152 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Yet in the same country, as we sliall afterwards show, one 

 hundred years later, a writer ^ attributed the backward condi- 

 tion of the national husbandry to "a demon of property," 

 which induced men to invest their savings in land instead of 

 devoting them to the improvement of its husbandry. 



How, then, are we to decide this knotty question ? 



How can we reconcile the splendid agricultural results 

 witnessed by Young across the Channel in the last century, 

 with the disastrous results described by M. E. Leconteux in 

 the present one ; attributed respectively by the first " to the 

 magic of property," and by the second to the " demon of 

 property " ? 



Surely the answer is to be found in the circumstance, that 

 in proper proportions the small freehold and the larger tenancy 

 produce between them all the wants of a community ; and that 

 where the one is in a too great excess, there is a deficiency 

 of one description of produce, and a glut of another. 



We shall see this contention the more clearly as we proceed ; 

 for now we come to a hitherto neglected factor in the contro- 

 versy regarding the size of individual farms which largely 

 affects the general economy. There is a wide difference 

 between the small farm occupied by the peasant proprietor, 

 and the same sized holding occupied by a tenant at will, or 

 rented on lease. Young, for example, was largely in favour 

 of peasant proprietorship in France ; but he had not one word 

 to say in favour of her metayer system. Equally pronounced 

 was his distinction between the capabilities of the small free- 

 hold and the small agricultural tenancy in England. When 

 we come to examine some of his statistics gleaned in those 

 three famous tours of his through rural England, we shall find 

 him representing the large holding as more economical of 

 labour, and comparatively more productive ; while the number 

 of persons actually emj)loyed in cultivating its area was not 

 less than that employed on the smaller tenancy. Y'^oung, 

 therefore, though preferring, if he could have seen any possi- 

 bility of its adoption over here, the peasant proprietary 

 system, would have subdivided existing estates into as few 

 ' Journal (TAyricidture Pratique^ M. E. Leconteux. 



