132 PEASANT PEOPEIETORS 



those artificial manures which, to the exhausted fertility 

 of an old country, have become a necessity. 



This statement is strongly confirmed by the conditions 

 of agriculture in France. Variety is at once the charm 

 and the solid advantage of France. It is by her diversities 

 of soil and climate that her peasant proprietary thrives. 

 By the same diversity she is protected against foreign 

 competition or adverse seasons. As in England the 

 relations of landlord and tenant farmer constitute practi- 

 cally the only system of land tenure, and corn-growing 

 and cattle-feeding her only agricultural industry, so her 

 districts are purely agricultural or purely manufacturing. 

 It is not so in France, and too much stress can hardly be 

 laid on the contrast. On the one hand, her land tenures 

 are more flexible and more elastic, and her modes of 

 cultivation more diversified, so that all her eggs are not 

 stored in a single basket ; on the other hand, agriculture 

 and manufacture are not separated into distinct districts. 

 The squalid haunts of English trade are surrounded at 

 the best by blackened wastes ; in French Flanders dense 

 population and high farming advance hand in hand. At 

 the doors of factories, at the brink of coal-pits, is some of 

 the best cultivated land in the world, land which affords 

 recreation and profit to thousands of artisans. The im- 

 portance of this feature in its bearing on the happiness of 

 the industrial population and on the alleged pulverisation 

 of the French soil can hardly be exaggerated. But even 

 in this favoured country there are certain conditions 

 which are necessary for the existence of a peasant pro- 

 prietary. 



The departments in which large properties are rarest 

 are the following : — Gers, Charente, Haute-Loire, Manche, 

 Lot, in which only 6 to 10 per cent, of the properties 



