THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE 431 



The question of common ownership is one which ought not 

 to be entirely ignored in a sketch of the French land system, 

 however brief, although but a very few words can be devoted 

 to it here. Upwards of four million and a half hectares of land 

 in France belong in common to various bodies, corporations, 

 communes, and villages. Of this area it is true that a consider- 

 able part is in forest, managed by the State, much of which it 

 would be inexpedient to divide and deforest. But the remainder 

 is in great part simply so much land almost lost to the country. 

 In a review of the reports of the enqicete agricole, at the end 

 of last year, M. de Lavergne pronounced that an effective law 

 for the division and sale of the common lands would do more 

 for the increase of the agricultural wealth of France than all 

 other administrative measures taken together ; for in addition 

 to the cultivation of land, now almost waste, that would follow, 

 the communes themselves would obtain funds by the sale for the 

 making of country roads, in which the southern half of France, 

 especially, is for the most part lamentably deficient. An act was 

 actually passed in i860, to facilitate the division of the common 

 lands, but it has produced but little effect. An impediment to 

 the division of the village commons in France, which has come 

 under the writer's observation, arises from a kind of departure of 

 the beneficial from the legal ownership. An entire commune, 

 made up of several villages having each its common land, is the 

 body whose authority is requisite for a division. It may be the 

 interest of the villagers, and their wish, to divide their own 

 common among themselves, but the rest of the commune would 

 often prefer to see the villager driven or induced to bring his 

 own land, with the communal rights attached, into the land 

 market, where they themselves might become buyers. They are 

 not desirous of giving the villagers an additional inducement to 

 stay where they are. If land existed in such ample abundance 

 that every peasant could have a sufficiency of land of his own to 

 make a comfortable subsistence, or could at least have the advan- 

 tage and comfort of a cottage and garden, the joint possession by 

 each village of an additional common domain might be regarded 

 as a great benefit ; but such is not the situation of matters in 



