APPENDIX. 439 



As to the conditions of land-tenure, the inhabitants 

 have happily escaped the action of Roman Law, and 

 they continue to live under the coutumier de Normandie 

 (the old Norman common law). Accordingly, more 

 than one-half of the territory is owned by those who 

 themselves till the soil ; there is no landlord to watch 

 the crops and to raise the rent before the farmer has 

 ripened the fruit of his improvements ; there is nobody 

 to charge so much for each cart-load of sea-weeds or 

 sand taken to the fields ; everyone takes the amount 

 he likes, provided he cuts the weeds at a certain 

 season of the year, and digs out the sand at a distance 

 of sixty yards from the high-water mark. Those who 

 buy land for cultivation can do so without becoming 

 enslaved to the money-lender. One-fourth part only 

 of the permanent rent which the purchaser undertakes 

 to pay is capitalised and has to be paid down on pur- 

 chase (often less than that), the remainder being a 

 perpetual rent in wheat which is valued in Jersey at 

 fifty to fifty-four sous de France per cabot. To seize 

 property for debt is accompanied with such difficulties 

 that it is seldom resorted to (Quayle's General View, 

 pp. 41-46). Conveyances of land are simply acknow- 

 ledged by both parties on oath, and cost nearly nothing. 

 And the laws of inheritance are such as to preserve 

 the homestead, notwithstanding the debts that the 

 father may have run into (ibid., pp. 35-41). 



"After having shown how small are the farms in the 

 islands (from twenty to five acres, and very many less 

 than that) there being " less than 100 farms in either 

 island that exceed twenty -five acres ; and of these 

 only about half a dozen in Jersey exceed fifty acres " 

 Messrs. Ansted, Latham, and Nicolle remark : 



" In no place do we find so happy and so contented 

 a country as in the Channel Islands. . . ." " The 



