POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Politic*! to regulate their procedure by numerous obligatory 

 jlmii.Miiy. cbuiM.s ; In- liiuitt-d their leases to a few \ 

 ' . ""~" kept them in a continual state of dependence. Dur- 

 ing the last century, farmers, particularly in England, 

 have risen to rank and importance. Political writers 

 and legislators have uniformly viewed them with a fa- 

 vourable eye ; their leases have ceased to be limited in 

 time to a small number of years ; and hence farmer* 

 have issued from a more elevated class of society. With 

 l.ir-t T capitals, they have taken farms of a larger bi/e ; 

 more extensive knowledge, and a better education have 

 enabled them to treat agriculture as a science. They 

 have applied to it several important discoveries in che- 

 mistry and natural history ; they have also in some de- 

 gree united the habits of the merchant with those of 

 the cultivator. The hope of a larger profit has induced 

 them to make larger advances; they have renounced 

 that parsimony which originates in want, and stands 

 in direct opposition to enlightened economy; they have 

 calculated and recorded the result of their operations 

 with greater regularity, and this practice has furnish- 

 ed better opportunities of profiting by their own ex- 

 perience. 



On the other hand, farmers from this time have 

 ceased to be labourers ; and below them has of course 

 been formed a class of men of toil, who being entrust- 

 ed with supporting the whole nation by their labour, 

 are the real peasants, the truly essential part of the 

 population. The peasantry, strengthened by the kind 

 of labour most natural to man, are perpetually requir- 

 ed for recruiting all the other classes ; it is they who 

 must defend the country in a case of need ; whom it 

 most concerns us to attach to the soil where they were 

 born ; and policy itself would invite every govern- 

 ment to render their lot happy, even though humani- 

 ty did not command it. 



When the system of small farms has been compared, 

 as is often done, with that of great farms, it has not 

 been sufficiently considered that the latter, by tak- 

 ing the direction of his labour out of the peasant's 

 hands, reduces him to a condition greatly more un- 

 happy, than almost any other system of cultivation. 

 In truth, hinds performing all the labours of agricul- 

 ture, under the command of a rich farmer, are not 

 only more dependant than metayers, but even than 

 serfs, who pay their capitation or their service. The 

 latter, whatever vexations they experience, have at 

 least a hope, a property, and a heritage to leave their 

 children. But the hind has no participation in pro- 

 perty, nothing to hope from the fertility of the soil or 

 the propitiousness of the season ; he plants not for his 

 children ; he entrusts not to the ground the labour of 

 his young years to reap the fruit of it with interest in 

 his old age. He lives each week on the wages of the 

 last. Ever exposed to the want of work by derange- 

 ments in his master's fortune ; ever ready to feel the 

 extremes of want, from sickness, accident, or even the 

 approaches of old age, he runs all the risks of ruin with- 

 out enjoying any of the chances of fortune. Economy 

 in his situation is scarcely probable; but though he 

 should succeed in collecting a little capital, the sup- 

 pression of all intermediate ranks hinders him from 

 putting it to use. The distance between his lot and 

 that of an extensive farmer, is too great for being pass- 

 ed over ; whereas, in the system of cultivation on the 

 small scale, a labourer may succeed, by his little eco- 

 nomy, in acquiring a small farm or a small metairie ; 

 from this he may pass to a greater, and from that to 

 every thing. The same causes have suppressed all the 



intermediate stages in other department* of industry. Political 

 A gulf lies between the day -labourer and every enter- Economy, 

 prite of manufacture or trade, a well as farming ; and *"" ****** 

 the lower claret havenow lost that help which sustained 

 them in a former period of civilization. Parish aids, 

 which are secured to the day-labourer, increase his de- 

 pendence. I n such a state of suffering and disquietude, 

 it is not easy to preserve the feeling of human dignity, 

 or the love of freedom ; and thus at the highest point of 

 modern civilization, the system of agriculture approxi- 

 mates to that of those corrupt periods of ancient civi- 

 lization, when ihe whole labour of the field was per- 

 formed by slaves. 



The state of Ireland, and the convulsions to which 

 that unhappy country is continually exposed, show 

 clearly enough how important it is for the repose and 

 security of the rich themselves, that the agricultural 

 class, which forms the great majority of a nation, should 

 enjoy conveniences, hope, and happiness. The Irish 

 peasants are rearly to revolt, and plunge their country in- 

 to the horrors of civil war; they live each in a miserable 

 hut, on the produce of a few beds of potatoes and the 

 milk of a cow ; more unhappy, at the present day, 

 than the cottagers of England, though possessing a 

 small property, of which the latter are destitute. In 

 return for their allotted pcrtion of jround, they merely 

 engage to work by the day, at a fixed wage, on the 

 farm where they live ; but their competition with each 

 other has forced them to be satisfied with a wage of 

 the lowest possible kind. A similar competition will 

 act likewise against the English cottagers. There is 

 no equality of strength between the day-labourer, who 

 is starving, and the farmer, who does not even lose the 

 revenue of his ground, by suppressing some of his ha- 

 bitual operations; and hence the result of such a strug- 

 gle between the two classes, is constantly a sacrifice of 

 the class which is poorer, more numerous, and better 

 entitled to the protection of law. 



Rich proprietors generally find that for themselves 

 large farms are more advantageous than small ones. The 

 small farmer rarely employs a capital sufficient even for 

 his little cultivation ; himself is always so near to ruin, 

 that he must begin by ruining the ground. And certain- 

 ly in countries, where the different systems of cultiva- 

 tion are practically set in opposition to each other, it is 

 granted that land is ruined by letting it on lease, 

 and reimproved by cultivating it with servants or 

 metayers. It is not, therefore, small farms, but me- 

 tairies, which ought to be compared with large farms. 

 Cultivation, on the great scale, spares much time which 

 is lost in the other way ; it causes a greater mass of 

 work to be performed in the same time by a given 

 number of men ; it tends, above all, to procure from 

 the employment of great capitals the profit formerly 

 procured from the employment of numerous work- 

 men ; it introduces the use of expensive instruments, 

 which abridge and facilitate the labour of man. It in- 

 vents machines, in which the wind, the fall of water, 

 the expansion of steam, are substituted for the power 

 of limbs ; it makes animals execute the work formerly 

 executed by men. It hunts the latter from trade to 

 trade, and concludes, by rendering their existence use- 

 less. Any saving of human strength is a prodigious ad- 

 vantage, in a colony, where the supernumerary popu- 

 lation may always be advantageously employed Hu- 

 manity justly solicits the employment of machines to 

 aid the labour of the negroes, who cannot perform 

 what is required of them, and who used to be in- 

 cessantly recruited by an infamous commerce. But in 



