642 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 11 



Fleuran, many landlords pay all. Near Aiguillon, 

 on the Garrone, the metayers furnish half the 

 cattle. Near Falaise, in Normandy, I found me- 

 tayers, where they should least of all be locked 

 for, on the farms which gentlemen keep in their 

 own hands; the consequence there is, that every 

 gentleman's farm must be precisely the worst cul- 

 tivated of all the neighborhood: — this disgraeefitl 

 circumstance needs no comment. At Nangis, in 

 the Isle of France, I met with an agreement for 

 the landlord to furnish live stock, implements, har- 

 ness, and taxes; the metayer found labor and his 

 own capitation tax; — the landlord repaired the 

 house and gates; the metayer the windows: — the 

 landlord provided seed the first year; the metayer 

 the last; in the intervening years they supply half 

 and half. Produce sold for money divided. Butter 

 and cheese used in the metayer's family, to any 

 amount, compounded for at 5s. a cow. In the Bour- 

 bonnois the landlord finds all sorts of live stock, 

 yet the metayer sells, changes, and buys at his 

 will; the steward keeping an account of these mu- 

 tations, for the landlord has half the product of 

 sales, and pays half the purchases. The tenant 

 carts the landlord's half of the corn to the barn of 

 the chateau, and comes again to take the straw; 

 the consequences of this absurd system, are stri- 

 king; land which in England would let at 10s. pay 

 about 2s. 6d. for both land and live stock. 



At the first blush, the great disadvantage of the 

 metaying system is to landlords; but on a nearer 

 examination, the tenants are found in the lowest 

 state of poverty, and some of them in misery. At 

 Vat an, in Berry, I was assured, that the metayers 

 almost every year borrowed tbeir bread of the 

 landlord before the harvest came round, yet hardly 

 worth borrowing for it was made of rye and bar- 

 ley mixed; I tasted enough of it to pity sincerely 

 the poor people; but no common person there eats 

 wheaten bread; with all this misery among the 

 farmers the landlord's situation may be estimated 

 by the rents he receives. At Salbris, in Sologne, 

 for a sheep-walk that, feeds 700 sheep, and 200 

 English acres of other land, paid the landlord, for 

 his half, about £33 sterling; the whole rent, for 

 land and stock too, did not, therefore amount to Is. 

 per head on the sheep! In Limosin the metayers 

 are considered as little better than menial servants, 

 removeable at pleasure, and obliged to conform 

 in all things to the will of the landlords; it is com- 

 monly computed that half the tenantry are dee| ly 

 in debtto the proprietor, so that he is often obi 

 to turn them off with the loss of these debts, in 

 order to save his land from running waste. 



In all the modes of occupying land, the. great 

 evil is the smallness of farms. There are large 

 ones in Picardy the Isle of France, the Pays ae 

 Beauce, Artois, and Normandy: but, in the rest of 

 the kingdom, such are not general. The, division 

 of the farms and population is so great, that the 

 misery flowing from it is in many places extreme; 

 the idleness of the people is seen the moment you 

 enter a town on market-day; the swarms of peo- 

 ple are incredible. At Landervisiau, in Breiagne, 

 I saw a man who walked seven miles to bring two 

 chickens, which would not sell for 24 sous the cou- 

 plers he told me himself At Avranches men atten- 

 ding each a horse, with a pannier load of sea ooze, 

 not more than four bushels. Near Isenheim, in 

 Alsace, a rich country, women, in the midst of har- 

 vest, where their labor is nearlv as valuable as that 



of men, reaping grass by the road side to carry 

 home to their cows. 



Observations. 



Three material questions obviously arise; 1st, the 

 inconveniencies of metaying, and the advantages 

 of the tenure at a money rent; 2d, the size of 

 farms; 3d, how far small properties are beneficial. 



Metayers. — This subject may be easily des- 

 patched; for there is not one word to be said in fa- 

 vor of the practice, and a thousand arguments that 

 might be used against it. The hard plea of ne- 

 can alone be urged in its favor; the poverty 

 of the farmers being so great, that the landlord 

 must, stock the firm, or it could not be stocked at 

 all; this is a most cruel burthen to a proprietor, 

 who is thus obliged to run much of the hazard of 

 larniingin the most dangerous of all methods, that 

 of trusting his properly absolutely in the hands of 

 people who are generally ignorant, many careless, 

 and some undoubtedly wicked. Among some 

 gentlemen I personally knew, I was acquainted 

 with one at Bagnere de Luchon, who was obliged 

 to sell his estate, because he was unable to restock 

 it, the sheep having all died of epidemical distem- 

 pers; proceeding, doubtless, lrom the execrable 

 methods of the metayers cramming them into 

 stabies as hot as stoves, on reeking dunghills; and 

 then, in the common custom of the kingdom, 

 shutting every hole and crack that could let in air. 

 In this most miserable of all the modes of letting 

 land, after running the hazard of such losses, fatal 

 in many instances, the defrauded landlord receives 

 a contemptible rent; — the farmer is in the lowest 

 state of poverty; — the land is miserably cultivated; 

 and the nation suffers as severely as the parties 

 themselves. It is a curious question how this 

 practice came to be exploded in Picardy, Norman- 

 dy, and the Isle of France. The wealth of great 

 cities will effect something, but notmuch; fbrBour- 

 deaux, JMarseilles, and, above all, Lyons and 

 Nantes, have done nothing in this respect; yet 

 they are to be classed among the richest cities in 

 Europe, and far beyond Rouen, Abbeville, Amiens, 

 &c. And were we to ascribe it to the nearer vi- 

 cinity of the capital, why has not the same cause 

 established a good husbandry, as well as rents 

 paid in money? The fact, however, is certain, that 

 those provinces, with Artois and Flanders, in 

 which we should not be surprised at any variation, 

 as they were conquered from a free country, com- 

 paratively speaking, are the only ones in the king- 

 dom where this beneficial practice generally pre- 

 vails. It is found, indeed, in a scattered and irreg- 

 ular manner elsewhere, but not established as in 

 those provinces. That the poverty of the tenan- 

 try, which has given rise to this mischievous prac- 

 tice, has arisen from the principles of an arbitrary 

 government, cannot be doubted. Heavy taxes on 

 the farmers, from which the nobility and clergy are 

 exempt; and those taxes levied arbitrarily, at the 

 will of the intendant and his subdelegues, have 

 been sufficient to impoverish the lower classes. 

 One would naturally have supposed, from the gross 

 abuses and cruelty of this method of taxation, 

 that the object in view were as much to keep the 

 people poor, as to make the king rich. As the 

 taille was professedly levied in proportion to every 

 one's substance, it had the mischievous effect of 

 all equal land taxes, when levied even with lion- 



