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 with no mercy from English authorities. "There is not one word to be said in favor of the practice," says Arthur Young,* "and a thousand arguments that might be used against it. The hard plea of necessity can alone be urged in its favor; the poverty of the farmers being so great, that the landlord must stock the farm, or it could not be stocked at all; this is a most cruel burden to a proprietor, who is thus obliged to run much of the hazard of farming in the most dangerous of all methods, that of trusting his property absolutely in the hands of people who are generally ignorant, many careless, and some undoubtedly wicked. . . . In this most miserable of all the modes of letting land, the defrauded landlord receives a contemptible rent; the farmer is in the lowest state of poverty; the land is miserably cultivated; and the nation suffers as severely as the parties themselves. Wherever this system prevails, it may be taken for granted that a useless and miserable population is found. Wherever the country (that I saw) is poor and unwatered, in the Milanese, it is in the hands of metayers;" they are almost always in debt to their landlord for seed or food, and "their condition is more wretched than that of a day laborer. There are but few districts" (in Italy) "where lands are let to the occupying tenant at a moneyrent; but wherever it is found, their crops are greater; a clear proof of the imbecility of the metaying system." "Wherever it" (the metayer system) "has been adopted,"

* Travels, vol. i. pp. 404-5.

Ibid. ii. 217.

Travels, vol. ii. 151-3.

says Mr. McCulloch,* "it has put a stop to all improvement, and has reduced the cultivators to the most abject poverty." Mr. Jonest shares the common opinion, and quotes Turgot and Destutt-Tracy 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 regime by no means represents the typical form of the contract. It is essential to that form, that the proprietor pays all the taxes. But in France the exemption of the noblesse from direct taxation had led the government to throw the whole burden of their ever-increasing fiscal exactions upon the occupiers; and it is to these exactions that Turgot ascribed the extreme wretchedness of the metayers; a wretchedness in some cases so excessive, that in Limousin and Angoumois (the provinces which he administered) they had seldom more, according to him, after deducting all burthens, than from twenty-five to thirty livres (20 to 24 shillings) per head for their whole annual consumption; "je ne dis pas en argent, mais en comptant tout ce qu'ils consomment en

*Principles of Political Economy, 3d ed., p. 471.

Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, pp. 102-4.

M. de Tracy is partially an exception, inasmuch as his experience reaches lower down than the revolutionary period; but he admits (as Mr. Jones has himself stated in another place) that he is acquainted only with a limited district, of great subdivision 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 favorable 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 expensive and valuable products of agriculture. (Systèmes de 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.

nature sur ce qu'ils ont récolté."* When we add that they had not the virtual fixity of tenure of the metayers of Italy, ("in Limousin," says Arthur Young,† "the metayers are considered as little better than menial servants, removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of the landlords") it is evident that their case affords no argument against the metayer system in its better form. A population who could call nothing their own, who, like the Irish cottiers, could not in any contingency be worse off, had nothing to restrain them from multiplying, and subdividing the land, until stopped by actual starvation.

These farms are
They invariably
buildings rarely
Their plan "af-

We shall find a very different picture, by the most accurate authorities, of the metayer cultivation of Italy. In the first place, as to subdivision. In Lombardy, according to Châteauvieux,* there are few farms which exceed fifty acres, and few which have less than ten. all occupied by metayers at half profit. display "an extent and a richness in known in any other country in Europe." fords the greatest room with the least extent of building; is best adapted to arrange and secure the crop, and is, at the same time, the most economical, and the least exposed to accidents by fire." The court-yard exhibits a whole so regular and commodious, and a system of such care and good order, that our dirty and ill-arranged farms can convey no

See the "Mémoire sur la Surcharge des Impositions qu'éprouvait la Généralité de Limoges, adressé au Conseil d'Etat en 1766," 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 compulsion of actual necessity. "Le propriétaire ne s'y prête qu'autant qu'il ne peut trouver de métayer autrement; ainsi, même dans ce cas-là, le métayer est toujours réduit à ce qu'il faut précisément pour ne pas mourir de faim." (P. 275.) † Vol. i. p. 404.

Letters from Italy, translated by Rigby, p. 16. § Ibid. pp. 19, 20.

adequate idea of." The same description applies to Piedmont. The rotation of crops is excellent. "I should think* no country can bring so large a portion of its produce to market as Piedmont." Though the soil is not naturally very fertile, the number of cities is prodigiously great." The agriculture must therefore be eminently favorable to the net as well as to the gross produce of the land. "Each plough works thirty-two acres in the season. . . Nothing can be more perfect or neater than the hoeing and moulding up the maize, when in full growth, by a single plough, with a pair of oxen, without injury to a single plant, while all the weeds are effectually destroyed." So much for agricultural skill. Nothing can be so excellent as the crop which precedes and that which follows it." The wheat "is thrashed by a cylinder, drawn by a horse, and guided by a boy, while the laborers turn over the straw with forks. This process lasts nearly a fortnight; and is quick and economical, and completely gets out the grain.

In no part of the world are the economy and management of the land better understood than in Piedmont, and this explains the phenomenon of its great population, and immense export of provisions." All this under matayer cultivation.

Of the valley of the Arno, in its whole extent, both above and below Florence, the same writer thus speaks :t"Forests of olive-trees covered the lower parts of the mountains, and by their foliage concealed an infinite number of small farms, which peopled these parts of the mountains; chestnut-trees raised their heads on the higher slopes, their healthy verdure contrasting with the pale tint of the olive-trees, and spreading a brightness over this amphitheatre. The road was bordered on each side with

village-houses, not more than a hundred paces from each other. They are placed at a little distance from the road, and separated from it by a wall, and a terrace of some feet in extent. On the wall are commonly placed many vases of antique forms, in which flowers, aloes, and young orange-trees are growing. The house itself is completely covered with vines. Before these houses we saw groups of peasant females dressed in white linen, silk corsets, and straw-hats ornamented with flowers. These houses being so near each other, it is evident that the land annexed to them must be small, and that property, in these valleys, must be very much divided; the extent of these domains being from three to ten acres. The land lies round the houses, and is divided into fields by small canals, or rows of trees, some of which are mulberry-trees, but the greatest number poplars, the leaves of which are eaten by the cattle. Each tree supports a vine. These divisions, arrayed in oblong squares, are large enough to be cultivated by a plough without wheels, and a pair of oxen. There is a pair of them between ten or twelve of the farmers; they employ them successively in the cultivation of all the farms. Almost every farm maintains a well-looking horse, which goes in a small two-wheeled cart, neatly made, and painted red; they serve for all the purposes of draught for the farm, and also to convey the farmer's daughters to mass and to balls. Thus, on holidays, hundreds of these little carts are seen flying in all directions, carrying the young women, decorated with flowers and ribbons."

This is not a picture of poverty; and so far as agriculture is concerned, it effectually redeems metayer cultivation, as existing in these countries, from the reproaches of English writers; but with respect to the condition of the cultivators, Châteauvieux's testimony is, in some points, not so favor