104 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



is sufficient. Upon this income the family of a coun- 

 try proprietor can live comfortably, as society with us 

 is at present constituted, and save every year for pro- 

 ductive outlays ; with less than this, difficulties arise, 

 unless economy is proportionately increased. With re- 

 spect to small property, as the possessor is at the same 

 time the cultivator, it prospers under much humbler con- 

 ditions. A peasant family may live very -well in an 

 ordinary way with an income of 1200 francs ; and pro- 

 vided they possess some few hundreds of francs over and 

 above this sum, the land does not suffer, but rather im- 

 proves, in their hands ; for nowhere is it the object of 

 more assiduous care, and nowhere does it more liberally 

 repay the attention bestowed upon it. 



It is not necessary and this is one chief source of 

 error into which the advocates for exclusively large pro- 

 perties fall that the income of the possessor of the land 

 should come to him entirely from the land itself. A con- 

 siderable portion of this income may be derived from 

 any other source from some occupation or business in 

 the town, or a salaried post in the country. In this 

 case, the smaller the country property in proportion to 

 the income, the more chance it has of benefiting by in- 

 fusion of capital. In almost every case properties suffer 

 neglect owing to their being too large for the income of 

 the possessor, but especially when he is in debt : in this 

 case, the greater the extent of the property, the worse its 

 condition ; it is nothing then but a false show a fatal 

 delusion. 



The great bane of property is debt not the debt con- 

 tracted for the purpose of making improvements, for that 

 is almost always remunerative, but that which trenches 

 upon income, and leaves the nominal proprietor without 

 resources for keeping the property in good order. This 



