cultural practices of the country, and which is customary on its large estates, the cause must lie in one of the salutary influences of the system; the eminent degree in which it promotes providence on the part of those who, not being yet peasant proprietors, hope to become so. In England, where the agricultural labourer has no investment for his savings but the savings bank, and no position to which he can rise by any exercise of economy, except perhaps that of a petty shopkeeper, with its chances of bankruptcy, there is nothing at all resembling the intense spirit of thrift which takes possession of one who, from being a day labourer, can raise himself by saving to the condition of a landed proprietor. According to almost all authorities, the real cause of the morcellement is the higher price which can be obtained for land by selling it to the peasantry, as an investment for their small accumulations, than by disposing of it entire to some rich purchaser who has no object but to live on its income without improving it. The hope of obtaining such an investment is the most powerful of inducements, to those who are without land, to practise the industry, frugality, and self-restraint, on which their success in this object of ambition is dependent. As the result of this enquiry into the direct operation and indirect influences of peasant properties, I conceive it to be established, that there is no necessary connexion between this form of landed property and an imperfect state of the arts of production; that it is favourable in quite as many respects as it is unfavourable, to the most effective use of the powers of the soil; that no other existing state of agricultural economy has so beneficial an effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and prudence of the population, nor tends on the whole so much to discourage an improvident increase of their numbers; and that no existing state, therefore, is on the whole so favourable, both to their moral and their physical welfare. Compared with the English system of cultivation by hired labour, it must be regarded as eminently beneficial to the labouring class. We are not on the present occasion called upon to compare it with the joint ownership of the land by associations of labourers. *French history strikingly confirms these conclusions. Three times during the course of ages the peasantry have been purchasers ceded the three principal eras of French of land; and these times immediately preagricultural prosperity. "In the worst times," says the historian Michelet (The People, Part i. ch. 1), "the times of universal poverty, when even the rich are poor and obliged to sell, the poor are enabled to buy: no other purchaser presenting himself, the peasant in rags arrives with his piece of gold, and acquires a little bit of land. These moments of disaster in which the peasant was able to buy land at a low price, have always been followed by a not account for: Towards 1500, for example, sudden gush of prosperity which people could when France, exhausted by Louis XI., seemed to be completing its ruin in Italy, the noblesse who went to the wars were obliged suddenly began to flourish; men began to to sell the land, passing into new hands, labour and to build. This happy moment, in the style of courtly historians, was called the good Louis XII. had the land recovered itself when the tax"Unhappily it did not last long. Scarcely collector fell upon it; the wars of religion followed, and seemed to rase everything to the ground; with horrible miseries, dreadful famines, in which mothers devoured their children. Who would believe that the country recovered from this? Scarcely is the war ended, when from the devastated fields, and the cottages still black with the flames, comes forth the hoard of the peasant. He buys; in ten years, France wears a new face; in twenty or thirty, all possessions have doubled baptized by a royal name, is called the good Henry IV. and the great Richelieu." and trebled in value. This moment, again Of the third era it is needless again to speak; it was that of the Revolution. picture, may compare these historic periods, Whoever would study the reverse of the characterized by the dismemberment of large and the construction of small properwhich accompanied, and the permanent deties, with the wide-spread national suffering terioration of the condition of the labouring classes which followed, the "clearing" away of small yeomen to make room for large grazing farms, which was the grand economical event of English history during the sixteenth century. CHAPTER VIII. OF METAYERS. § 1. FROM the case in which the produce of land and labour belongs undividedly to the labourer, we proceed to the cases in which it is divided, but between two classes only, the labourers and the landowners; the character of capitalists merging in the one or the other, as the case may be. It is possible indeed to conceive that there might be only two classes of persons to share the produce, and that a class of capitalists might be one of them; the character of labourer and that of landowner being united to form the other. This might occur in two ways. The labourers, though owning the land, might let it to a tenant, and work under him as hired servants. But this arrangement, even in the very rare cases which could give rise to it, would not require any particular discussion, since it would not differ in any material respect from the threefold system of labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The other case is the not uncommon one, in which a peasant proprietor owns and cultivates the land, but raises the little capital required, by a mortgage upon it. Neither does this case present any important peculiarity. There is but one person, the peasant himself, who has any right or power of interference in the management. He pays a fixed annuity as interest to a capitalist, as he pays another fixed sum in taxes to the government. Without dwelling further on these cases, we pass to those which present marked features of peculiarity. or When the two parties sharing in the produce are the labourer labourers and the landowner, it is not a very material circumstance in the case, which of the two furnishes the stock, or whether, as sometimes happens, they furnish it, in a determinate proportion, between them. The essential difference does not lie in this, but in another circumstance, namely, whether the division of the produce between the two is regulated by custom or by competition. We will begin with the former case; of which the metayer culture is the principal, and in Europe almost the sole, example. The principle of the metayer system is that the labourer, or peasant, makes his engagement directly with the landowner, and pays, not a fixed rent, either in money or in kind, but a certain proportion of the produce, or rather of what remains of the produce after deducting what is considered necessary to keep up the stock. The proportion is usually, as the name imports, one-half; but in several districts in Italy it is two-thirds. Respecting the supply of stock, the custom varies from place to place; in some places the landlord furnishes the whole, in others half, in others some particular part, as for instance the cattle and seed, the labourer providing the implements. "This connexion," says *In France, before the Revolution, according to Arthur Young (i. 403) there was great local diversity in this respect. In Champagne, "the landlord commonly finds half the cattle and half the seed, and the metayer, labour, implements, and taxes; but in some districts the landlord bears a share of these. In Roussillon, the landlord pays half the taxes; and in Guienne, from Auch to Fleuran, many landlords pay all. Near Aguillon, on the Garonne, the metayers furnish half the cattle. At Nangis, in the Isle of France, I met with an agreement for the landlord to furnish live stock, implements, harness, and taxes; the metayer found labour and his own capitation tax: the landlord repaired the house and gates; the metayer the windows: the landlord provided seed the first year, the metayer the last; in the intervening years they supply half and half. Inthe Bourbonnois the landlord finds all sorts of live stock, yet the metayer sells, changes, and buys at his will; the steward keeping an account of these mutations, for the land-. lord has half the product of sales, and pays half the purchases." In Piedmont, he says, "the landlord commonly pays the taxes and repairs the buildings, and the tenant provides cattle, implements, and seed." (II. 151.) : Sismondi, speaking chiefly of Tuscany, "is often the subject of a contract, to define certain services and certain occasional payments to which the metayer binds himself; nevertheless the differences in the obligations of one such contract and another are inconsiderable; usage governs alike all these engagements, and supplies the stipulations which have not been expressed and the landlord who at tempted to depart from usage, who exacted more than his neighbour, who took for the basis of the agreement anything but the equal division of the crops, would render himself so odious, he would be so sure of not obtaining a metayer who was an honest man, that the contract of all the metayers may be considered as identical, at least in each province, and never gives rise to any competition among peasants in search of employment, or any offer to cultivate the soil on cheaper terms than one another." To the same effect Châteauvieux, speaking of the metayers of Piedmont. They consider it" (the farm) "as a patrimony, and never think of renewing the lease, but go on from generation to generation, on the same terms, without writings or registries."+ § 2. When the partition of the produce is a matter of fixed usage, not of varying convention, political economy has no laws of distribution to investigate. It has only to consider, * Studies in Political Economy, Essay VI. On the Condition of the Cultivators in Tus cany. + Letters from Italy. I quote from Dr. Rigby's translation. (p. 22.) This virtual fixity of tenure is not how ever universal even in Italy; and it is to its absence that Sismondi attributes the inferior condition of the metayers in some provinces of Naples, in Lucca, and in the Riviera of Genoa; where the landlords obtain a larger (though still a fixed) share of the produce. In those countries the cultivation is splendid, but the people wretchedly poor. "The same misfortune would probably have befallen the people of Tuscany if public opinion did not protect the cultivator; but a proprietor would not dare to impose conditions unusual in the country, and even in changing one metayer for another, he alters nothing in the terms of the engagement." New Principles of Political Economy, book iii, ch. 5. as in the ease of peasant proprietors, the effects of the system, first, on the condition of the peasantry, morally and physically, and secondly, on the efficiency of the labour. In both these particulars the metayer system has the characteristic advantages of peasant properties, but has them in a less degree. The metayer has less motive to exertion than the peasant proprietor, since only half the fruits of his industry, instead of the whole, are his own. But he has a much stronger motive than a day labourer, who has no other interest in the result than not to be dismissed. If the metayer cannot be turned out except for some violation of his contract, he has a stronger motive to exertion than any tenant-farmer who has not a lease. The metayer is at least his landlord's partner, and a half-sharer in their joint gains. Where, too, the permanence of his tenure is guaranteed by custom, he acquires local attachments, and much of the feelings of a proprietor. I am supposing that this half produce is sufficient to yield him a comfortable support. Whether it is so, depends (in any given state of agriculture) on the degree of subdivision of the land; which depends on the operation of the population principle. A multiplication · of people, beyond the number that can be properly supported on the land or taken off by manufactures, is incident even to a peasant proprietary, and of course not less but rather more incident to a metayer population. The tendency, however, which we noticed in the proprietary system, to promote prudence on this point, is in no small degree common to it with the metayer system. There, also, it is a matter of easy and exact calculation whether a family can be supported or not. If it is easy to see whether the owner of the whole produce can increase the production so as to maintain a greater number of persons equally well, it is a not less simple problem whether the owner of half the produce can do so.* * M. Bastiat affirms that even in France, incontestably the least favourable example of the metayer system, its effect in repressing population is conspicuous. "It is a well-ascertained fact that the There is one check which this system | from their own share of the produce, seems to offer, over and above those because the lord, who laid out nothing, held out even by the proprietary was to get one half of whatever it system; there is a landlord, who may produced. The tithe, which is but a exert a controlling power, by refusing tenth of the produce, is found to be a his consent to a subdivision. I do not, very great hindrance to improvement. however, attach great importance to A tax, therefore, which amounted to this check, because the farm may be one-half, must have been an effectual loaded with superfluous hands without bar to it. It might be the interest of being subdivided; and because, so long a metayer to make the land produce as the increase of hands increases the as much as could be brought out of it gross produce, which is almost always by means of the stock furnished by the the case, the landlord, who receives proprietor; but it could never be his half the produce, is an immediate interest to mix any part of his own gainer, the inconvenience falling only with it. In France, where five parts on the labourers. The landlord is no out of six of the whole kingdom are doubt liable in the end to suffer from said to be still occupied by this species their poverty, by being forced to make of cultivators, the proprietors complain advances to them, especially in bad that their metayers take every oppor seasons; and a foresight of this ulti- tunity of employing the master's cattle mate inconvenience may operate bene- rather in carriage than in cultivation; ficially on such landlords as prefer because in the one case they get the future security to present profit. whole profits to themselves, in the other they share them with their landlord." It is indeed implied in the very nature of the tenure, that all improvements which require expenditure of capital, must be made with the capital of the landlord. This, however, is essentially the case even in England, whenever the farmers are tenants-at The characteristic disadvantage of the metayer system is very fairly stated by Adam Smith. After pointing out that metayers "have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so," he continues," it could never, however, be the interest of this species of culti-will: or (if Arthur Young is right) vators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the little stock which they might save tendency to excessive multiplication is chiefly manifested in the class who live on wages. Over these the forethought which retards marriages has little operation,because the evils which flow from excessive compe tition appear to them only very confusedly, fore, the most advantageous condition of a and at a considerable distance. It is, there people to be so organized as to contain no regular class of labourers for hire. In metayer countries, marriages are principally determined by the demands of cultivation; they increase when, from whatever cause, the metairies offer vacancies injurious to production; they diminish when the places are filled up. A fact easily ascertained, the proportion between the size of the farm and even on a` "nine years lease." If the landlord is willing to provide capital for improvements, the metayer has the strongest interest in promoting them, since half the benefit of them will accrue to himself. As however the perpetuity of tenure which, in the case renders his consent a necessary condiwe are discussing, he enjoys by custom, tion; the spirit of routine, and dislike of innovation, characteristic of an agricultural people when not corrected by education, are no doubt, as the advocates of the system seem to admit, a serious hindrance to improvement. § 3. The metayer system has met the number of hands, operates like fore- with no mercy from English authorithought, and with greater effect. We find, ties. accordingly, that when nothing occurs to make an opening for a superfluous population, numbers remain stationary: as is seen in our southern departments.' Considerations on Metayage, in the Journal des Economistes for February 1846. * Wealth of Nations, book iii. ch. 2. "There is not one word to be said in favour of the practice," says Arthur Young, "and a thousand arguments that might be used against it. The hard plea of necessity can * Travels, vol. i. pp. 404-5, alone be urged in its favour; the po- | by no means represents the typical verty of the farmers being so great, form of the contract. It is essential that the landlord must stock the farm, to that form, that the proprietor pays or it could not be stocked at all: this all the taxes. But in France the exis a most cruel burthen to a proprietor, emption of the noblesse from direct who is thus obliged to run much of the taxation had led the Government to hazard of farming in the most dan- throw the whole burthen of their evergerous of all methods, that of trusting increasing fiscal exactions upon the his property absolutely in the hands occupiers: and it is to these exactions of people who are generally ignorant, that Turgot ascribed the extreme many careless, and some undoubtedly wretchedness of the metayers: a wicked. . . . In this most miserable wretchedness in some cases so excesof all the modes of letting land, the sive, that in Limousin and Angoudefrauded landlord receives a con- mois (the provinces which he adınitemptible rent; the farmer is in the nistered) they had seldom more, aclowest state of poverty; the land is cording to him, after deducting all miserably cultivated; and the nation burthens, than from twenty-five to suffers as severely as the parties them- thirty livres (20 to 24 shillings) per selves. Wherever this system head for their whole annual consumpprevails, it may be taken for granted tion: "I do not mean in money, but that a useless and miserable population including all that they consume in is found. . . . Wherever the country kind from their own crops.' When (that I saw) is poor and unwatered, we add that they had not the virtual in the Milanese, it is in the hands of fixity of tenure of the metayers of Italy, metayers" they are almost always | ("in Limousin," says Arthur Young,t in debt to their landlord for seed "the metayers are considered as little or food, and "their condition is better than menial servants, removable more wretched than that of a day at pleasure, and obliged to conform in labourer. There are but few all things to the will of the landlords,”) districts" (in Italy) "where lands admits (as Mr. Jones has himself stated in are let to the occupying tenant at another place) that he is acquainted only a money-rent; but wherever it is with a limited district, of great subdivision found, their crops are greater; a clear proof of the imbecility of the metaying system." "Wherever it" (the metayer "has been adopted," says system) Mr. M'Culloch, "it has put a stop to all improvement, and has reduced the cultivators to the most abject poverty." Mr. Jones § shares the common opinion, and quotes Turgot and DestuttTracy in support of it. The impression, however, of all these writers (notwithstanding Arthur Young's occasional references to Italy) seems to be chiefly derived from France, and France before the Revolution.|| Now the situation of French metayers under the old régime and unfertile soil. M. Passy is of opinion, that a French peasantry must be in indigence and the country badly cultivated on a metayer system, because the proportion of the produce claimable by the landlord is too high; it being only in more favourable climates that any land, not of the most exuberant fertility, can pay half its gross produce in rent, and leave enough to peasant farmers to enable them to grow successfully the more expen-. sive and valuable products of agriculture. (On Systems of Culture, p. 35.) This is an objection only to a particular numerical proportion, which is indeed the common one, but is not essential to the system. See the "Memoir on the Surcharge of Taxes suffered by the Generality of Limoges, addressed to the Council of State in 1786," pp. 260-304 of the fourth volume of Turgot's Works. The occasional engagements of landlords (as mentioned by Arthur Young) to pay a part of the taxes, were, according to Turgot, of recent origin, under the comed.pulsion of actual necessity. "The proprietor only consents to it when he can find no mepp. tayer on other terms; consequently, even in that case, the metayer is always reduced to what is barely sufficient to prevent him from dying of hunger." (p. 275), M. de Tracy is partially an exception, nasmuch as his experience reaches lower down than the revolutionary period but he † Vol. i. p. 404. |