AND DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 377 



vegetables and bread. Bread, both wheat and rye, is with them 

 literally the staff of life. With all this they enjoy a ruddy 

 health ; and the women are diligent to a proverb. They seem 

 unwilling to lose a moment s time. I have repeatedly seen them 

 carrying heavy burdens upon their heads, and at the same time 

 knitting as they went along. 



CXVIII. SIZE OF FARMS, AND DIVISION OF 

 PROPERTY. 



The size of farms in Prance has been a subject of much dis 

 cussion. The right of primogeniture has ceased to exist there : 

 and since the great revolution, the law has ordained that the 

 land possessed by any one at his death should be equally divided 

 among his children. This did not take place without a hard 

 struggle against it on the part of the great proprietors, nor without 

 many predictions of ruin to the agriculture of France, from the 

 infinite subdivisions which the land was likely to undergo, and 

 the small size to which farms were about to be reduced. The 

 law, however, has been maintained, and, as far as I have been 

 able to observe, with the happiest results to France.* It was 

 predicted, that, under such an arrangement, no system of exten 

 sive agricultural improvement could be attempted ; and that 

 small proprietors being thus multiplied, and the laborers them- 



* In France the total number of taxed landed properties is stated, in ]835, to 

 have been 10,896,682, and these were again divided into 123,360,338 separate 

 pieces of land. It is supposed, however, that of heads of families occupying 

 estates, which combine many of these smaller divisions, and which consequently 

 become merely nominal partitions, there are about 5.000,000. Now, allowing 

 an average of four to a family, it will be seen that there are 20,000,000 of peo 

 ple in France directly interested in the property of the soil. The number of 

 proprietors of the soil in England, who hold landed property yielding a rent of 

 100 sterling per year, is stated, at the same time, at 38,000 ; and the whole 

 number of proprietors of the soil in England and Wales is rated at 200,000, and 

 in the whole United Kingdom at 600,000. The extent of the United Kingdom 

 is about two thirds that of France. Statistique Gintrale de la France, par 

 Schnitzler, torn. iii. p. 11. 

 32* 



