POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Teliticai a country where population is already too abundant, 

 Economy. t h e dismissal of more than half the field-labourers is a 



*~~" ' serious misfortune, particularly at a time, when a similar 



improvement in machinery causes the dismissal of more 

 than half the manufacturing population of towns. The 

 nation is nothing else but the union of all the indi- 

 viduals who compose it, and the progress of its wealth 

 is illusory, when obtained at the price of general 

 wretchedness and mortality. 



Whilst, in England, the peasantry are hastening to 

 destruction, their condition is improving in France ; 

 they are gathering strength, and without abandening 

 manual labour, they enjoy a kind of affluence ; they 

 unfold their minds, and adopt, though slowly, the disco- 

 veries of science. But in France, the peasants are most- 

 ly proprietors : the number of those who cultivate their 

 own lands prodigiously increased in the Revolution ; 

 and to this cause must be attributed the rapid pro- 

 gress which agriculture is making in that country, in 

 spite of a long war and heavy contributions. Per- 

 haps England might partly obtain a similar advantage, 

 if these vast commons were shared among her cotta- 

 gers, to whom the charm of property would thus be 

 restored. 



The most industrious provinces of France are, at 

 this time, experiencing the unlooked-for effects of di- 

 viding property arribng its true cultivators ; we mean 

 the distribution of great farms among the contiguous 

 peasantry, by a great number of particular contracts. 

 A large proprietor now rarely gives his farm to be cul- 

 tivated by a single person ; he finds it infinitely more 

 advantageous, at present, to share his domain, among 

 a number of neighbouring peasants, each of whom 

 takes as much land as is requisite to occupy him all 

 the year. No doubt, the peasant will generally sacrifice 

 the land which he farms, to that which is his property ; 

 but both those portions are cultivated with the ar- 

 dour which a direct interest excites in the labourer, and 

 with the intelligence which is developed in him, now 

 that his lord can no longer oppress him. The agricul- 

 tural classes are as happy as the political circum- 

 stances of a country, loved with enthusiasm, permit 

 them to be. 



To conclude our review of the systems, by which 

 territorial wealth is incessantly renewed, we ought yet 

 to bestow a moment of attention on the system of em- 

 phyteuses or perpetual farms, the most suitable of all 

 when government has grants of land to make. 



In other systems of cultivation, the agriculturist ac- 

 quires all the fruit of his annual advances, but he can 

 never be sure of profiting from those irredeemable ad- 

 vances by which a perpetual value is added to land, 

 from drainings, plantations, and breaking up of the 

 soil. Proprietors, of themselves, are seldom enabled to 

 make such advances. If they sell the land, the purcha- 

 ser, in order to acquire it, must surrender that very 

 capital, with which he might have made those improve- 

 ments. The lease of emphyieusis, or plantation, which 

 is the proper meaning of the word, was thus a very 

 useful invention, as by it the cultivator engaged to 

 break up a desert, on condition of acquiring the domi- 

 nium utile of it for ever, whilst the proprietor reserv- 

 ed for himself an invariable rent to represent the do- 

 minium directum. Nc,. expedient could more happily 

 combine, in the s^me individual, affection for pro- 

 perty, with zeal for cultivation ; or more us'efully 

 employ in irrt^roving land, the capital destined to 

 break it up. Although this kind of lease is known in 

 England under the name of freehold for many lives; 



and though it is even of great importance in this king- Political 

 dom, as the right of voting in county elections de- Economy. 

 pends upon it, its beneficial influence has chiefly been T^* 

 experienced in Italy, where it is named livello. In 

 the latter country, it has restored to the most brilliant 

 state of cultivation whole provinces, which had been 

 allowed to run waste. It cannot, however, become a 

 universal mode of cultivation, because it deprives the 

 direct proprietor of all the enjoyment of property, 

 exposing him to all the inconveniences, with none of the 

 advantages, in the condition of the capitalist ; and be- 

 cause the father of 'a family can never be looked upon as 

 prudent or economical, when he thus alienates his pro- 

 perty for ever, without at least retaining the disposal 

 of the price to be received in exchange for it. 



For reproducing territorial wealth, it is sufficient, in 

 general, that the use of the ground be transmitted to 

 the industrious man, who may turn it to advantage, 

 whilst the property of it continues with the rich man, 

 who has no longer the same incitements or the same 

 fitness for labour, and who thinks only of enjoyment. 

 The national interest, however, sometimes also requires 

 that property itself shall pass into hands likely to make 

 a better use of it. It is not for themselves alone that 

 the rich elicit the fruits of the earth ; it is for the whole 

 nation; and if, by a derangement in their fortune, they 

 suspend the productive power of the country, it concerns 

 the whole nation to put their property under different 

 managers. Personal interest is, indeed, sufficient to 

 bring about this transmission, provided the law offers 

 no obstacle. When a soldier comes to inherit a ma- 

 chine for making stockings-, he does not keep it long ; 

 in his hands, the machine is useless for himself and the 

 nation ; in the hands of a stocking-maker it would be 

 productive, both for the nation and the individual. Both 

 feel this ; and a bargain is soon struck. The soldier re- 

 ceives money, which he well knows how to employ ; 

 the stocking-maker receives possession of his frame, 

 and production recommences. Most of our European 

 laws respecting immoveable property, are like a law 

 made to hinder the soldier from parting with the 

 frame, of whose use he is ignorant. 



The value of land cannot be unfolded, except by em- 

 ploying a capital sufficient to procure the accumula- 

 tion of that labour which improves it. Hence, it is es- 

 sential to the very existence of a nation, that its land 

 be always in the hands of those who can devote capital 

 to its cultivation. If it were not in any case allowed 

 to sell a workman's implement, it would not, certainly, 

 at least, be forbidden to make new ones for the use of 

 new workmen ; but new lands cannot be made, and so 

 often as the law prevents the alienation of an estate by 

 one that cannot use it, so often does it suspend the most 

 essential of all productions. 



The systems of cultivation, which we have now 

 glanced over in review, certainly cause the earth to 

 produce, by the hands of temporary cultivators, when 

 the permanent advances have been made ; but they ab- 

 solutely discourage such cultivators from making those 

 permanent advances which, as they give a perpetual 

 value to property, cannot be laid out except by those 

 with whom that property is destined to continue. Legis- 

 lators in general, altogether occupied with preventing 

 the alienation of immoveables, and preserving great 

 fortunes in great families, have dreaded lest such an 

 alienation might clandestinely be brought about by a 

 lease, for a long term, and without return. They 

 have eagerly attempted to defend the rights of proprie- 

 tors against proprietors themselves ; they have guided 

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