of it for the occupation of his leisure, and 
 that he will not speedily convert it into a productive 
 garden, benefiting himself proportionably at the same 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 229 
 
 time. Nor is it only unmarketable labour that may be 
 profitably employed in this manner. In long occupied 
 and well-peopled territories, where wages are not extra- 
 ordinarily high, and where good land is not easily pro- 
 curable, it would seem that no soil can be so bad that a 
 labourer, to whom it is granted in full property, will not 
 find it for his interest to cultivate it, even though by so 
 doing he should be obliged to neglect other employment. 
 No soil can be imagined more unsuitable for vegetation 
 than the sand with which the maritime provinces of Bel- 
 gium were once overspread, and with which extensive 
 tracts are still covered. It can be likened to nothing but 
 the sand on the sea shore, which it no doubt originally 
 was, and it offers about the same attraction for the invest- 
 ment of capital ; but, although the rash speculator, em- 
 ploying hired labour, who should have undertaken the 
 improvement of such land, would probably have been 
 ruined, the attempt was made with the most complete 
 success by moneyless boors, who, working on their own 
 account, contrived to enrich both themselves and the 
 soil, and, indeed, to make the latter the richest on this 
 side the Alps. The conversion of sand into mould is not 
 yet complete in Belgium, and the process may still be 
 witnessed at every stage. In the first place, broom seed 
 is sown, which will grow anywhere, and the plants from 
 which are fit to be cut in three years, and are then sold for 
 fire-wood to bakers and brick-makers. The ground has 
 acquired some compactness from the fibres of the roots, 
 and has been enriched by the leaves which have fallen, 
 and by the manure purchased with the price of the 
 
230 IRELAND; 
 
 faggots. It is now in a fit state to be ploughed and to be 
 sown with buck-wheat, or even with rye ; and, by the 
 time this is reaped, a sufficiency of manure may be 
 collected to allow of a regular course of cropping. As 
 soon as clover and potatoes enable the farmer to keep 
 cows, improvement goes on rapidly. In a few years the 
 soil undergoes a complete change j it becomes mellow 
 and retentive of moisture, and enriched by the vegetable 
 matter afforded by the decomposition of the roots of the 
 clover and other plants. The Flemings seem to want 
 nothing but a space to work upon : whatever be the 
 quality or texture of the soil, they will, in time, make it 
 productive. It is deserving of remark, that their im- 
 provements when once begun are seldom abandoned, 
 unless undertaken on too large a scale, in which case the 
 land is soon divided into smaller portions, and improve- 
 ments proceed from a greater number of centres, and with 
 more certainty. 1 
 
 These examples may serve to show that there is no 
 land, not absolutely incapable of cultivation, of which 
 the produce, though it may not yield profit enough to 
 satisfy a capitalist, will yet not yield some profit some 
 little over and above the expenses of cultivation. In the 
 expenses of cultivation is included the cultivator's subsis- 
 tence ; there is therefore no land from which the culti- 
 vator may not obtain a livelihood. It is true that the 
 Flemish process just described is somewhat tedious, and 
 would be but ill adapted to cultivators who were entirely 
 
 ^ l Flemish Husbandry, pp. 11-13. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 231 
 
 dependent for subsistence on the land they were reclaim- 
 ing. It would by no means suit our Irish colonists, for 
 instance, who might perish with hunger while their farms 
 were producing only crops of brushwood. But neither 
 would the adoption of so slow a process be requisite on 
 the better sort of Irish waste land, which bears no sort of 
 resemblance to the sands of Belgium. Much of it, even in 
 its present state, is used as pasture, and the rest, consisting 
 of heathy bog, though at present valueless, has a surface 
 of vegetable matter one or two feet thick, resting generally 
 on a bed of clay or gravel. The intermixture of the upper 
 and lower soils would supply to each what the other 
 principally wants, and this operation, as well as drainage, 
 would be performed before the settlers were placed in 
 possession of their farms. The latter, therefore, from 
 their first occupation, would possess as high a degree of 
 fertility as the primitive soil of Belgium acquires after 
 several years of incessant labour. Indeed, with the 
 addition of lime, (or where lime were not procurable, of 
 sea- weed or sea-sand,) they would immediately bear 
 tolerable crops of roots. Of this experience affords 
 abundant proof. The reclamation of waste land has been 
 undertaken of late years, in several parts of Ireland, by 
 private persons, and, as it would seem, with invariable 
 success. Several instances are on record of land naturally 
 worth not a shilling of rent per acre, which, by draining, 
 subsoiling, and liming, has in the first year been made to 
 produce five tons of potatoes per acre, or corresponding 
 crops of turnips, and in three years' time has been 
 fitted for an ordinary five years' rotation, being then esti- 
 
232 IRELAND; 
 
 mated to be worth a rent of 30^. or 35^. per acre. It is 
 easy to show how a farmer, with a wife and three young 
 children, might obtain a livelihood from eight acres of 
 such land. Two acres, in the first year, would yield 
 300 bushels of potatoes, (and two hundred would suffice 
 for the consumption of the family,) and the turnips or 
 other produce of the rest of the farm would be much 
 more than enough for the keep of a cow and a pig. By 
 the end of the year, there would be a considerable ac- 
 cumulation of manure, and it would be the farmer's own 
 fault if the quantity did not annually increase, until every 
 portion of his land had been brought into the highest state 
 of productiveness of which it was capable. With abun- 
 dance of manure at his disposal, all his difficulties would 
 vanish. In the second year, he might substitute oats for 
 potatoes, and in every subsequent year he might sow 
 part of his land with some sort of grain. But even 
 although he should make corn his principal article of diet, 
 he would not, when his land was thoroughly fertilised, re- 
 quire more than two acres to produce food for the direct 
 consumption of his family, so that six acres would remain 
 under grass or green crops for his cattle. A Fleming in 
 such a situation would be able to keep three or four cows, 
 stall fed ; and, as we are now considering what the land 
 is capable of, we may assume that an Irishman could do 
 the same. The milk and butter of one cow he might use 
 at home, but the rest of the dairy produce might be sent 
 to market ; and no elaborate calculation can be needed to 
 prove that the proceeds would enable him to defray all 
 the expenses incidental to his station in life, and to save 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 233 
 
 a good deal of money besides, even though he should 
 not be absolute owner of his farm, but should be subject 
 to an annual rent of nine shillings an acre. 
 
 It will have been observed, that potatoes form as it 
 were the basis of the farming just referred to. They seem 
 to be thought the only crop on which man can subsist, 
 that in this climate can be obtained from newly reclaimed 
 land without the assistance of manure, 1 and to be, conse- 
 quently, the only provisions which pauper cultivators 
 could raise during the first year. But after failing in two 
 successive seasons, this crop can no longer be safely de- 
 pended upon ; and should the disease, by which it has 
 been twice destroyed, be still continuing its ravages when 
 the waste lands are prepared for tillage, a considerable 
 alteration of plan will be necessary. The change will be 
 a subject for regret, inasmuch as it will occasion a con- 
 siderable increase of expenditure ; but, on the other hand, 
 its effect will be to hasten by a year or two the progress 
 of improvement. One object of every scheme for the 
 benefit of Ireland, and one sign of its success, must be 
 the adoption of better kinds of food by the labouring 
 classes. In attempting to raise the social condition of 
 the people, some higher end should be proposed than 
 that of enabling them to obtain a sufficiency of potatoes. 
 If this only were aimed at, it would be quite unnecessary 
 to allot so much as eight acres of land to a family. Farms 
 of that size were recommended in order that the occu- 
 
 1 Young, however, from land which had been merely pared, 
 burnt, and limed, took crops of wheat, rye, and bere, the first year. 
 (Tour, vol. ii. App. p. 70.) 
 
234 IRELAND; 
 
 pants should be able to make bread their staff of life, and 
 to grow grain enough for their consumption, as in the 
 course of two or three years it was expected they would 
 do. If, however, the potato disease prove permanent, 
 the Irish peasantry must needs be fed on grain at once ; 
 and, unless Government prefer to furnish the people with 
 food, instead of enabling them to raise it for themselves, 
 its simplest course will be to supply every settler on the 
 waste lands with manure enough to prepare part of his 
 ground for oats. His first harvest will then supply him 
 with bread instead of potatoes, and this will be the prin- 
 cipal difference, so far as he is concerned. His subse- 
 quent operations will be nearly the same as in the case 
 previously supposed. 
 
 It may here be proper to show, that the management 
 of eight acres of land will not be too severe a task for 
 those on whom it is to be imposed, viz., for a family of 
 five persons, including only one male adult, and possess- 
 ing, besides their land and their industry, no other capital 
 than the small advance made to them for the purchase 
 of indispensable implements and stock. The head of 
 such a family might not be able to procure either a horse 
 or a plough, and might be obliged to use a spade ; but 
 this, as every one may see, by comparing a field and a 
 garden, is by far the more efficient instrument when time 
 will allow of its being used ; and the only question is, 
 therefore, whether one man could spare time for the 
 spade work annually required on a farm of eight acres. 
 A more than ordinary quantity would be required on waste 
 land, during the first year or two after its reclamation, 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 235 
 
 but still not more than could be easily performed. * A 
 good labourer can trench four perches (each perch being 
 a square of five and a-half yards) in a day, or dig 
 eight perches. It will take him thirty days to trench 
 an acre, and sixteen to dig it well.' 1 If placed in 
 possession of his farm in October, therefore, he could 
 easily dig six acres before the season arrived for 
 planting potatoes and sowing turnips ; and when a 
 regular rotation of crops was established his labours 
 would be greatly abridged. Suppose him to appropriate 
 three acres to corn, one to potatoes, one to clover, and 
 one to turnips, and to keep two under grass. Between 
 harvest and spring he must trench one acre twenty inches 
 deep, and manure it for potatoes, and dig three acres ; 
 one acre being under clover, sown with the corn of the 
 previous season, will not require digging, and another 
 will have been sufficiently prepared for wheat by the 
 taking up of a former crop of potatoes. His spade work 
 will occupy him only seventy-eight days, and he will 
 have the rest of the year for wheeling manure, harrowing, 
 sowing, planting, mowing, and reaping, while his wife 
 and children weed the crops, tend the cows and pigs, 
 and perform other light offices. 
 
 The whole amount of labour would be but a moderate 
 burden for the united strength of the family, whose own 
 fault alone it would be if they did not prosper. But it is 
 not sufficient to have shown what a mine of wealth lies 
 hidden in the waste land, if there be reason to believe 
 
 1 Flemish Husbandry, p. 75. 
 
236 IRELAND; 
 
 that it would not be properly wrought by the settlers 
 whom it is proposed to place there. A colony of Flem- 
 ings in such a situation would speedily bring the soil to 
 the highest pitch of fertility, and enrich themselves with 
 the abundant tribute they would extort from itj but 
 Irishmen, it will be said, are not Flemings. 1 The former 
 would, indeed, have the same motives for industry. In 
 their proprietary character, they would possess that 
 strongest of all incentives to exertion, the knowledge 
 that they were working for themselves ; they would feel 
 the influence of that affection for their little domains, 
 which, according to Adam Smith, makes small proprietors 
 ' the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most 
 successful of improvers ' of that ' magic of property,' 
 which, as Arthur Young says, ' turns sand to gold.' Such 
 impulses might be irresistible by ordinary mortals ; but 
 Irishmen are apparently considered exempt from the 
 rules by which mankind in general are governed. It 
 seems to be thought that, with them, self-interest is less 
 powerful than habit ; that, having hitherto always lived 
 in constrained inactivity, they now value no privilege so 
 highly as idleness ; that, having never possessed anything 
 
 1 Young has some remarks so singularly apposite that it would 
 be unpardonable not to insert them here. ' A few considerable 
 landlords,' he says, ' many years ago, made the experiment of fixing, 
 at great expense, colonies of Palatines on their estates. They had 
 houses built for them, plots of land assigned to each, at a rent of 
 favour, assisted in stock, and all of them with leases for lives from 
 the head landlord. The poor Irish are very rarely treated in this 
 manner, but when they are, they work much greater improvements 
 than are common among these Germans? (Tour in Ireland, vol. ii. 
 App. pp. 24, 25.) 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, 237 
 
 but the merest necessaries of life, they have little desire 
 for its comforts, or, at any rate, think them not worth the 
 price of steady labour. What little employment is at 
 present offered to them, either in their own potato 
 grounds, or by larger occupiers, is often either neglected, 
 or listlessly performed ; and it may be suspected that 
 they would exhibit the same apathy, even if constituted 
 owners of farms large enough to furnish them with con- 
 stant occupation, more especially when those farms, 
 consisting of land recently reclaimed, demanded more 
 than ordinary assiduity for the development of their 
 resources. In reply to this, reference might be made to 
 the notorious fact, that Irish labourers, when removed 
 to situations in which industry is liberally rewarded, 
 exert themselves as strenuously as those of any other 
 nation ; and, even in Ireland, examples are not wanting 
 of peasants not only working hard, but applying them- 
 selves with ardour and success to the very occupa- 
 tion their fitness for which we are now considering. 
 Young observed, long ago, that ' little occupiers who can 
 get leases of a mountain side, make exertions in improve- 
 ment, which, though far enough from being complete, 
 show clearly what great effects encouragement would 
 have amongst them j ' l and he adds, * that the idleness 
 seen among them, when working for those who oppress 
 them, is a very contrast to the vigour and activity with 
 which the same people work when themselves alone 
 reap the benefit of their labour.' 2 Among the grounds 
 for this estimate of the Irish character, was an experi- 
 
 1 Tour, vol. ii. App. p. 22. 2 Ibid. p. 72. 
 
238 IRELAND; 
 
 ment tried by Young himself. On Lord Kingsborough's 
 estate he marked a road, and assigned portions of the 
 waste on each side to such as were willing to form the 
 fences in the manner prescribed, and to cultivate and 
 inhabit the land ; allowing each a guinea towards his 
 cabin, and promising the best land rent free for three 
 years, and the worst for five. The eagerness with "which 
 the poor people came into the scheme convinced him 
 that they wanted nothing but a little encouragement to 
 enter with all their might and spirit into the work of 
 improvement. They trusted to his assurance to go to 
 work upon the ditches, and actually made a considerable 
 progress. * In all undertakings of this kind in Ireland,' 
 he continues, l it is the poor cottiers and the very little 
 farmers who are the best tools to employ, and the best 
 tenants to let the land to ; ' l and this is confirmed by 
 Mr. Nicholls, who says that 'most of the recently 
 reclaimed land which he saw in the western counties was 
 reclaimed by the small occupiers, who drained and 
 enclosed an acre or two at a time.' 2 But the evidence 
 taken by the Land Commission, being the latest, may 
 also be considered the most valuable. A practice, we 
 are told, not uncommonly adopted by Irish farmers, is 
 that of * giving a small piece of waste land to a poor 
 cottier or herdsman, for the first three crops, after which 
 the improved portion is returned to the farmer, and a 
 fresh portion is taken on the same terms by the cottier. 
 Here are persons of the very poorest class obtaining a 
 
 1 Tour, vol. ii. App. p. 72. 
 
 2 Nicholl's Reports on Irish Poor Laws, p. 1 8. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 239 
 
 livelihood by the cultivation of waste land, under the 
 most discouraging and least remunerative circumstances 
 that can well be imagined.' Where more favourable 
 terms are conceded to the tenants, the progress of 
 improvement is proportionate. On the Lough-ash estate, 
 in Tyrone, about four hundred acres of waste land have 
 been distributed among thirty tenants, most of whom 
 have leases for twenty-one years, and obtained the land 
 rent free for the first part of the term, on condition of 
 paying a gradually increasing rent during the remainder. 
 These tenants took possession of their respective allot- 
 ments at different periods, between the years 1829 and 
 1840. They belonged originally to the < poorest class of 
 cottiers ; ' but, when visited by the Land Commissioners, 
 'had raised themselves into a comfortable body of 
 farmers.' l 
 
 Examples of this kind may not, however, be nume- 
 rous enough to establish a national reputation for 
 industry, and it would, no doubt, be safer to assume that 
 the energies of the Irish peasantry would require to be 
 artificially stimulated. Without adopting the theory of 
 the incorrigible laziness of the Celtic race, with which 
 some writers perversely choose to stultify all their own 
 suggestions for the benefit of Ireland, we may acknow- 
 ledge it to be doubtful whether people who had been 
 dawdling about all their lives, would, when regular 
 occupation was offered to them* spontaneously apply 
 themselves to it. There is certainly some reason to 
 
 1 Digest of Evidence on Occupation of Land, p. 570. 
 
240 IRELAND; 
 
 apprehend that if settlers of this description were 
 merely translated to their respective allotments, and 
 there abandoned to their own devices, many of them 
 might prefer sloth and poverty to toil and comfort ; and, 
 at any rate, no appeal to their hopes or fears, that might 
 help to rouse them to activity, should be rejected as 
 superfluous. Some direct attempts might be made to 
 imbue them with new and improved tastes, and they 
 should certainly be made acquainted with the advantages 
 of their position, taught how to avail themselves of them, 
 and threatened with their withdrawal in the event of 
 their neglecting to make use of them. One advantage 
 of having the houses on the reclaimed lands built under 
 the superintendence of public officers, would be, that 
 their occupants would receive at once tolerably exalted 
 notions of one sort of comfort of which they might long 
 have remained ignorant, if they had been permitted to 
 build dwellings according to their own fancy, and had 
 taken for their models the vile sties with which they 
 had previously been satisfied. In general, however, it is 
 sufficient, in order to create new wants, that the means 
 of gratifying them be provided. If the colonists could 
 be made to understand, that by taking a little pains they 
 could procure good clothes and good food, they would 
 quickly discover that a whole coat is better than rags, 
 and that a dinner of potatoes is immensely improved 
 by the addition of bread and cheese and bacon. In 
 order to convey to them the needful preliminary in- 
 formation, the whole number of colonies might^ be 
 arranged in districts, to each of which should be 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 24! 
 
 appointed a scientific agriculturist, whose duty it would 
 be to visit periodically -every farm placed under his 
 superintendence, and to instruct the owner in the 
 principles of husbandry. Such agricultural teachers are 
 already employed by several landlords, and have in 
 general done much good. When their advice has not 
 been neutralised by superciliousness on their part, it has 
 commonly been very well received. ' They have easily 
 overcome the prejudices against new practices, enter- 
 tained by the peasantry, and have persuaded them to 
 adopt improved modes of drainage, better rotations, 
 artificial grasses and other green crops. 1 Equal success 
 might be expected with the settlers on the waste lands, 
 and the more surely, as with regard to them, a little com- 
 pulsion might be used in case of need. The permanence 
 of their tenure might be declared contingent on their 
 behaviour, and they might be threatened with the 
 resumption of their grants unless their farms were 
 brought into cultivation within a specified time. 
 
 Such measures, however, would be necessary only 
 with the original colonists, whose vicious habits, inherited 
 from a long line of ancestors, might frustrate any scheme 
 that depended for success on their eradication. But the 
 second and all succeeding generations might be trained 
 betimes in the way in which they should walk. The 
 influence of education might be brought to bear upon 
 them by machinery to be provided in the following 
 manner. The home colonies would either be annexed 
 
 1 Digest of Evidence, ut supra, p. 28. 
 R 
 
242 IRELAND; 
 
 to villages previously existing, or would constitute distinct 
 communities ; and, on account of the situation of the 
 waste lands, the latter arrangement would probably be 
 by far the most general. To each of the separate colonies 
 might be appointed a schoolmaster, who, besides the 
 usual qualifications for the post, should be required to 
 have studied at an agricultural seminary, and thus to have 
 become competent to impart to the children of farmers 
 the special instruction which such pupils require. Every 
 householder should be required by the conditions of his 
 tenure to send his children, between certain ages, to 
 attend the lessons of this master, whose remuneration 
 might consist partly of a fee for every pupil, partly of a 
 rent-free house and ground, and partly of a rent-charge 
 on the land. In a community consisting at first of 200 
 families, and occupying consequently 1,600 acres, a con- 
 tribution of eighteen pence an acre would amount to 1 2o/. 
 a year, which, added to the other emoluments of the 
 office, would procure the services of a properly qualified 
 person. The spiritual instruction of the community might 
 be provided for in a similar manner, by the appointment 
 of a priest, who, besides a manse and glebe and the 
 usual ecclesiastical fees, should be allowed a stipend of 
 the same amount as the schoolmaster, and arising from 
 the same source. The rate which it would be necessary 
 to levy for the payment of both religious and secular 
 teachers, and for the satisfaction of the government claim, 
 would not exceed twelve shillings an acre, or only 
 one-third of the rent that might readily be obtained for 
 the land. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 243 
 
 With these precautions, it may be sanguinely hoped 
 that the experiment would succeed. The wastes recom- 
 mended for reclamation are such as would deserve the 
 attention even of a speculator, seeking not a mere liveli- 
 hood, but a profitable investment for his money ; for 
 experience has shown that an outlay of five or six pounds 
 per acre would add twenty or thirty shillings to the rent- 
 able value. Six acres of such land, held at the full rent, 
 enable the Belgian tenant-farmer, not only to live in 
 comfort, but to save money. Eight acres, therefore, held 
 in perpetuity at a rent of only one-third the original yearly 
 value, could not be an inadequate provision even for 
 Irishmen, if only the latter could be induced to work ; 
 and it is proposed to urge them to exertion by every 
 motive that can stimulate industry. Perhaps, then, we 
 may be permitted to assume that the original grantees 
 would rise from their present indigence to comparative 
 affluence. It remains to be considered whether their 
 prosperity would be permanent, or whether it would be 
 frittered away by the gradual subdivision of the original 
 tenements. The question of the inherent tendency of 
 small properties to continual diminution has already been 
 fully discussed, and it is hoped that sufficient cause has 
 been shown for answering it in the negative. The par- 
 tition of land, it appears, is seldom carried too far except 
 where the various claimants have, by constant com- 
 panionship with privation, accustomed themselves to 
 expect nothing more than a bare subsistence, and have 
 no means of obtaining even that, except from the occu- 
 pation of a piece of ground ; and it is probable that even 
 
244 IRELAND; 
 
 Irishmen, when relieved from the necessity which now 
 leaves them no alternative but to divide the holdings of 
 their parents, would refrain from a course of which they 
 could not fail to perceive the ruinous consequences. With 
 all their Irishism they are not altogether void of reason, 
 but would probably act in much the same manner as 
 other rational beings in similar circumstances. If brought 
 up in the enjoyment of competence they would not con- 
 tent themselves with a miserable pittance, merely because 
 they could derive it from land of their own. If their 
 patrimony were insufficient to maintain them in the "style 
 to which they had been accustomed, they would rather 
 dispose of it and seek a livelihood elsewhere. Such are 
 natural inferences from observation of what happens 
 among peasant proprietors in other countries. Still, if 
 attention be confined to Ireland, it cannot be denied that 
 subdivision has long been the universal practice there 
 not indeed among peasant proprietors, for there are none 
 such in the island but among the miserable cottiers, from 
 whom it is proposed to select the future proprietors. It 
 is possible that with these men, notwithstanding the 
 change in their situation, habit might be more powerful 
 that prudence, and that the continual subdivision of farms 
 might in two or three generations plunge the descendants 
 of the colonists into the destitution from which their 
 forefathers had been raised. Such a result, although very 
 unlikely to occur, is nevertheless possible, and in a 
 matter of so much moment it would be unwise to leave 
 anything to chance. All ground for apprehension might 
 however be removed, assurance might be made doubly 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 24$ 
 
 sure, the possibility of excessive subdivision might be 
 prevented, by the adoption of regulations respecting the 
 succession to the farms to be formed on the waste lands. 
 The construction of such rules would doubtless be a work 
 of great delicacy. In legislating for small estates two 
 opposite evils are to be guarded against their too fre- 
 quent consolidation not less than their excessive partition. 
 The former is, indeed, by far the most difficult to prevent, 
 for contiguous properties have so much chemical affinity 
 for each other that very strong opposing forces are 
 necessary to prevent their combination. Small properties 
 have scarcely anywhere stood their ground permanently, 
 unless gavelkind, or some similar custom of inherit- 
 ance, has prevailed ; and if the law of primogeniture 
 were to be enforced among the colonists of the Irish waste 
 lands, the class of small proprietors would probably 
 sooner or later disappear. But, on the other hand, to 
 establish gavelkind would be to give a legal warrant for 
 the very partition, against which extraordinary precautions 
 are supposed to be necessary in Ireland ; and gavelkind, 
 besides, by ensuring to every child a portion of the family 
 estate, would unduly weaken parental authority. In this 
 dilemma a middle course would perhaps be the most 
 advisable. 
 
 When it was proposed to divide the reclaimed wastes 
 into allotments of eight acres, it was not intended to 
 attach any special importance to that size, or to recom- 
 mend that it should be protected against subsequent 
 alteration. There is, however, a minimum size which 
 properties must possess in order to deserve the name of 
 
246 IRELAND; 
 
 farms, and a maximum size which they cannot exceed 
 without ceasing to be peasant properties. These limits 
 cannot be denned, for they differ in different situations 
 with the productiveness of the soil and the skill and 
 industry of the cultivator; but we will suppose that in 
 Ireland, under good management, five acres would 
 furnish a family with full occupation and adequate subsis- 
 tence, and that fifty acres would elevate the owner above 
 the condition of a mere husbandman. If it should be 
 thought desirable to prescribe these as the most usual 
 boundaries for the possessions of the settlers and their 
 descendants, without, however, absolutely prohibiting the 
 future formation of any of larger or smaller size the end 
 might be attained by some such rules as the following. 
 An owner of more than five acres might be allowed the 
 power of alienation during his lifetime, provided that he 
 did not dispose of a smaller portion than five acres. A 
 person whose estate did not reach that limit should not 
 be permitted to diminish it, but if desirous of alienating, 
 should be required to alienate the whole. Every land- 
 owner having children might be allowed to select from 
 amongst them one or more to be his heirs, provided that 
 he bequeathed to no one more than fifty acres, without 
 making the same provision for as many of his other 
 children as his estate would permit; and provided also, 
 that he bequeathed to none a portion of less than five 
 acres, unless, after division into portions of five acres, 
 one portion of inferior extent should remain, of which he 
 might then be permitted to make a separate bequest. In 
 the case of persons dying intestate, the eldest son might, 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 247 
 
 if the estate were under five acres, be entitled to the 
 whole, and if it exceeded that limit, might take the 
 principal dwelling-house and five acres adjoining. The 
 remainder of the land might be distributed among the 
 other children, or among as many of them, in order of 
 seniority, as could be put in possession of five acres each. 
 If any land then remained, it might, if less than five 
 acres, be given to the eldest of the children previously 
 unprovided for ; and if it exceeded five acres, it might 
 be divided equally among all the children, care being 
 taken in such partition that every inheritance should be 
 compact, and not composed of scattered fragments. It 
 will no doubt be perceived that a law of succession like 
 this, though professedly designed to prevent the size 
 from falling below five acres, would not only permit, but 
 would favour, the formation of some properties of smaller 
 size. It must also be remarked, however, that it would 
 limit the number of such properties; and would moreover 
 prevent a property of less than five acres, when once 
 formed, from being again subdivided. With these pre- 
 cautions, the existence of such properties, instead of 
 being an eviL, would be attended with the best conse- 
 quences. If there were no farms too large to be culti- 
 vated exclusively by the occupiers, pieces of land too 
 small to furnish their owners with adequate employment 
 and subsistence might be productive of idleness and 
 poverty, for the deficiency of their resources could not be 
 supplied. But in Ireland there are, and no doubt always 
 will be, a considerable number of farms extensive enough 
 to require the assistance of hired labour, and upon 
 
248 IRELAND; 
 
 those farms, petty proprietors, insufficiently employed at 
 home, might obtain supplementary occupation. Their 
 pieces of ground would not constitute their principal 
 means of livelihood, but would merely answer the same 
 purpose as the allotments occasionally granted to English 
 labourers, and this the more efficaciously as they would 
 be held on much more favourable terms. Now, the occu- 
 pation of a little land for cultivation in their intervals of 
 leisure is not only advantageous to agricultural day 
 labourers, but seems to be almost indispensable to enable 
 them to live in comfort and security. This they can 
 seldom do when they are entirely dependent upon wages. 
 It seems impossible so to accommodate the supply of 
 agricultural labour to the demand as that the latter shall 
 be fully satisfied, and yet that labour shall be adequately 
 rewarded. And for this reason. Agriculture requires 
 different quantities of labour at different seasons. If, 
 then, the number of labourers be equal to the demand in 
 the busy season, it must exceed the demand in the slack 
 season. But as even during the first period, competition 
 will have been keen enough to prevent wages from rising 
 above the sum required for the maintenance of a family, 
 at other times it must depress them below that amount, 
 so that the labourer who has no resource but his hire, 
 must be reduced to distress during part of every year. 
 Where day labourers enjoy competence, it will be found 
 almost invariably either that they are artisans or manu- 
 facturers as well as husbandmen, or that they hold a 
 little land in their own possession. In many parts of the 
 Continent they have both these additional resources. In 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 249 
 
 England they have neither. In England, accordingly, 
 when their employers have no immediate occasion for 
 their services, they must apply for eleemosynary aid, and, 
 in many rural parishes, half the labourers are every winter 
 entered on the list of pauper pensioners. In the settle- 
 ments to be formed on the Irish wastes, such of the 
 labourers as inherited small plots of ground, would be 
 raised above this degrading necessity. 
 
 Colonisation of the waste lands thus offers a means of 
 speedily raising the most destitute portion of the Irish 
 people to independence and comfort, and of permanently 
 securing those blessings to their descendants. But the 
 advantages of the scheme would not be confined to those 
 most directly affected by it, but would be shared largely 
 by the remainder of the peasantry, and more or less by 
 every section of the nation. By the removal of nearly 
 200,000 families from the lands already cultivated, an end 
 would be put to the present ruinous competition in the 
 land and labour markets ; labour would command, and 
 land be obtainable at, reasonable prices ; rent would fall to 
 the amount which the farmer could pay without impove- 
 rishing himself, and wages would rise, in consequence 
 both of the decrease in the number of labourers, and of 
 the increase of the means of the farmers. Improvement 
 to this extent would take place naturally and as a neces- 
 sary consequence of the reclamation of the waste lands, 
 and legislative interference would be requisite only to pro- 
 mote and confirm it. With these views, two suggestions 
 may be offered : one, the enactment of a law rendering 
 the grant of leases obligatory, a measure which, though no 
 
250 IRELAND; 
 
 longer recommended by the same urgent necessity, would, 
 when tenants were able to negotiate with landlords on 
 more equal terms, be no longer open to the same objec- 
 tion as at present ; and the other, the allotment to the 
 labourers remaining on the present cultivated area of 
 plots of common land, of half an acre or an acre in extent, 
 on the same conditions as the grants made to the settlers 
 on the wastes. The whole body of peasantry labourers, 
 cottiers, and farmers would then, for the first time, be 
 placed in situations in which their subsequent lot would 
 depend upon their own exertions. Specific instruction 
 might still be necessary to teach them the value of the 
 means at their command, but were this afforded, it cannot 
 be doubted that industry would require no other stimulus 
 than self-interest. Industry would introduce plenty, and 
 plenty be accompanied by content Tranquillity would 
 succeed to desperation and violence, and capital would 
 no longer be deterred from flowing wherever a suitable 
 field were offered for its employment. Canals and rail- 
 ways would at once mark and facilitate a the progress of 
 enterprise, mines would be worked, fisheries and such 
 manufactures as were adapted to the country established, 
 the conveniences of civilised life would be multiplied 
 and brought within the reach of every class of the com- 
 munity. The advance of national prosperity would cor- 
 respond with that of individual happiness. The whole 
 empire would receive a vast accession of vigour when its 
 most exhausting drain was converted into an abundant 
 source of wealth, and when the festering wound in one of 
 its principal members was at length healed. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 2$ I 
 
 A scheme so simple, yet promising such brilliant 
 results, may perhaps, on that account alone, be summarily 
 rejected as visionary. Large professions are generally 
 received with distrust, the stronger and more natural, 
 in proportion as they are declared to be easy of fulfilment. 
 The condition of Ireland is commonly regarded as almost 
 hopeless ; ingenuity has long perplexed itself in attempts to 
 investigate the nature of her disorder ; every remedy 
 hitherto applied . has failed to afford even partial or tem- 
 porary relief. It will not, then, be readily believed that 
 the means of effecting a perfect cure were always at hand, 
 open to view, but unnoticed or unappreciated. Yet, when 
 every other prescription has been tried in vain, a new 
 proposal is at least entitled to examination ; and the one 
 offered in the foregoing pages has stronger recommenda- 
 tions than that of mere novelty. Its adoption would pro- 
 cure for the peasantry an extension of territory, which, 
 even if it were not, as argued, the only practicable means, 
 would certainly be an infallible means of procuring for 
 them that additional employment without which they can 
 never emerge from their present debasement. They 
 themselves, with an instinctive perception of what their 
 situation requires, are resolute in their demands for land, 
 and are even now engaged with its actual proprietors in a 
 fearful struggle, of which it is impossible to foresee the 
 end. Yet, to pacify them by assigning additional tracts 
 for their occupation is not even pretended to be an 
 object of any scheme hitherto propounded, save of this 
 for the reclamation of the waste lands, and of another, 
 already alluded to for emigration to British America. 
 
252 IRELAND; 
 
 The latter, beset as it is with difficulties, apparently 
 insuperable, has nevertheless attracted a considerable 
 share of attention ; the very simplicity and practicability 
 of the former are perhaps the cause of its having been 
 treated with comparative neglect. Great statesmen will 
 scarcely deign to listen unless some complicated project 
 some ' great thing ' be submitted for their considera- 
 tion. They disdain to use plain and obvious methods for 
 the cure of national leprosy, even as Naaman, the Syrian, 
 hesitated to wash in Jordan, and be clean, while there 
 were Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than 
 all the waters of Israel. 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 253 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IRELAND ; FORECAST FROM 1873. 
 
 IN respect of sentiment not less than of statement of fact, 
 the preceding chapter, has, by lapse of time, become in 
 portions obsolete ; yet it is left very nearly as originally 
 written five and twenty years ago, in hopes, as I frankly 
 own, that the courteous reader may judge how good on 
 the whole the advice then given was, and how different, 
 if it had been forthwith followed, might now be the con- 
 dition of Ireland. True, plans very similar to the one 
 recommended, have occasionally been tried on the Con- 
 tinent, and have in every instance utterly failed, one 
 example, fairly typical of the rest, being thus described by 
 Col. Mure : * In 1852, when, owing to the potato blight, 
 which since 1846 had more or less devastated the country, 
 together with the absorption of hand weaving by steam 
 power, the greatest distress prevailed among the dense 
 population of Flanders, the Government was induced to 
 purchase certain lands in the Commune of Lommel, in 
 the wildest parts of the Campine, in order there to 
 establish a colony of impoverished Flemish peasants, 
 the object being partly to relieve Flanders of its 
 superabundant population, and partly to introduce 
 
254 IRELAND; 
 
 that skill and industry which for fifty generations have 
 distinguished the Flemish cultivator, and thereby 
 advance the reclamation of hitherto almost useless lands. 
 
 * Two hundred and forty acres were purchased and 
 divided into twenty small farms. Of each farm five acres 
 were reclaimed, sown, and fenced ; excellent steadings 
 were built, and irrigation supplied from the canals gratis ; 
 good roads were made ; even trees were planted for fire- 
 wood everything, in fact, that a reasonable being could 
 desire ; a church and school were erected. 
 
 ' These farms were let to twenty Flemish families on a 
 redemption lease of thirty years. For the first five years 
 no rent was exacted, the annual rent for the remaining 
 twenty-five years graduating on a small increasing scale 
 until the full purchase-money of lyo/. per farm was paid 
 off ; there were various modes, however, by which the 
 tenant was enabled to redeem, which I need not enter 
 into. There were also certain conditions, but all of the 
 most advantageous kinds ; sub-letting was forbidden. 
 
 ' The result was that, before ten years had elapsed, the 
 tenants, apparently considering that the Government was 
 indebted to them, gradually neglected to fulfil any condi- 
 tions whatever ; became idle, insolent, and indifferent ; 
 and, instead of being an example of skill and industry to 
 the neighbourhood, soon became remarkable for every 
 vice which follows in the train of irresponsibility and 
 dependence. Finally, the property, which had cost the 
 State io,4oo/., was sold for i,6oo/. by auction, to my 
 informant himself, who, on entering, evicted the vaga- 
 bond Government pensioners. The lands are now let 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 255 
 
 on the usual conditions, are tolerably cultivated, and in 
 course of time will be valuable property.' l 
 
 Really, it does look as if private energy were unable 
 to survive the torpedo-like touch of governmental support. 
 Certainly, from Indian railways downwards, every private 
 enterprise languishes which government guarantees. In 
 the worst parts of the Campine, a region comprising 
 within its limits the greater part of the provinces of 
 Antwerp and of Belgian Limburg, the tourist may see what 
 almost the whole of Flanders once was a waste, as far as 
 eye can reach, of intermingling moor and marsh. Thirty 
 years ago, few and far between were the oases that 
 diversified the Campine wilderness ; but, to the present 
 writer, while traversing it last autumn from end to end, in 
 more than one direction, there was a species of disap- 
 pointment in remarking how much and how fast the pro- 
 gress of reclamation is interfering with the picturesque 
 effects which some clever landscapes of the modern 
 Belgian school of painting had led him to look for. It 
 has now become difficult to get absolutely out of sight of 
 fields under crop, or of fir plantations in process of 
 clearance for conversion into arable land, or at any rate 
 of land which is being trenched, in order to be planted 
 with firs, with a view to the same eventual conversion. 
 These improvements are the work of volunteers without 
 other prompting than that of self-interest, and there are 
 few Flemish peasants without land of their own who 
 would not gladly undertake, and gladly pay for permission 
 
 1 Letter to the Times, Jan. 24, 1870. 
 
256 IRELAND; 
 
 to undertake similar improvements. Yet, when some of 
 these very peasants were conveyed carriage-free to the 
 Campine, and set down on allotments already reclaimed 
 to their hand, the receipt of so much preliminary help 
 seems to have disabled them from helping themselves. 
 They contrived to persuade themselves that all the 
 solicitude bestowed on them must somehow have been 
 no more than their due, which it was rather indeed a 
 favour on their part to accept, and that to do anything 
 for themselves would be a wanton surrender of dignity, 
 and of the right to have everything done for them. 
 Without disparagement of the Irish character, 'it may be 
 suspected that Irishmen, similarly circumstanced, would 
 not have effectually resisted the demoralizing influences 
 to which even Flemings succumbed. They too, no 
 doubt, if subjected to the coaxing and petting by which 
 children are spoiled, might have responded by behaving 
 like spoilt children. This danger was not, however, 
 overlooked in the recommendations offered above for the 
 colonisation of Irish wastes, and resort to a little 
 wholesome compulsion was suggested as a suitable pre- 
 caution against it. Somewhat stern supervision would 
 no doubt have been indispensable to prevent the 
 colonists from idling, and much judgment would have 
 been required for selection of good disciplinarian super- 
 intendents. This however would have been the chief 
 preliminary difficulty. If there be no British regiment of 
 which, whatever be the preponderance in its composition 
 of the Irish element, we do not feel justly confident that, 
 well led; it will go anywhere and do anything, what room 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 257 
 
 can there be for apprehension that agricultural train- 
 bands, albeit composed exclusively of the same element, 
 would, under suitable leadership, have proved themselves 
 fully equal to the subjugation of Irish waste lands ? The 
 enterprise might, indeed, have occupied many tedious 
 campaigns, chequered by not a few disheartening re- 
 verses, but success in the end would have been certain, 
 if only the patience of the commanders and of the on- 
 looking and cash-advancing public had held out long 
 enough. 
 
 No such peaceful warfare was however attempted; 
 but in its stead, those several alternative expedients 
 examined a while ago in connexion with it, have, one 
 after the other, been resorted to. Railways have been 
 extensively made, and although, as a matter of course, 
 not less extensively jobbed, present themselves in nume- 
 rous directions as smoothened tracts along which progress 
 of every sort may speed with materially accelerated 
 strides. Some millions sterling of public money have 
 been laid out on other public works, either directly by 
 the State or through the medium of loans to private in- 
 dividuals, and the result ;n arterial drainage and the like, 
 if not quite full money's worth, is at any rate a con- 
 spicuous return for the money. Emigration has taken 
 place spontaneously, on a scale on which the boldest 
 fancy would have deemed it incapable of being artificially 
 urged on a scale without historical parallel save in 
 Israel's Exodus from Egypt. That standing reproach to 
 England, that standing insult to Ireland, the Church of 
 a small minority, rich with the spoils of the Church of a 
 
 s 
 
258 IRELAND; 
 
 majority, no longer stands to gall to madness the sensitive 
 pride of a generous people, although the one single 
 principle that of restoration to the rightful owners 
 that could fully justify the disendowment, was unluckily 
 lost sight of. By the operation of the Encumbered and 
 Landed Estates' Courts, an eighth of the surface of 
 Ireland has been relieved from the dead weight of a 
 pauper proprietary, whose superincumbent pressure served 
 only to squeeze periodically out of the soil some few 
 drops more of its remaining fertility. Finally, by the 
 Landlord and Tenant Act of 1870, a powerful stimulus 
 has been applied to the grant of leases, and some imper- 
 fect security of an inferior kind provided where that of 
 leases is withheld. Measures these, or half measures as 
 the case may be they, each and all, may claim to be 
 regarded as healing processes. How far, then, has their 
 combination resulted in re-establishment of the national 
 health? The reply given by Fenian riot and Home 
 Rule rant is not encouraging. ' Never,' says Judge 
 Longfield, ' were Irish farmers more prosperous than at 
 the present moment : never were they more discon- 
 tented.' l Even so slight, as yet, are the symptoms of 
 abatement in that national agitation which, if only by 
 frightening away capital, prevents the sowing of the first 
 seeds of social regeneration. Neither, indeed, to ensure 
 the indispensable calm, will any merely soothing measures 
 suffice, unaccompanied by monitory manifestations of 
 self-conscious strength on the part of the ministering 
 agency ; and, unhappily, all the legislative energy recently 
 1 Cobden Club Essays. First Series, p. 7. 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 259 
 
 exhibited in regard to Ireland has been neutralized by 
 pitiable executive weakness. No amount of beneficence 
 can gain credit for benevolence for an administration 
 which systematically accepts treason as an apology for 
 murder, and suffers policemen to be knocked on the head 
 unavenged, provided political motives are urged for the 
 assault. Its utmost liberality will then be construed into 
 timidity, from which, by further bullying, any amount of 
 further concessions may be extorted. No government 
 need hope to be respected that dares not, in self-defence, 
 meet force by force, putting down sedition with a strong 
 hand, and putting down even trial by jury where juries 
 ally themselves with sedition. That any British states- 
 man, of whatever complexion, should venture on a 
 policy of such Cromwellian decision is, however, in 
 these days out of the question. Is it not one of our 
 national glories that ours is a government by party, 
 carried on by an unremitting ' strife of Freedom,' where- 
 in, as has been said, * everyone may get a share of 
 what is going ; ' Whig and Tory, Conservative and De- 
 structive, all alike, ranking party zeal first among the 
 virtues, and patriotism at best but second, and, by 
 motions and counter-motions in their struggle for place 
 and power, keeping up an edifying show of administrative 
 activity, and reducing administrative action as nearly as 
 possible to zero ? There is the respect that makes the 
 Irish difficulty of so long life, and threatens to render it 
 immortal unless, in the absence of any extrinsic impulse 
 towards the repression of disorder, the growth of a native 
 party of order naturally take place or be artificially 
 
 s 2 
 
260 IRELAND; 
 
 fostered. Now, might not the couple of hundred 
 thousand peasant proprietors, whose settlement on the 
 waste lands was hypothetically provided for in the last 
 chapter, have constituted a nucleus of such a party ? ' As 
 a matter of fact/ says Lord Dufferin, ' few of the actual 
 occupiers of land are tainted with Fenianism. Scarcely 
 any farmers have been implicated in that conspiracy, 
 though, perhaps, some of their relatives (in other words, 
 persons with a much more modified interest in land than 
 themselves) may have been entrapped. The tenant of a 
 piece of land, even under the alleged disadvantageous 
 condition of his existence, has much more to lose than to 
 gain by the overthrow of the existing order of things/ l 
 But, if it be thus with mere occupiers, mere tenants at- will, 
 with an interest in the land f modified ' down to almost 
 vanishing point, how would it have been with our sup- 
 posed peasant owners, with an interest altogether un- 
 modified in keeping what they had got ? Might not 
 these in case of emergency have been relied upon for 
 enrolling themselves as ' Defenders ' or ' United Irish- 
 men/ with views the very opposite of those of the bands 
 so designated in 1798. The time for creating a numerous 
 peasant proprietary in the summary mode suggested 
 has, however, long gone by, and is not now to be re- 
 covered. How seldom, alas, does England, in respect of 
 Irish reforms, take time by the forelock ! 
 
 Still, indeed, there remains in Ireland enough and 
 more than enough both of waste lands convertible into 
 peasant freeholds, and of peasants whose labour could 
 1 Irish Emigration, p. 201. 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 26 1 
 
 not be better utilised than in so converting them them- 
 selves experiencing simultaneously a corresponding con- 
 version. Moreover, thanks to emigration, there would 
 now be comparatively ample breathing time within which 
 to perform all subsidiary operations with needful fore- 
 thought and deliberation. Yet, prepossessed as I natu- 
 rally am in favour of a plan which, although frequently 
 fathered upon Mr. Mill and others, has by Mr. Mill him- 
 self been distinctly declared to be originally mine, 1 1 would 
 not now advocate its adoption even on a limited scale, 
 partly because I feel that the advocacy would be as in- 
 effectual as ever, but partly, also, because there is no 
 longer the same pretext or occasion for it. The tenure 
 of land, when not artificially warped, but left free to 
 take whatever shape circumstances are calculated to give, 
 generally adapts itself to the social requirements of time 
 and place; and the condition of a country must be very 
 peculiar, and scarcely less critical than that of Ireland 
 five and twenty years ago, to warrant a legislature in 
 attempting to accelerate the assumption of any particular 
 shape. But the condition of Ireland has within the last 
 twenty-five years changed very materially; slight as may 
 
 1 Alluding to proposals for the colonisation of Irish wastes by 
 Irish peasants, Mr. Mill says : ' This plan has been strongly pressed 
 upon the public by several writers, but the first to bring it promi- 
 nently forward in England was Mr. W. Thornton, in a work (Over- 
 population and its Remedy) honourably distinguished,' &c. Prin- 
 ciples of Political Economy, first edition, 1848, p. 392. I may 
 mention that the first edition of my Peasant Proprietors was 
 published some weeks before the first edition of Mr. Mill's Political 
 Economy appeared. 
 
262 IRELAND; 
 
 have been the progress made towards a solution of her 
 social problem, the problem itself has become greatly 
 simplified; her epidemic misery has diminished greatly 
 both in extent and intensity, and what remains of the 
 disease is not too desperate to be expected to yield to 
 none but desperate remedies. Fully persuaded, as I con- 
 tinue to be, that a peasant proprietary is one of Ireland's 
 foremost needs, I nevertheless believe that it may now 
 be left to grow up spontaneously, without other legislative 
 aid than would consist in removal of the obstacles which 
 past legislation has heaped in its way. Of some of these, 
 the Encumbered and Landed Estates Courts have already 
 made, and are making short work; and cessation of the 
 factitious encouragement given by law to primogeniture 
 and entails, together with the substitution of some cheap 
 and simple machinery for verifying titles to land, for the 
 labyrinthine tissue of legal complexities through which 
 search has now to be made for them, would go far to 
 dispose of the rest. If all estates with which it was for 
 the interest of the owners to part could be brought to 
 market without more let or hindrance, and be sold there 
 without payment of higher market tolls or other fees than 
 those to which mercantile goods and chattels are liable, 
 they would, it may be presumed, equally with miscel- 
 laneous merchandise, pass into the possession of the 
 customers best fitted to utilise them. They would be 
 offered for sale in portions of all sizes, large and small, 
 and partly, no doubt, in portions small enough to come 
 within the means of the most numerous class of customers 
 of the petty fanners, to wit, who, beggarly-looking as 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 263 
 
 they and all their environments are, often have, tied up in 
 an old stocking, good store of sovereigns lying idle 
 until called forth to furnish a daughter's dower. 1 To 
 judge from what happens elsewhere in analogous cir- 
 cumstances, the owners of these petty hoards would be 
 rather too eager than the reverse to avail themselves of 
 the opportunities offered for territorial investment ; and, 
 over and above the numerous petty freeholders coming 
 consequently into being, there would be a much greater 
 number of freeholders in prospect, who, in the five, ten, 
 and fifteen acre farms scattered around them, would see 
 ladders by which they might hope to mount from the 
 grade of journeymen to that, first of tenant farmers, and 
 then of farmers of their own acres. To insist upon the 
 immense benefit to the entire peasantry of these transfor- 
 mations, immediate and prospective, would be but to 
 repeat on~e again what has already been repeatedly 
 urged throughout this volume. What rather I feel to be 
 incumbent upon me is to admit that completest realisation 
 of the benefit anticipated would still fall far short of 
 what I conceive would result from a really perfect land 
 system. According to my ideal on that subject, there 
 should be no property in land save -that of the whole 
 nation in its corporate capacity ; and those Asiatic 
 countries in which the state, as trustee for the nation, is 
 sole landed proprietor, would, in my opinion, be 
 infinitely to be congratulated, were there but adequate 
 
 1 * Moreover, we know from bank returns that Irish farmers have 
 actually I7,ooo,ooo/. lying idle in banks.' Cliffe Leslie's Land 
 Systems, p. in. 
 
264 IRELAND; 
 
 security that the rights involved in the trust would be 
 duly appreciated and judiciously exercised by those who 
 have to administer it. In countries, however, in which 
 such national ownership has either never existed or has 
 been inconsiderately relinquished, its establishment or 
 restoration by fair means is not to be expected on this 
 side millennium nor yet by foul means, without a deluge 
 of revolutionary bloodshed such as has not been para- 
 lelled, even aqueously, on this side the Flood, and such 
 as, on its subsidence, would leave surviving but a small 
 remnant of the nation to avail itself of the eventually 
 emergent national right. With reference to which hope- 
 lessness of theoretical perfection in the matter, it were 
 not perhaps amiss for the most advanced of land reformers 
 to aim at something lower and more practicable than 
 their present summum bonum the ' nationalisation ' of 
 the soil and to content themselves with striving to 
 reduce the evils of private proprietorship to a minimum. 
 Having so brought their aspirations within practicable 
 limits, they would probably recognise the spontaneous 
 intermixture of peasant proprietors among the present 
 monopolists of land as an important move in the right 
 direction ; nor are there wanting considerations, though 
 of an opposite character, calculated to commend the 
 same movement equally to the most obstinately preju- 
 diced of anti-reformers. Already in the murmurs, 
 passing ever and anon into growls, of a landless 
 multitude who, as soon as they awake to full appreciation 
 of their recently conceded political powers, will perceive 
 themselves to be absolute masters of every domestic 
 
FORECAST FROM 1873. 2 6$ 
 
 situation whoso lists, may distinguish sounds ominously 
 resembling ' the surly laughter of ocean preluding a storm.' 
 But, to prevent storms from breaking upon land, what 
 more effectual than a breakwater? what appearance 
 more welcome, to the dwellers on a menaced shore, than 
 that of such a barrier forming itself naturally ? and what 
 sort of toleration would there in such case be for port 
 rules, ballast regulations, or the like, calculated to 
 obstruct the deposition of suitable materials ? 
 
 To the whole existing order of landlords, scarcely 
 more to Irish than to English and Scottish, the parable is 
 spoken. All alike may profit by pondering over its 
 moral, on condition, however, of not lingering too long 
 in meditation. In every quarter of the United Kingdom 
 a storm against landlordism is audibly brewing, which, if 
 allowed to break, will shake the edifice to its foundations, 
 not, assuredly, leaving undislocated the superstructure. Yet 
 landlordism, even if a hundred times more unpopular than 
 it has, so far, become amongst ourselves, might be rendered 
 one of the most popular of institutions, by simply having 
 its privileges, now so invidiously concentrated, made 
 freely accessible to all the meanest farm labourer in- 
 cluded; and to this change in its character the only remain- 
 ing impediments are legal ones, of which landlords and 
 their legal advisers are the chief upholders. On the legal 
 counsel concerned in the case, the most presumptuous 
 of unprofessional outsiders would shrink from obtruding 
 advice ; but it ought not to be hopeless to invite land- 
 lords to consider whether the immunity of periodical 
 bankruptcy which entails confer, is a really valuable 
 
266 IRELAND. 
 
 privilege ; and whether the dignity involved in the tedious 
 formalities now hampering the sale of land is adequate 
 compensation for the depreciation, by a third or more, of 
 the market value of land thereon consequent ; whether at 
 any rate it is wise, for the sake of retaining these minor 
 outposts, to impede the formation of a breakwater which, 
 by conversion from landless into landed, of a good pro- 
 portion of the sea of men foaming in the front, may pre- 
 vent their main position from being swept away. 1 It rests 
 with themselves to have, or not to have, in a seemingly 
 inevitable and not distant controversy as to their con- 
 tinued existence as a class, the whole rural population as 
 decidedly for them, as, in Ireland at least, the main bulk 
 thereof is at present decidedly against them. But in order 
 to resolve wisely on the course to be taken they must be 
 wise betimes ; for much longer to defer will be discovered 
 too late to have been little short of madness. 
 
 1 In the Appendix will be found some striking remarks of M. 
 de Laveleye, which no one who has ought to fear from agrarian 
 convulsion should omit to read. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Remarks by M. De Laveleye on the anti-revolutionary 
 influence of Peasant Proprietorship. 
 
 ; IT may be thought a matter for surprise that, in Flanders, 
 feelings hostile to social order nevertheless do not manifest 
 themselves, and that agrarian outrages are never perpetrated 
 as in Ireland, although I think it certain that, in consequence 
 of excessive competition, the Flemish farmer is much more 
 -ground down by his landlord than the Irish tenant. The 
 fact that in Flanders, as in all countries in which landed 
 property is distributed among a large number of owners, the 
 ideas called socialist in the bad sense of the word do not 
 obtain, is to be accounted for as follows : 
 
 1 The Flemish tenant, although ground down by the 
 constant rise of rents, lives among his equals, peasants like 
 himself, who have tenants whom they use just as the large 
 landowner does his. His father, his brother, perhaps the 
 man himself, possesses something like an acre of land, which 
 he lets at as high a rent as he can get. In the public-house, 
 peasant proprietors will boast of the high rents they get for 
 their lands, just as they might boast of having sold their 
 pigs or potatoes very dear. Letting at as high a rent as 
 possible comes thus to seem to him to be quite a matter of 
 course, and he never dreams of finding fault with either the 
 landowners as a class, or with property in land. His mind 
 is not likely to dwell on the notion of a caste of domineering 
 
268 APPENDIX. 
 
 landlords, of " bloodthirsty tyrants," fattening on the sweat of 
 impoverished tenants, and doing no work themselves ; for 
 those who drive the hardest bargains are not the great land- 
 owners, but his own fellows. Thus the distribution of a 
 number of small properties among the peasantry forms a 
 kind of rampart and safeguard for the holders of large 
 estates ; and peasant property may, without exaggeration, be 
 called the lightning conductor that averts from society 
 dangers which might otherwise lead to violent catastrophes. 
 1 The concentration of land in large estates among a small 
 number of families is a sort of provocation of levelling 
 legislative measures. The position of England, so enviable 
 in many respects, seems to me to be in this respect full of 
 danger for the future.' Cobden Club Essays, First Series, 
 pp. 273 and 274. 
 
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