PEASANT PEOPEIETOES 13^ 



ticians or of theorists. The small owner is not superior to 

 the ordinary conditions of agricultural success. He will 

 not thrive wherever he is planted, or live on land which 

 starves a rabbit. The chief conditions of his prosperity do 

 not exist in England. We have no commons, no domestic 

 industries, no union of agriculture with manufacture, no 

 special crops for which his minute labour is peculiarly 

 adapted. Some of these conditions can be created ; but 

 it is well to bear in mind what is entailed in the establish- 

 ment of a peasant proprietary, as well as to recognise the 

 duties which such a system throws upon the State. 



Finally the example of France is often quoted to prove 

 that a happy and contented peasant proprietary may be 

 established by legislation. The illustration is unfortunate. 

 In the fourteenth century peasant proprietors were nume- 

 rous in the country, and on the whole increased continu- 

 ously. In 1697, as Bois-Guillebert states in his ' Detail,' 

 famine compelled them to sell the land which they had pain- 

 fully acquired in the two preceding centuries. But this check 

 was only temporary. Forbonnais points out that in 1750 

 impoverished landlords sold their lands to their tenants, 

 Necker states that there were in his time ' une immensite ' 

 of peasant proprietors. Doniol (' Histoire des Classes ru- 

 rales ') says that before the Revolution a quarter of the soil 

 had passed into their hands. Arthur Young goes fvirther 

 when he states that in 1787 a third of the land was tilled 

 by peasant owners. The returns on which the land tax of 

 1790 was based show that, in many districts, the number 

 of proprietors then amounted to two-thirds of the land- 

 owning population. It is a travesty of history to assert 

 that the peasant proprietary of France w^as created by 

 legislation, inasmuch as it was firmly established under the 

 same land laws which existed in this country. 



