424 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



of these the law of transfer is in perfect accordance with the 

 interests of all parties concerned, and the natural tendencies of 

 agriculture in a country of growing wealth suggests a very im- 

 portant conclusion respecting the other namely, the law of 

 succession. It enables us to perceive why this latter does not 

 produce the practical mischiefs many English writers, not un- 

 naturally, have assumed. The fact is, that (except as regards its 

 operation upon separate parcels, where the property consists of 

 such a mischief easily cured in the opinion of the highest 

 French authorities) the French law of succession tends in the 

 main to the same result as the natural course of agriculture and 

 free trade in land namely, the subdivision of land. Secondly, 

 the operation of a good law of transfer tends to cure whatever 

 mischiefs really arise from the partitions effected by the law of 

 succession, there being a steady flow of small lots through the 

 land market towards those who can turn them to the best 

 account. Lastly, it is established beyond dispute that peasant 

 property arrests an excessive partition of land among children 

 by imposing a check upon population. "The law of succession," 

 observes M. de Lavergne, " is still the object of some attacks, 

 which do not succeed in shaking it. It cannot be said of a 

 country which contains 50,000 properties of more than 200 hec- 

 tares that the soil is subdivided to excess. It is enough to 

 read the advertisement columns of the daily papers to see that 

 lands of several hundred, and even several thousand, hectares 

 are still numerous. There are even too many of them, in the 

 sense that the majority of the owners would be gainers by divid- 

 ing them." 1 Of smaller properties, again, of only six hectares 

 on the average (of which he reckons two millions), the same 

 authority adds : " The owners of these live in real comfort. 

 Their properties are divided by inheritance ; but many of them 

 are continually purchasing, and on the whole they tend more to 

 rise than to fall in the scale of wealth." In place of suggesting 

 a radical change in the law of inheritance, he, like most French 

 economists, suggests only a modification of it in the case of a 

 number of separate parcels, together with a great reduction of 



1 " Economie rurale de la France." 



