LAW OF POPULATION ILLUSTRATED 197 



neck, which, as often happens, drags him down in 

 utter ruin. Accordingly for some decades the dis- 

 possessed proprietors have been flying in numbers 

 from the soil, seeking the poorest Government employ- 

 ments to rescue them from starving, or flocking into 

 the towns in search of work connected with their 

 industries. The law of equal inheritance, though 

 eminently fair and just to appearance, like most 

 doctrinaire laws, is economically disastrous. By con- 

 stantly dispersing accumulations and preventing the 

 growth of capital, it has hampered all the industries 

 of France, and hindered improvement of the land on 

 any large scale. 



One benefit, however, which accrues from the 

 thinning out of the agricultural population, is that 

 large properties are increasing, and well-to-do tenants 

 are taking the place of wretched petty landowners. 

 The fact noted by Mill, with rather a triumphant 

 appreciation of it, that the wealthy peasant proprietors 

 exhibit the same rags and live in the same squalor 

 and misery as the most struggling of their class, is 

 an evidence that the blessings and elevating influences 

 of modern civilisation have not reached them, do 

 not indeed exist, as far as they are concerned. 

 The law of inheritance makes as many female as 

 male heirs. Upon this fact hinge the marriages of 

 the petty proprietors. The farmer, as a rule, needs 

 more than his own portion of land to enable him to 

 marry. His penurious soul hungers to acquire more 

 land. He marries, therefore, partly to satisfy this 



