THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE 421 



and inspect the register, to satisfy himself respecting the title to 

 any estate or parcel of land, and the charges, if any, upon it. The 

 director of the registry is, moreover, bound to deliver for a trifling 

 charge a statement of the title to every estate or parcel to any one 

 demanding it. The private charges for the assistance of the 

 notary in effecting a purchase vary indeed considerably, and are 

 very much heavier in proportion on very small parcels than on 

 large estates. Every sale of land is moreover burdened with 

 the much-complained-of duty of above 6 per cent. 1 But the 

 transaction is simple, expeditious, and secure ; and the fact that, 

 in spite of heavier relative cost, high taxation, and the competi- 

 tion of public loans and other investments, the peasant is the 

 great buyer of land in France, only strengthens the conclusion 

 that the subdivision of land by the purchase of small estates is a 

 natural and healthy tendency of the market, springing from the 

 high profits of la petite culture, and at the same time from the 

 happiness and independence which the possession of land is 

 found by the experience of the people at large to confer. It 

 shows, too, the error of a common impression in England, that 

 it is much better for a cultivator to rent a larger farm than 

 to farm a small estate of his own. If there be any truth in 

 English political economy, the buyers of land in France are the 

 best judges of their own interests ; and we have the practical 

 testimony of the whole nation that the small estate is the better 

 investment of the two for capital and labour. But, moreover, 

 under a sound system of title, and of registration of mortgages, 

 the peasant proprietor is not debarred from increasing the size 

 of his farm ; he can raise money expeditiously and safely on 

 his own little property, and farm adjoining land as a tenant, 

 should he find it to his advantage. The French land system 

 gives the small buyer of land the benefit of being able to raise 

 capital on unexceptional security, and that by a process which 

 creates no impediment to its subsequent sale. And such a system, 

 so far from tending to increase the encumbrances on land, tends 

 necessarily, in the first place, to bring land into the hands of 

 those who can make most of it, and secondly, to enable them to 



1 6fr. 5 c. per 100 fr., inclusive of the dicime de guerre. 



