420 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



land, the landowner, the farmer, and the labourer, the country 

 and the town. Instead of being, as has been supposed, a cause 

 of low wages, it has been a consequence of high wages, which 

 have enabled the labourer to become a land-buyer and even a 

 cause of high wages by diminishing the competition in the labour 

 market, and placing the labourer in a position of some independ- 

 ence in making his bargains with employers. Instead of dimin- 

 ishing agricultural capital, as many English agriculturists urge, it 

 is, in the language of Adam Smith, both cause and effect of 

 "the frugality and good conduct, the uniform, constant, and 

 uninterrupted effort of every man to better his own condition, 

 from which public as well as private opulence is derived, and 

 which is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural 

 tendency of things towards improvement, in spite both of the 

 extravagance of government and the greatest errors of admin- 

 istration." 



But, assuming it to be demonstrable that the subdivision of land 

 in France is in the main the result of natural and beneficial 

 economic causes, it is certain, nevertheless, that it could not take 

 place without the co-operation of legal causes, that is to say, of a 

 legal system which renders dealings in land simple and safe, and, 

 by comparison with the English system, inexpensive. In the 

 absence of natural economic tendencies towards the subdivision of 

 land by its purchase in small lots, the best-constructed legal system 

 of transfer would only tend to its accumulation in few hands ; but, 

 on the other hand, under such a legal system as our own, what- 

 ever the natural tendencies of the market, the expense, difficulty, 

 and risk of buying very small estates would make them an 

 altogether unsuitable and impracticable investment for the savings 

 of the peasant and the labourer. Even under a law of succession 

 like the French there could be no such poor man's land market 

 in England ; the properties partitioned by inheritance would be 

 rapidly added to the domain of the great landowner and the 

 millionaire, able to run the risk of litigation and to procure the 

 best legal assistance. In France every sale and every mortgage 

 of land is immediately inscribed in a public registry in the 

 chef -lieu of the arrondissement ; and anv one has a right to enter 



