164 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



this day reach 100 francs and upwards, in the depart- 

 ments where a non-agricultural population abounds, and 

 fall to 1 in those where it is wanting. If we had every- 

 where the same outlets as in England, no doubt our 

 average rent would very soon be equal to that of our 

 neighbour ; that is to say, double what it is now. Only 

 double the rent, and, even without changing the actual 

 condition of property, many of our poor proprietors 

 would become, by this means alone, rich proprietors. We 

 should immediately have the exact equivalent of the 

 English gentry. 



There are, moreover, two kinds of property : the fixed, 

 called in England real property, and the movable or 

 personal property. The income from real property for 

 the three kingdoms is estimated at 120,000,000 sterling, 

 or three milliards of francs. Land, properly so called, 

 figures for only half of this : the rest is from house pro- 

 perty, mines, quarries, canals, railways, fisheries, &c. The 

 value of house property alone is nearly as much as the 

 land itself. In Great Britain, the income from land is 

 46,000,000 sterling, while that of houses is 40,000,000. 

 The income from personal property may, at the same 

 time, be valued at 80,000,000 sterling, or two milliards 

 of francs, deducting interest paid to mortgagees, already 

 included as income from properties mortgaged. It fol- 

 lows, therefore, that the rent of land, so high relatively, 

 does not amount to a third of the income of English 

 proprietors. 



We see now how they come to be, on an average, 

 richer than ours. In the first place, they are propor- 

 tionately much less numerous ; and then, again, (and this 

 is the main reason), they have a much larger revenue to 

 be divided among them. With us the income from land, 

 which, to begin with, is proportionately less than the 



