50 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Political ject of hatred and distrust to his vassals ; and social 

 Economy, order, threatened so incessantly, cannot be maintained 

 '^Y""*' except by violent means. 



The ground of the metayer's contract is every way the 

 same, as that of a contract with the cultivator by cor- 

 vees. The landlord in Hungary, as in Italy, has given 

 up his land to the peasant, on condition of receiving 

 half its fruits in return. In both countries, the other 

 half has been reckoned sufficient for supporting the 

 cultivator, and repaying his advances. A single error 

 in political economy has rendered what is highly ad- 

 vantageous for one of those countries disastrous for the 

 other. The Hungarian has not inspired the labourer 

 with any interest in his own industry ; by sharing the 

 land and the days of the week, he has made an ene- 

 my of the man, who should have been his coadjutor. 

 The labour is performed without zeal or intelligence ; 

 the master's share, inferior to what it would have been 

 according to the other system, is collected with fear ; 

 the peasant's share is so reduced, that he lives in con- 

 stant penury : and some of the most fertile countries in 

 the world have already been for ages doomed to this 

 state of wretchedness and oppression. 



But the legistator's interference, which we claimed 

 for the metayer, has, in some of the countries culti- 

 vated by corvees, actually taken place in favour of 

 the vassal, peasant, or serf. In the German provinces 

 of the Austrian monarchy, contracts between the land- 

 lord and peasant are, by law, made irrevocable, and 

 most of the corvees have been changed into a fixed 

 and perpetual rent of money, or of fruits in a raw state. 

 By this means, the peasant has acquired a true proper- 

 ty in his house and land ; only, it continues to be 

 charged with rents, and some feudal services. Still far- 

 ther to protect the peasantry from being afterwards 

 oppressed or gradually expelled from their properties, 

 by the opulent lords living among them, the law 

 does not allow any noble to buy a vassal's land ; or, if 

 he does buy any, he is obliged to sell it, on the same 

 conditions, to some other family of peasants ; so that 

 the property of the nobles can never increase, or the 

 agricultural population diminish. 



These regulations of the Austrian government in 

 behalf of an order, which, if left to itself, must needs 

 be oppressed, are almost sufficient to redeem the er- 

 rors of its general system, by this increase of happi- 

 ness to the subject, and of stability to the system itself. 

 In a country deprived of liberty, where the finances 

 have at all times been wretchedly administered, where 

 wars are eternal and still disastrous, obstinacy there 

 being always joined with incapacity ; the great mass of 

 the population, composed almost wholly of peasant-pro- 

 prietors living in easy circumstances, have been ren- 

 dered happy ; and this mass of subjects, feeling their 

 own happiness, and dreading every change, have mock- 

 ed all the projects of revolution or of conquest direct- 

 ed against their country, the government of which is 

 so little able to defend itself. 



The system of cultivating land by capitation, could 

 be adopted only among a people scarcely emerged 

 from barbarism. It is, in fact, nearly a modern farm- 

 lease, the parties to which, in fixing the rent, pay no 

 regard to the greater or smaller extent of the ground, 

 to its comparative fertility or barrenness, to the im- 

 provements which labour has already made it undergo. 

 Be the nature of these circumstances what it may, each 

 proprietor of a whole Russian province pays thirty 

 roubles yearly to the lord of it. Doubtless when the 

 capitation was imposed, all those circumstances were 



equal ; there was more fertile land for each than each Political 

 could cultivate, and no part of it had yet been im- Econon.y. 

 proved by labour. -Y- 



In free countries, capitation is looked upon as a de- 

 grading tax, because it recals the idea of servitude. It 

 was, indeed, originally always accompanied with servi- 

 tude of the soil. The peasant always depended on the 

 good pleasure of his master; in executing their mutual 

 contract, no law afforded him protection ; he was al- 

 ways liable to be ejected, carried off, sold, stript of all 

 the property amassed by his industry ; and thus the 

 kind of authority to which he was subject incessantly 

 reminded him, that, whatever he saved, he took frcm 

 himself to give it to his master ; that every effort on his 

 part was useless, every invention dangerous, every im- 

 provement contrary to his interest, and finally, that 

 every sort of study but aggravated his wretchedness by 

 more clearly informing him of his condition. 



Even in Russia, however, the disinterestedness of 

 some noble families, who for several generations have 

 not changed the capitation, has inspired the peasantry 

 with confidence sufficient to reanimate their industry, 

 to infuse a taste for labour and economy, and some- 

 times even to permit their realizing very large fortunes, 

 which, however, always depend on the master's good 

 pleasure. But in countries where servitude of the soil 

 has been gradually abolished, the capitation has be- 

 come a fixed rent ; united most frequently to personal 

 services, and sometimes reduced to mere feudal rights, 

 as the system, by degrees, varied from its primitive 

 uniformity. Such was the tenure by villunage in 

 France, by copyhold in England, the origin of nearly 

 all the property possessed by peasants cultivating their 

 own heritages. On the other hand, such contracts 

 helped to produce the notion of farm-leases, which, 

 in the wealthiest countries of Europe, have succeeded 

 every other kind of convention between proprietor 

 and cultivator. 



By a farm-lease, the proprietor yields his land, and 

 nothing more, to the cultivator ; and demands an in- 

 variable rent for it ; whilst the farmer undertakes 

 to direct and to execute all the labour by himself; to 

 furnish the cattle, the implements, and the funds of 

 agriculture ; to sell his produce, and to pay his taxes. 

 The farmer takes upon him all the cares and all the 

 gains of his agriculture; he treats it as a commercial 

 speculation, from which he expects a profit propor- 

 tionate to the capital employed in it. 



At the time when slavery was abolished, the system 

 of farms could not be immediately established : freed- 

 men could not yet undertake such important engage- 

 ments, nor were they able to advance the labour of a 

 year, much less that of several years, for putting the 

 farm in a proper condition. The master, on giving them 

 their liberty, would have been obliged to give them also 

 an establishment ; to furnish them with cattle, instru- 

 ments of tillage, seed and food for a year ; and after 

 all these advances, the farm would still have been 

 a burdensome concern for the owner, because by hi 

 contract he had renounced the profit of good years on 

 condition that his farmer should warrant him against 

 bad years ; but the farmer who had nothing could war- 

 rant nothing, and the master would have given up his 

 good crops without any return. 



The first farmers were mere labourers ; they exe- 

 cuted most of the agricultural operations with their 

 own hands ; they adjusted their enterprises to the 

 strength of their families ; and as the proprietor re- 

 posed little confidence in their management, he used 



3 



