POLITICAL ECON'OMY. 



53 



i that class of people by forfeits and resolutory clauses ; 



v - they have n'xtil upon a short term for farm leaflet; 



~~ they seem continually repeating to the cultivator : "This 



laiul, on which you work, is not yours ; acquire not too 



much aticc-tion for it ; make no advances which you 



might run the risk of losing ; improve the present mo- 



nifiit, if you can, but think not of the future; above 



.\ll, beware of labouring for posterity." 



Besides, independently of legislative errors, it be- 

 longs to the very nature of a farm lease never to allow 

 the farmer to take as much interest in the land as its 

 proprietor. It is enough, that this lease must have an 

 rnd, to induce the farmer, as this end approaches, to 

 care less about his fields, and to cease laying out money 

 tor improving them. The metayer, with smaller 

 power, at least never fears to improve the land com- 

 mitted to him as much as possible ; because the condi- 

 tions of his lease are invariable, and he is never dis- 

 missed except for bad behaviour. The farmer, again, 

 is liable to be dismissed directly in consequence of his 

 good management. The more hf*. has improved his 

 farm, the more will his landlord, at renewing the lease, 

 he disposed to require an augmentation of rent ; and, 

 besides, as part of the advances laid out by the culti- 

 vator on the ground create a perpetual value, it is nei- 

 ther just nor natural that they should be made by one 

 whose interest is merely temporary. The farmer will 

 carefully attend to the fields and meadows, which, in a 

 few years, are to give him back all his advances ; but 

 he will plant few orchards ; few high forests in the 

 North ; few vineyards in the South ; he will make few 

 canals for navigation, irrigation, or draining ; he will 

 transport little soil from one place to another ; he will 

 clear little ground ; he will execute, in short, few of 

 those works which are most conducive to the public 

 interest, because they found the wealth of posterity. 



None of those labours, on which the increase of the 

 whole national subsistence depends, can be undertaken 

 save by a proprietor rich in moveable capital. It is 

 not the preservation of great fortunes that concerns the 

 nation, but the union of territorial fortunes with cir- 

 culating ones. The fields do not flourish in the 

 hands of those who have already too much wealth to 

 watch over them, but in the hands of those who have 

 enough of money to bring them into value. Territo- 

 rial legislation ought, therefore, without ceasing, to 

 strive that moveable capital be united with fixed ; pro- 

 perty, which we call personal, with property which we 

 call real. Legislation over almost all the world has 

 striven to do quite the contrary. 



And first, it were always for the national advantage, 

 and favourable to the increase of its production, that 

 the proprietor, whenever his fortune is embarrassed, 

 should sell his property instead of borrowing on it ; 

 yet, on the contrary, facilities have been held out to 

 him for borrowing rather than for sale. A particular 

 system of law has been created for territorial debts ; 

 marked differences have been established between real 

 and personal property ; the rank of creditors on land 

 has been regulated according to their date, whilst an 

 absolute equality prevails among creditors of all dates, 

 who claim only on moveable property. And thus 

 thousands of law-suits have been created, intermin- 

 able difficulties have been started ; and the time is al- 

 most come when half the lands of Europe are possess- 

 ed by people who, far from possessing the power to 

 dispose of a capital that might increase their produc- 

 tifenese, on the contrary, are debtors by a pretty large 



capital which they cannot extract from these fund*. I'oHticti 

 Hence those embarrassed proprietors have incessantly gc fy^ 

 had recourse to ruinous expedients, not to put money * 

 on their land, but to take it off; to borrow of their 

 farmers, to diminish the funds of cultivation, to sell 

 tlu-ir woods, and deteriorate their estates. If the law 

 had given no preference to territorial creditors ; if, on 

 the other hand, it had given as much facility to cre- 

 ditor for selling an immoveable property, as for making 

 seizure of a moveable one ; especially if, in protecting 

 personal liberty, sacrificed too slightly, it had permit' 

 lands to be sold as often as it now permits the debtor 

 to be put in prison most old debts would be ex- 

 tinguished, and those immoveable possessions, which 

 ought to support the nation, would be in the hands of 

 such as could force them, by capital and labour, to fur. 

 nish the means of subsistence. 



But the props lent to the pride of family by entails, 

 Jidei-commissa, primogenitures, and the laws invented 

 to hinder families in a ruinous condition from selling 

 their property, have still farther impeded the develop- 

 ment of agriculture and industry. The legislator aimed 

 at fixing fortune in great families : he has fixed beggary 

 and want in them. On the pretext of securing the pa- 

 trimony of children, he has forbidden the heir of entail to 

 sell or borrow with a sufficient security to his creditors ; 

 but he could not hinder him from going to ruin, and 

 overwhelming himself with clamorous debts. In that 

 case, even the care of his honour, the feeling of justice, 

 and his own security, oblige him to employ all the re- 

 sources of his mind, all his industry, in destroying his 

 patrimony, that he may obtain the disposal of what law 

 has reserved to his heir. Whatever produce he can 

 detach from the ground without replacing it, whatever 

 advance he can dispense with laving out, is in his 

 eyes just so much profit ; and Europe has come to ee 

 the proprietors of noble estates, almost everywhere, 

 the enemies of their property. At the same time, if 

 the legislator's object was the preservation of families, 

 he has failed in this object ; because entails condemn 

 all the sons of a rich family to idleness ; the elder out 

 of pride, the younger out of inability. The system 

 has proscribed all from industry, the sole mean of in- 

 creasing property ; whilst it leaves them subject to all 

 human chances, which never cease to attack whatever 

 is ancient, and which must always in the end destroy 

 whatever opulence is not renewed. 



CHAP. IV. 



OF COMMERCIAL WEALTH. 



By labour man drew his first wealth from the earth, Of com- 

 but scarcely had he satisfied his primitive wants, when mereial 

 desire made him conceive other enjoyments not. to be 

 obtained without the aid of his fellows. Exchanges be- 

 gan. They extended to whatever had any value, to 

 whatever could produce any ; they comprised mutual 

 services and labour, no less than the fruit of labour ; and 

 gave room to the formation and increase of a new kind 

 of wealth, which was no longer measured by the wants 

 of him who produced it, but by the wants of all those 

 with whom he might transact exchanges, with whom 

 he might carry on commerce ; and hence we have 

 named it commercial wealth. 



