THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE 427 



England ; and the latter has, to begin with, a large and ever- 

 increasing domain within which it can defy the competition of 

 the former. The large farmer's steam-engine cannot enter the 

 vineyard, the orchard, or the garden. The steep mountain is 

 inaccessible to him, when the small farmer can clothe it with 

 vineyards ; and the deep glen is too circumscribed for him. In 

 the fertile alluvial valley like that of the Loire, the garden of 

 France, his cultivation is not sufficiently minute to make the 

 most of such precious ground, and the little cultivator outbids 

 him, and drives him from the garden ; while, on the other hand, 

 he is ruined by attempts to reclaim intractable wastes which his 

 small rival converts into terrains de quality sup^rieure. Even 

 where mechanical art seems to summon the most potent forces 

 of nature to the large farmer's assistance, the peasant contrives 

 in the end to procure the same allies by association, or individual 

 enterprise finds it profitable to come to his aid. It is a striking 

 instance of the tendency of la petite culture to avail itself of 

 mechanical power, that the latest agricultural statistics show a 

 larger number of reaping and mowing machines in the Bas Rhin, 

 where la petite culture is carried to the utmost, than in any other 

 department. Explorers of the rural districts of France cannot 

 fail to have remarked that la petite ctilture has created in recent 

 years two new subsidiary industries, in the machine maker on the 

 one hand, and the entrepreneur on the other, who hires out the 

 machine ; and one is now constantly met even in small towns 

 and villages, old-fashioned and stagnant-looking in other respects, 

 with the apparition and noise of machines, of which the large 

 farmer himself has not long been possessed. Admitting, there- 

 fore, fully an important truth in Mr. Wren Hoskyns' remark, 

 that " the machine doctrine of ' most produce by least labour ' 

 is, as applied to the soil, the doctrine of starvation to the labourer 

 and dispossession to the small proprietor ; and instead of belong- 

 ing to the advance of knowledge, is a retrogression towards the 

 time when a knight's fee included a whole wapentake, or hundred, 

 and a count was territorial lord over a county," ^ regarding with 



* Chandos Wren Hoskyns, M. P., Land in England, Land in Ireland, and Land 

 in Other Lands. 



