643 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



[No. 11 



farmers. Can any thing be apparently so absurd, 

 as a strong beany man walking some miles, and 

 losing a day's work, vvhir.li ought to be worth 1-5 

 or 20.-!. in order lo sell a dozen of eggs, or a chick- 

 en, the value of which would not equal the labor 

 of conveying it, were the people usefully employed! 

 This ought to convince us, that these small occu- 

 pations are a real loss of labor; and that people 

 are fed upon them, whose time is worth little or 

 nothing. 



There are many practices in French husbandry, 

 that are apparently of considerable merit, yet oan- 



for some years occupied all minds in France. Some 

 would unite all property in the hands of lew fami- 

 lies; others are willing to leave it to time and pri- 

 vate interest to effect a suitable division, and one 

 advantageous to the nation and the government.* 



Large landed estates spring from the first insti- 

 tutions of monarchy; privileges, grants, and the 

 divisions of inhabitants into classes, centre all pro- 

 perty in the hands of a lew; the rest of the popu- 

 lation, condemned to servitude, is attached to the 

 soil. 



Gradually the serfs are freed; property is divi- 



not be recommended to other countries. I have ded; but the new proprietors have been able to ac 

 seen them, in a part of Flanders, mattocking up quire and to possess only on burdensome conditions; 

 every corner of a field where the plough could not \ their lands have been loaded with rents and im- 

 come; and in the south of France, the peasant posts from which the first possessors were exempt, 

 makes a common practice of mattocking up whole and thus two kinds of property are established 



fields. In many parts of the king lorn all ihe land 

 is digged. In the mountains of the Vivarais, ter- 

 races fire built by walling, and the earth carried to 

 them in baskets." Such practices, and a thousand 

 other similar, spring absolutely from the extreme 

 division of landed property, having nursed up a 

 population beyond the power of industry to sup- 

 port; and ought to be considered as a proof of a 

 real evil in the vitals of the state. The man who 

 unhappily has existence in a country when; there 

 is no empli ymenl lor him, wiil, if he has the pro- 

 perty of a scrap of land, work for two-pence a day 

 upon it; he will work for half a farthing; and, if 

 he has an ardor of industry, fir nothing, as thou- 

 sands do in France, if he docs not perform some 

 business, upon his little firm, he thinks he docs 

 nothing; in such a situation, he will pick straws — 

 he will take up a stone here, and lay it there: he 

 will cany earth in a basket to the top of a moun- 

 tain; he will walk ten miles to sell an egg. Is it 

 not obvious to the reader, that such practices cms 

 ting, and, if tolerably directed, producing an efiect 

 well calculated to command admiration from an 

 extreme of culture, are in reality no more auala- 

 gous to a well constituted country, if I may ven- 

 ture the expression, than would the most prepos- 

 terous practices to be fancied. You might as well 

 go a step farther in population, ami hold up, with 

 JV1. de Poivre, the example of the Chinese, as 

 worthy of European imitation. 



Upon the whole, one must be inclined to think, 

 that small properties are carried much too fir in 

 France; that a most miserable population has been 



While this state of things has continued, agri- 

 culture has made no progress; one class was too 

 rich to perceive the necessity of improving their 

 estates, the other was too poor to attempt it. 



When the power of acquiring property has been 

 L p ivcn to all. and particularly when the law has 

 equally protected all proprietors, and abolished all 

 privileges attached to the sod, or to individuals, the 

 result has been a division of property, and an ad- 

 vance in agriculture. 



The resolution has had two results advantage- 

 ous to land-owners; the first, that of effacing the 

 last traces of inequality in property; the second, 

 that of offering to the agriculturist an enormous 

 quantity of lands, which he could purchase at a 

 low price. 



The natural consequence of this slate of things 

 has been to increase the number of landed proprie- 

 tors, and the respectability of the tanner. 



Is the division of the soil into small estates an 

 advantage or an evil? That is the question which 

 we are to examine,. 



Large estates have the advantage of affording 

 scope tor all the developerrrents of agricultural in- 

 dustry. That which lorins the basis of subsis- 

 tence, and a large proportion of the raw material 

 of manufactures, is here united in one grand scene 

 of operation. The productions of a large domain 

 not only suffice for the subsistence and support of 

 the proprietor and his agents; but the surplus sup- 

 plies the wants of all, and fills the public markets. 



Add to this, that large proprietors are more en- 

 lightened than small ones, and, especially, belter 



created bv them, which ought to have had no exis- j enabled, by their more ample Ibrtunes, to attempt 

 tence; that their division should be restrained by | improvement 



express laws, at least till the demand lor hands is 

 equal to the production; that the system of great 

 farmers regularly employing, and well paying a 

 numerous peasantry by day labor, is infinitely 

 more advantageous to the nation, and to the poor 

 themselves, than the multiplication of small pro- 

 perties; in fine, it is obvious, that all measures 

 which prevent the establishment of large farms, 

 and wealthy farmers, such as restrictions or bars 

 to inclosures, the existence of rights of common- 

 age, and the least favor to little proprietors in levy- 

 ing of the land taxes, are ruinous to agriculture, 

 and ought to be deprecated, as a system destruc- 

 tive of the public welfare. 



from Chaptal's Chymistry Applied to Agriculture. 

 Of large and small Estates. 



The question as lo large and small estates has 



There is, then, no doubt that large proprietors 

 are desirable in France; but are we therefore to be 

 alarmed at the increase of small farms? I think 

 not. 



If, as I have already said, large estates have 

 been the necessary result of our ancient institu- 

 tions, the division of landed property is the natu- 

 ral effect of those by which we are at present 

 governed. The suppression of ihe right of pri- 

 mogeniture, and of all ihe burdens which weighed 

 unequally upon different classes of proprietors, and 

 the prosperity which has prevailed among the in- 

 habitants of the country, have necessarily increased 

 the number of land-owners; but will this increase 

 be unlimited? No; it will stop when the advantage 



* See the excellent Memoir of the Vicomte de Mo- 

 el Vinde on this subject. 



