234 PEASANT PROPRIETARY ABROAD 



' How the Peasant Owner lives in Parts of France, 

 Germany, Italy, Russia ' : 



The pictures of the mean, sordid lives of the main part of the 

 peasant population the dogged way in which they pursue the 

 wretched objects of their existence, i.e., the earning and hoarding 

 des petits sous dans de vieux bas, the lying, cheating, picking, and 

 stealing which are considered lawful as against a ' richard' [well- 

 to-do person], the way in which all means, the most vile and repul- 

 sive, are condoned for the sovereign end, the obtaining of a little 

 bit of land form a repulsive picture indeed. 



Nor have the results of peasant proprietorship in 

 France been more satisfactory from a financial stand- 

 point. * Proprietors ' they may be in name, but few 

 of the peasants hold their land free of mortgage, and 

 many of them are heavily indebted besides. They not 

 only cultivate the soil under the most laborious of 

 conditions, but they must meet, as best they can, the 

 demands of the State, the usury of the money-lender, 

 and also the fees of the lawyer who fattens alike on 

 the land transfers and on the quarrels and lawsuits. 

 ' Of the 8,000,000 proprietors in France,' wrote M. 

 Lecouteux, when Professor of Rural Economy at the 

 Institute, * 3,000,000 are on the pauper roll, exempt, 

 that is, from personal taxation '; while of the remainder, 

 at the period of which this authority speaks, 600,000 

 proprietors paid contributions to the State amounting 

 to only five centimes each. ' Getting rid of one order 

 of landlords and their rents,' adds M. Lecouteux, 'they 

 have subjected themselves to another, though invisible, 

 order the mortgagees, and to their heavier and more 

 rigid rents.' 



Another French writer on economics, in dealing 

 with * Peasant Proprietary in France,' says : 



Capital is the sinews of high farming, and poverty is the con- 

 stitutional disease of peasant proprietary. And not money alone 

 is it that the French peasant lacks. He lacks also the brains to 



