THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE 425 



the duty on their exchange, which at present is the same as on 

 a sale. Rational opponents in England of the French law of 

 partition (that is to say, those who are in favour of a greater 

 liberty of bequest, as distinguished from those who defend our 

 own barbarous system of primogeniture and entail) ought to take 

 into account that the French law of succession really effects, in 

 the main, the very results which the testamentary powers they 

 advocate would produce ; as is evident from the fact that the 

 vast majority of French parents do not exercise the limited power 

 they already possess over a part equal to one child's share. But 

 the main point is that already adverted to that a good law of 

 transfer corrects a defective law of inheritance. Not only is there 

 a continual enlargement of little peasant properties by the pur- 

 chase of adjoining plots, as well as a continual accession to the 

 number of small plots through the natural play of the market ; 

 but there is even a natural flow of large capitals toward the land. 

 Hence M. Monny de Mornay remarks that, notwithstanding the 

 great diminution of the total domain of large property, and the 

 perpetual increase in the number of little estates through the pur- 

 chases of the peasantry and the labouring class, there has been 

 for some years a current of ideas and tastes on the part of 

 unemployed men of fortune, and of capitalists enriched by the 

 trade of towns, towards investment in landed property.^ The 

 truth is that large and small property compete on much fairer 

 and more natural terms in France than in England, and large 

 buyers of land as well as small, in the former country, are free 

 from burdens on the pursuit of their interests and happiness with 

 which both are loaded in the latter. 



It follows in natural sequence that large and small farms 

 la graiide and la petite culture like la grande and la petite 

 propfi^t^, really compete on fairer terms in France than in 

 England ; and the former and not the latter is the place to see 

 them on their trial, and to judge of the natural tendencies of 

 rural economy in respect of each. The fact is that, while la petite 

 ailtnre is gaining ground and growing more prosperous as well 

 as more perfect and more minute, large farming too has made 



* Enquete agricole. 



