96 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



one-half millions of land assessments, which seems to indi- 

 cate a like number of proprietors ; but since the inquiry 

 instituted by M. Passey, it is also well known how far 

 this figure is deceptive. Not only does it often happen 

 that a single tax -payer pays several assessments, thus 

 destroying what this number would otherwise seem to 

 indicate, but the house property of towns figures in the 

 number of assessments, which reduces the actual number 

 of landed properties to five or six millions at most. 



The assessment, however, has its particular value, and 

 as in England, in order to arrive at the most general 

 state of property, we exclude those vast possessions of 

 some great lords which would otherwise give an unduly 

 high average, so must we in France put in their true 

 place that multitude of small proprietary which so 

 greatly lowers the average. Upon eleven and one-half 

 million of assessments, five and one-half millions are 

 below five francs, two millions are from five to ten 

 francs, three millions ten to fifty francs, six hundred 

 thousand from fifty to one hundred five hundred thou- 

 sand only are above one hundred francs ; it is this half 

 million which constitutes the bulk of the landed property. 

 The eleven millions of assessments below one hundred 

 francs may be set down as appertaining to about one-third 

 of the total surface, or eighteen million hectares (forty- 

 five million acres), the other two-thirds, or thirty-two 

 millions of hectares, belong to four hundred thousand 

 proprietors, deducting those who are only urban pro- 

 prietors, and this for each property gives an average of 

 eighty hectares (two hundred acres). 



Thus in cutting off, on the one side, the very large pro- 

 perties, and on the other the very small ones, occupying 

 in each country a third of the soil, the average in France 

 would be the same as the English average for the remain- 



