624 
Small Holdings in France. 
certainly — and I have little doubt all over France — owning, hiring, 
and farming as family representative are so exceedingly mixed up, 
that the term “ peasant proprietor ” is very far from being an accu- 
rate term to apply generally to French cultivators. 
Satisfactory as it is to see the managers doing well and saving, 
and adding rood to rood, it is a very serious state of things to find 
the class of yeoman-farmers or cuUivateurs of from 40 to 100 acres 
breaking down in Northern France, in spite of “protection.” For 
several years preceding 1890, wheat paid an import duty of 5 francs 
the quintal (100 kilogrammes), equivalent to about ten shillings a 
quarter. In consequence of the failure of the wheat crop in the 
north of France in 1891, the French Chambers, dreading a scarcity, 
reduced the duty from 5 francs to 3 francs per quintal, for one 
year oidy. The 5-franc duty per quintal is again in force since 
June 1, 1892. During the four years’ (1887-1891) prevalence of 
the unreduced duty, the price of wlieat averaged only 1 franc per 
quintal (or about two shillings per quarter) higher than during 
the year of the reduction of the duty from 5 francs to 3 francs. 
The complaints of the scarcity and deteriorated quality of labour 
on tlie part of the few large farmers whom I came across in Picardy 
are even louder than in England. The facilities for acquiring 
small bits of land in France are so widespread, that almost every 
steady labourer in the country — in Picardy at all events — becomes 
the owner of an acre or two before he reaches middle age. The large 
farmers have to put up with the improvident and inferior labourers, 
who alone will engage themselves by the year. Their relations with 
their men are so strained, and the times are so bad, that large farms 
are hardly to be let at any price. A farm at La Roselle, near 
Douliens, formerly let at 14,000 francs, is now ofiered at 5,000 francs. 
In a commune like Vraignes, where there are no large farms, and 
where the moderate-sized ioi,vm&v&,menagers, and labourers (hoping to 
become menagers) are mutually interdependent, the relations are 
excellent. 
As the landlords in France, very often notaries, are nearly always 
non-resident, and are seldom persons in a position to take land 
into their own hands, the condition of agriculture on the large scale, 
where cereals are the main crop, is even more critical than in 
England. In the sugar-beet growing district around Peronne, 
where sugar factories abound, with light railways to feed them, the 
outlook is much more hopeful. 
Since writing the above I have had the advantage of reading 
the paper on “Small Holdings in Cornwall,” by Mr. J. AV. Lawry, 
in tins Journal (vol. iii. part ii., 1892, p. 390). I venture to think 
that Cornwall, wdth its exceptionally mild climate, can hardly be 
taken as a fair sample of what can generally be achieved in Great 
Britain by small holders. But the success as yet obtained even there 
does not seem very considerable. 
I have myself been carving small holdings oflf large farms in 
Cambridgeshire for twenty years, and offering them at the same rate 
