414 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



among the children equally, is the cause commonly assigned 

 in England for the continuous subdivision of land in France. 

 And of an incontestable mischief in the operation of the French 

 law, as regards the subdivision of separate parcels, there will be 

 occasion to take notice hereafter. But a point of much greater 

 importance is that the real effects of the French law of succes- 

 sion cannot be understood without taking into account a process 

 of subdivision taking place in France from a different cause, one 

 really indeed traceable in part to the structure of French law, but 

 not the law of succession namely, continual purchases on the 

 part of the peasantry of small estates or parcels of land. On this 

 subject notaries in many different parts of France have given the 

 writer surprising information in recent years ; and it has indeed 

 for many years been a subject of such common remark in the 

 country that even mere railway passengers through it can hardly 

 have failed to have come upon evidence of it. M. Monny de 

 Mornay states with respect to it, in the chapter of his report on 

 the division of land : 



The fact which manifests itself most forcibly is the profound and continuous 

 alterations in the distribution of the soil among the different classes of the 

 population. In the greater number of departments the estates of ioo hectares 

 might now be easily counted ; and taken altogether they form but an insignifi- 

 cant part of the national territory. The proportion cannot be stated in figures, 

 because it varies from one department to another ; one must confine oneself to 

 saying that the West and South have preserved more large estates than the 

 North and East. 



The North and East, he might have added, are the wealthiest and 

 best-cultivated zones, though the south is now rapidly improving 

 in cultivation and wealth, and, as will presently be shown, the 

 process of subdivision keeps step with this improvement. After 

 referring to the disappearance of estates of even moderate size, 

 M. de Mornay proceeds : 



All that has been lost to the domain of large estates, all that is lost day by 

 day to that of estates of middle size, small property swallows up. Not only 

 does the small proprietor round his little property year by year, but at his side 

 the class of agricultural labourers has been enriched by the rise of wages, and 

 accedes to landed property in its turn. In the greater number of departments 

 71 per cent at least of them are now become owners of land. Peasant property 



