392 History of the English Landed Interests 



lurked in its clauses wliicli could permanently improve the 

 agricultural economy of France ? It was and is commonly- 

 believed that the Revolution freed French agriculture from 

 the last traces of feudalism, and thus put an end to the 

 miseries of the rural labourer. It is supposed that it replaced 

 the manorial tenures of the villeinage with the landed pro- 

 prietorship of the peasant, and that by aboKshiug the seignorial 

 class it enabled that of the labourer to derive a comfortable 

 subsistence from the soil. 



A brief glance at French history will dispel such illusions. 

 Long before the enfranchisement of the serfs by Louis de 

 Hutin there had been a redistribution of proprietary rights far 

 in excess of what happened in England at the Reformation 

 period. The crusades had so impoverished the French nobility 

 that a large proportion of their manorial rights found its way 

 into the property market, and was bought up not only by the 

 ecclesiastic and bourgeois, but by the serf, so that in the Etats 

 Generaux, summoned by Anne in 1481, we find the Tiers Etat 

 in existence and packed with landed-peasants taking part in 

 the affairs of government.^ As a direct product of the French 

 villeinage system we have la culture a mi fruits^ commonly 

 called the metayer process, that is to say, an agricultural 

 partnership by which the hailleiir, or owner, provided the 

 stock-in-trade, and the preneur^ or tenant, the labour, both 

 sharing equally the fruits of the undertaking. A third species 

 of tenure was the domaine congeaUe, which dated from the 

 twelfth century, and consisted of a contract by which the 

 proprietor let his lands at a small rent to the occupier, who 

 became possessor of everything, even to buildings erected on 

 the holding at his own expense, and for which he was com- 

 pensated on quitting. It was an arrangement terminable at 

 the will of either party, and very similar to a modern EngHsh 

 farming agreement in which the Fermier general corresponded 

 to our Land Agent. Now when Arthur Young visited France 

 in order to examine French tenures and agriculture he found 



^ Histoire de France, vol. iii. p. 268, et seq., aud vol. vii. p. 190. H. 

 Martin. See also the Introduction to Young's Travels in France. By 

 M. Betham Edwards. Edition 2, 1889. 



