AGRICUI.TURE ON THE RHINE. 71 



agriculture, as well as from other branches of industry, 

 is the more conspicuous the fewer the hands are that 

 divide it. Now since farming-, properly so called, is 

 carried on in England upon allotments varying from 100 

 to 1000 acres, whereas the common limits in this part of 

 Germany are from 10 to 300 acres ; the difference in the 

 numbers sharing the profits in both countries is at least 

 as one to eight or perhaps ten. We have no doubt that 

 the number of estates exceeding 1000 acres, managed by 

 one farmer in central England, exceeds the number of 

 those above 300 acres on the Rhine. In the districts 

 more remote from the thoroughfares of trade, the propor- 

 tion of the population employed in agriculture is over- 

 whelming as compared with other occupations. Hence 

 tlie low prices of produce in good years, and the difficulty 

 the Germans find in accumulating capital. Where there 

 is a superfluity of produce, if all produce the same, there 

 can be no market. So it is in Germany. Every man 

 grows his own bread. Who is to buy of those who pro- 

 duce more than they require for their own consumption V 

 It is owing to this circumstance, and not because the cost 

 of tillage is less, that prices are so low. To raise them it 

 will be necessary to open new fields of labour in trade 

 and manufactures, into which many of the present culti- 

 vators of the land must be induced to migrate, and thus 

 to leave to a smaller number the division of the profits in 

 agriculture. The gift to the peasants of the small lots 

 they held, in the manner before described, had quite a 

 contrary tendency, by keeping them on the land which 

 they would by degrees have left. But at that time, and 

 even still, the panacea prescribed in Germany for all 

 widely spread discontent is to subdivide the land. Unless 



