THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 37 



was for his benefit. Such slaves could acquire nothing but their daily 

 maintenance. It was properly the proprietor himself, therefore, that 

 occupied his own lands and cultivated them by his own bondmen. 



But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great 

 proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ 

 slaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages and nations, I 

 believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears 

 to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A 

 person who can acquire no property can have no other interest but 

 to eat as much and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he 

 does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can 

 be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of 

 his own. To the slave cultivators of ancient times succeeded gradu- 

 ally a species of farmers, known at present in France by the name of 

 metayers. They have been so long in disuse in England that I know 

 no English name for them at present. The proprietor furnished them 

 with the seed, cattle, and instruments of husbandry the whole stock, 

 in short, necessary for cultivating the farm. The produce was divided 

 equally between the proprietor and the farmer, after setting aside what 

 was judged necessary for keeping up the stock, which was restored to 

 the proprietor when the farmer either quitted or was turned out of the 

 farm. Such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring prop- 

 erty; and having a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they 

 have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as 

 possible, in order that their own proportion may be so. It could 

 never, however, be the interest, even of this last species of cultivators, 

 to lay out, in the improvement of the land, any part of the little stock 

 which they might save from their own share of the produce, because 

 the landlord, who laid out nothing, was to get one-half of whatever it 

 produced. The tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce, is found to 

 be a very great hindrance to improvement. A tax, therefore, which 

 amounted to one-half must have been an effectual bar to it. It might 

 be the interest of the metayer to make the land produce as much as could 

 be brought out of it by means of the stock furnished by the proprietor; 

 but it could never be his interest to mix any part of his own with it. 



To this species of tenantry succeeded, though by very slow 

 degrees, farmers, properly so called, who cultivated the land with 

 their own stock, paying a certain rent to the landlord. When such 

 farmers have a lease for a term of years, they may sometimes find it 

 to their interest to lay out part of their capital for the further 



