THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE 413 



themselves with that side of history will find the fact fully sub- 

 stantiated in the introduction to M. de Lavergne's " I^conomie 

 rurale de la France." The point which calls for notice here is 

 that, centuries before the Revolution of 1789, one of the causes 

 of the subdivision of land in France (one which we shall find 

 to be the chief cause in our own time) was its acquisition by 

 purchase in small parcels by the French peasantry. 



" I have in my hands," says M. Monny de Mornay, in his 

 general report on the results of the recent enquHe agricole, 

 "contracts of purchase by peasants of parcels of land of less 

 than twenty ares (that is to say, less than half an acre) com- 

 mencing prior to the close of the sixteenth century." It was not 

 the lack of landed property that left the peasantry of France in 

 destitution, and drove them to furious vengeance two hundred 

 years later ; it was the deprivation of its use by atrocious mis- 

 government, and the confiscation of its fruits by merciless taxa- 

 tion and feudal oppression. But in England, also, the number 

 of small landholders at the close of the sixteenth century was still 

 very large, though it had once been much larger ; even at the 

 date of the French Revolution it was considerable ; and in 1 8 1 5 

 (at which date it is calculated that there were 3,805,000 land- 

 owners in France), it was, although it had steadily declined, a 

 more significant figure than it is now. In France, on the con- 

 trary, the number has increased to about four millions engaged 

 in the actual cultivation of the soil, in addition to nearly a million 

 other small rural proprietors who are the owners at least of a 

 cottage. We are not here engaged to inquire into the causes of 

 the diminution, the disappearance, one may say, of small land- 

 owners in England ; but the contrast between the movement 

 which has been steadily adding to the number in France and that 

 which has extirpated them in England adds interest to an investi- 

 gation of the nature and causes of the French agrarian economy. 

 The results of such an investigation can hardly fail, moreover, to 

 throw an indirect light upon the agrarian economy of England. 



As already observed, the French law of succession, which limits 

 the parental power of testamentary disposition over property to 

 a part equal to one child's share, and divides the remainder 



