CONDITIONS IN FRANCE 231 



hunger is a complaint that attacks individuals of every 

 rank in life, in every country in the world ; and, next 

 to the accumulation of money, there is probably no 

 one form of ambition more acute, and more widespread 

 than that of becoming, as it were, part-proprietor of the 

 universe. But the experiences of foreign countries 

 should be studied before any further attempt is made 

 to establish peasant proprietorship on any general basis 

 here, and the result of such study should, I would 

 submit, lead to the conclusion that, even from the 

 Continental standpoint, it would be preferable in Great 

 Britain to set up some more practical and more de- 

 sirable alternative. 



France has often been pointed to as an example for 

 England to follow in the matter of peasant proprietary, 

 and certain it is that, if the system can show satis- 

 factory results anywhere, such results ought to be 

 found in a country where peasant proprietary has had, 

 perhaps, its greatest opportunities. But on this particu- 

 lar question one must not be led astray by mere figures 

 as to national wealth, or by the familiar stories con- 

 cerning the petits sous which the French peasant hoards 

 in old stockings, and may lend to his own Government 

 or to Russia at interest, in preference to devoting 

 them to the better development of the land from which 

 they have been derived. One needs to look into the 

 question much more closely than this. It is not the 

 wealth of the nation as such, but the condition of the 

 peasantry themselves with which we are here mostly 

 concerned. 



The first fact that strikes one forcibly in connection 

 with peasant proprietary in France is the excessive 

 degree to which the subdivision of small properties 

 has been carried. As one generation has succeeded 

 another, and the individual plots of land have been 



