428 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Mr. Wren Hoskyns, machinery as made for man, not man for 

 machinery, and the happiness and prosperity of a large rural 

 population as the true object of agriculture and land systems, we 

 see no reason to believe that the progress of machinery is incom- 

 patible with the persistence of la petite culture, still less with that 

 of la petite proprittt, in France. 



But if large and small farming compete on fairer terms in 

 France, as elsewhere on the Continent, than in England, and 

 their relative position is accordingly very different, it ought to 

 be added that it is only in the hands of proprietors that either 

 la grande or la petite culture is fairly tried in France. It is not 

 in the part of the French land system against which English 

 criticism has been directed the part which differs from the 

 English, namely, the subdivision of landed property and peasant 

 proprietorship that its weak point really lies ; it is, on the 

 contrary, in the part which resembles the English the system 

 of tenure. The British Islands are far from being the only 

 country in which the question of tenure demands and indeed 

 engages the earnest attention of statesmen and. economists ; 

 though on the Continent the problem of tenure finds more than 

 half its solution in the system of proprietorship. In France there 

 are two kinds of tenure namely, ( I ) by lease, usually for three, 

 six, or nine years (a lease for even eighteen years being quite 

 the exception) ; and (2) metayage, according to which the pro- 

 prietor and the me'tayer divide the produce, the capital being 

 furnished by the one or the other in proportions varying in 

 different localities. It seems to be supposed by many writers 

 that the metayer, if he has only half the motive to exertion which 

 may be supposed to influence a tenant who has the whole of the 

 produce subject to a fixed rent, enjoys at least the advantage 

 of permanence of tenure. But such is far from being the case 

 in France ; very commonly the contract of metayage is but for 

 one, two, or three years. The truth is, the system of short 

 tenures common throughout most of western Europe has a 

 common barbarous origin. It belongs to a state of agriculture 

 which took no thought of a distant future, and involved no 

 lengthened outlay, and which gave the land frequent rest in 



