FRENCH AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 89 



credit, purchases upon credit of cattle, stock and 

 farm necessaries, or for family maintenance, etc., is 

 known to be about £660,000,000 — viz., 14 J milliards, 

 plus the mortgage loans (2 milliards) of the Credit 

 Foncier. The above estimate is made by most careful 

 economists and financiers, after allowing no less than 

 £180,000,000 (4! milliards) for mortgages discharged 

 but not struck off the registration records, from which 

 the gross total of 21 milliards (£840,000,000) is derived. 

 It includes, however, all urban mortgages, and not 

 rural only. In the department of the Garonne, a 

 vine-growing tract, for which particulars are given 

 in an American Consular Report, the annual mort- 

 gages were stated at 4"68 per cent, of the total value 

 of the land ; as mortgages are only given to one-half 

 the estimated value, it follows that each year about 

 9 per cent, of the land is mortgaged, while since the 

 mortgages are usually for a considerable term, it 

 follows that the bulk of the land is under mortgage. 

 As a matter of fact, actually existing mortgages amount 

 in that department to about one-third the estimated 

 full value, and therefore to about two-thirds of the 

 mortgage value of the land. 



' For Austria no complete data are available, but 

 in only a portion of Austria — a comparatively poor 

 country with only 160 persons to the square mile — 

 the mortgage debts in 1888 were £160,000,000 on 

 peasants' holdings only, and the increase between 

 1867-88 was 42 per cent. Of these debts the 

 " number of cases due to the issue of warrants of 

 execution" was 1576 per cent, in 1868 and 31 per 

 cent, in 1888, while the value of such cases was 4*34 

 in 1868 and 7*23 in 1888, showing a large increase in 

 the court-sales of small properties. About one-fifth 

 of the cases and one-fourth of the amount of the debts 

 were due to the purchase and inheritance of land, even 

 in this sparsely-inhabited country. 



1 For Germany statistics are not available, but the 



