APPK.VDIX. 233 



tax-collector. While the English pay, in taxes, an average 

 of 505. per head of population; while the French peasant 

 is over-burdened with taxes of all imaginable descriptions, 

 and the Milanese peasant has to give to the Treasury full 

 30 per cent, of his income all taxes paid in the Channel 

 Islands amount to but IDS. per head in the town parishes 

 and to much less than that in the country parishes. Besides, 

 of indirect taxes, none are known but the 25. 6d. paid for 

 each gallon of imported spirits and pd. per gallon of im- 

 ported wine. 



As to the conditions of land-tenure, the inhabitants have 

 happily escaped the action of Roman Law, and they continue 

 to live under the coutumier de Normandie (the old Norman 

 common law). Accordingly, more than one-half of the 

 territory is owned by those who themselves till the soil ; 

 there is no landlord to watch the crops and to raise the rent 

 before the farmer has ripened the fruit of his improvements ; 

 there is nobody to charge so much for each cart-load of 

 sea-weeds or sand taken to the fields ; every one takes the 

 amount he likes, provided he cuts the weeds at a certain 

 season of the year, and digs out the sand at a distance of 

 sixty yards from the high-water mark. Those who buy land 

 for cultivation can do so without becoming enslaved to the 

 money-lender. One-fourth part only of the permanent rent 

 which the purchaser undertakes to pay is capitalised and has 

 to be paid down on purchase (often less than that), the 

 remainder being a perpetual rent in wheat which is valued 

 in Jersey at 50 to 54 sous de France per cabot. To seize 

 property for debt is accompanied with such difficulties that it 

 is seldom resorted to (Quayle's General View, pp. 41-46). 

 Conveyances of land are simply acknowledged by both parties 

 on oath, and cost nearly nothing. And the laws of inheri- 

 tance are such as to preserve the homestead notwithstand- 

 ing the debts that the father may have run into (ibid., pp. 

 35-41)- 



After having shown how small are the farms in the islands 

 (from twenty to five acres, and very many less than that) 

 there being " less than 100 farms in either island that exceed 

 twenty-five acres; and of these only about half a dozen in 



