Report on the Agriculture of Belgium. 
83 
devoted to agricultural pursuits, and they will make enormous 
sacrifices in order to buy a piece of land. They are very 
industrious when working for themselves ; but otherwise their 
labour is dear even at the low price they get paid for it. There- 
fore, under a small-farm system, a certain amount of force is 
utilised which would otherwise have been wasted. The Walloons 
are entirely different ; they are more energetic, and do more 
justice to their employers ; then they get better wages, live very 
much better, and have neither the hoarding propensity nor the 
land-mania so characteristic of the Flemish. 
Although we have endeavoured to show that small farming, 
as a national system, is not desirable in a manufacturing country 
like Belgium, we are far from saying that there should be no 
small farms. Such an opinion would be equivalent to saying 
that because it is not desirable that every soldier should be an 
officer, therefore there should be no officers. La petite culture 
of Belgium is favoured by the provisions of the Code Napoleon 
with respect to the inheritance of property ; and we imagine 
that the tendency of those provisions must be to gradually extend 
the system of small farms, and to diminish the average size of 
the holdings.* This tendency seems to us directly opposed to an 
increase in the material prosperity of the country. 
6. Land-tenure and Tenant-right. — In every part of Belgium, 
except the Pays de Waes, land is held under a system of short 
leases. The customary maximum duration of a lease is 9 years, 
but either landlord or tenant can terminate it at the end of 3 or 
6 years by giving 6 months' notice. Occasionally one meets 
with a large farm held under an 18 years' lease. The date of 
entry varies from October 1st to May 15th in different parts 
of Belgium, and the covenants and customs are so variable 
that it is impossible to describe them in detail. Not only are 
the customs different in adjoining provinces, but in any one 
province half-a-dozen descriptions of agricultural usage may be 
found. Many of these customs vary with the date of entry, and 
refer particularly to what the incoming farmer is to be allowed 
to do previous to his entry, and what the outgoing farmer may 
do after the expiration of his tenancy. But as the present and 
future tenants seldom possess much mutual goodwill, these 
customs not unfrequently lead to disputes. Therefore some 
landlords have acquired the property of the outgoing tenant in 
the crops which he has sown, in the unconsumed forage, and so 
* M. Leclerc remarks that " Landed property in Belgium tends to become 
more and more divided. This is the one inevitable consequence of the legislative 
enactment which gives to each child the right to claim an equal part in hind of 
the paternal heritage ; it is also a conseqeiice of the increase of the public riches, 
as a large number of men -who have acquired fortunes in mauufactu.res and com- 
merce desire to become landed proprietors.'' 
G 2 
