TI IK LAND SYSTEM 01 1 K.\\< I. 4 j 5 



the duty on their exchange, which at present is the same as on 

 a sale. Rational opponents in England of the French law of 

 partition (that is to say, those who are in favour of a greater 

 liberty of bequest, as distinguished from those who defend our 

 own barbarous system of primogeniture and entail) ought to take 

 into account that the French law of succession really effects, in 

 the main, the very results which the testamentary powers they 

 advocate would produce ; as is evident from the fact that the 

 vast majority of French parents do not exercise the limited power 

 they already possess over a part equal to one child's share. But 

 the main point is that already adverted to that a good law of 

 transfer corrects a defective law of inheritance. Not only is there 

 a continual enlargement of little peasant properties by the pur- 

 chase of adjoining plots, as well as a continual accession to the 

 number of small plots through the natural play of the market ; 

 but there is even a natural flow of large capitals toward the land. 

 Hence M. Monny de Mornay remarks that, notwithstanding the 

 diminution of the total domain of large property, and the 

 tual increase in the number of little estates through the pur- 

 s of the peasantry and the labouring class, there has been 

 for some years a current of ideas and tastes on the part of 

 unemployed men of fortune, and of capitalists enriched by the 

 of towns, towards investment in landed property. 1 The 

 truth is that large and small property compete on much 

 and more natural terms in Franec than in Kn-land, and large 

 land as well as small, in the former country, arc free 

 Uirdens on the pursuit of their interests and happiness with 

 which both are loaded in the latter. 



It follows in natural sequence that large and small farms - 

 /;///< and l,i petite culture like Li ^t\inde and lei petite 

 really compete on mcc than in 



UK!; and the farmer and not the latter is the place to see 

 on their trial, and to judge of the natural tendencies of 

 ruial economy in respect of each. The fact is that, whiK 

 cultm .mid and gr<> <>re prosperous as well 



as m< ml more minute, large farming too has made 



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