alone be urged in its favour; the po- | * Travels, vol. ii. 151-3. † Ibid. ii. 217. 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 burthen of their everincreasing 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: "I do not mean in money, but including all that they consume in kind from their own crops.' When we add that they had not the virtual fixity of tenure of the metayers of Italy, (“in Limousin," says Arthur Young,t "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,") 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. יי M. Passy is of opinion, that a French peasantry must be in indigence and the country badly cultivated on a metayer system, beable by the landlord is too high; it being cause the proportion of the produce claimonly in more favourable climates that any land, not of the most exuberant fertility, leave enough to peasant farmers to enable can pay half its gross produce in rent, and them to grow successfully the more expensive 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," WP. 260-304 of the fourth volume of Turgot's 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 com + Principles of Political Economy, 3rd ed.pulsion of actual necessity. "The proprietor p. 471. M. de Tracy is partially an exception, inasmuch as his experience reaches lower down than the revolutionary period: but he only consents to it when he can find no metayer 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), † Vol. i. p. 404. 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. 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 sixty acres, and few which have less than ten. These farms are all occupied by metayers at half profit. They invariably display "an extent and a richness in buildings rarely known in any other country in Europe." Their plan "affords 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 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 favourable 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, * Letters from Italy, translated by Rigby, + Ibid. pp. 19, 20. p. 16. Ibid. pp. 24-31. drawn by a horse, and guided by a boy, while the labourers turn over the straw with forks. This process lasts nearly a fortnight: it is quick and economical, and completely gets out the grain..... In no part of the world are the economy and the 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 metayer cultivation. Of the valley of the Arno, in its whole extent, both above and below Florence, the same writer thus speaks ;* "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 villagehouses, 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 tivated by a plough without wheels, squares, are large enough to be culPp. 78-9. and a pair of oxen. There is a pair of oxen 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 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." Florence) much at their ease; that on 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 favourable. "It is neither the natural fertility of the soil, nor the abundance which strikes the eye of the traveller, which constitute the well-being of its inhabitants. It is the number of individuals among whom the total produce is divided, which fixes the portion that each is enabled to enjoy. Here it is very small. I have thus far, indeed, exhibited a delightful country, well watered, fertile, and covered with a perpetual vegetation; I have shown it divided into countless inclosures, which, like so many beds in a garden, display a thousand varying productions; I have shown, that to all these inclosures are attached well-built In spite of Châteauvieux's statehouses, clothed with vines, and deco- ment specting the poverty of the rated with flowers; but, on entering metayers, his opinion, in respect to them, we find a total want of all the Italy at least, is given in favour of the conveniences of life, a table more than system. "It occupiest and constantly frugal, and a general appearance of interests the proprietors, which is never privation." Is not Châteauvieux here the case with great proprietors who unconsciously contrasting the condition lease their estates at fixed rents. It of the metayers with that of the establishes a community of interests, farmers of other countries, when the and relations of kindness between the proper standard with which to com- proprietors and the metayers; a kindpare it is that of the agricultural day-ness which I have often witnessed, and labourers? Arthur Young says, "I was assured that these metayers are (especially near * Pp. 73-6. Travels, vol. ii. p. 156. from which result great advantages in interested in the success of the crop, never refuses to make an advance upon it, which the land promises to repay with interest. It is by these advances, and by the hope thus spired, that the rich proprietors or land have gradually perfected the whole rural economy of Italy. It is to them that it owes the numerous systems of irrigation which water its soil, as also the establishment of the terrace culture on the hills: gradual but permanent improvements, which common peasants, for want of means, could never have effected, and which could never have been accomplished by the farmers, nor by the great proprietors who let their estates at fixed rents, because they are not sufficiently interested. Thus the interested system forms of itself that alliance between the rich proprietor, whose means provide for the improvement of the culture, and the metayer, whose care and labours are directed, by a common interest, to make the most of these advances." But the testimony most favourable to the system is that of Sismondi, which has the advantage of being specific, and from accurate knowledge; his information being not that of a traveller, but that of a resident proprietor, intimately acquainted with rural life. His statements apply to Tuscany generally, and more particularly to the Val di Nievole, in which his own property lay, and which is not within the supposed privileged circle immediately round Florence. It is one of the districts in which the size of farms appears to be the smallest. The following is his description of the dwellings and mode of life of the metayers of that district.* "The house, built of good walls with lime and mortar, has always at least one story, sometimes two, above the ground йoor. On the ground floor are generally the kitchen, a cowhouse for twohorned cattle, and the storehouse, which takes its name, tinaia, from the large vats (tini) in which the wine is put to ferment, without any pressing: From his Sixth Essay, formerly referred to. it is there also that the metayer locks up his casks, his oil, and his grain. Almost always there is also a shed supported against the house, where he can work under cover to mend his tools, or chop forage for his cattle. On the first and second stories are two, three, and often four bedrooms. The largest and most airy of these is generally destined by the metayer, in the months of May and June, to the bringing up of silkworms. Great chests to contain clothes and linen, and some wooden chairs, are the chief furniture of the chambers; but a newly-married wife always brings with her a wardrobe of walnut wood. The beds are uncurtained and unroofed, but on each of them, besides a good paillasse filled with the elastic straw of the maize plant, there are one or two mattresses of wool, or, among the poorest, of tow, a good blanket, sheets of strong hempen cloth, and on the best bed of the family a coverlet of silk padding, which is spread on festival days. The only fireplace is in the kitchen; and there also is the great wooden table where the family dines, and the benches; the great chest which serves at once for keeping the bread and other provisions, and for kneading; a tolerably complete though cheap assortment of pans, dishes, and earthenware plates: one or two metal lamps, a steelyard, and at least two copper pitchers for drawing and holding water. The linen and the working clothes of the family have all been spun by the women of the house. The clothes, both of men and of women, are of the stuff called mezza lana when thick, mola when thin, and made of a coarse thread of hemp or tow, filled up with cotton or wool; it is dried by the same women by whom it was spun. It would hardly be believed what a quantity of cloth and of mezza lana the peasant women are able to accumu late by assiduous industry; how many sheets there are in the store; what a number of shirts, jackets, trowsers, petticoats, and gowns are possessed by every member of the family. By way of example I add in a note the inventory of the peasant family best known to me it is neither one of the richest nor of the poorest, and lives happily by its industry on half the produce of less than ten arpents of land. The young women had a marriage portion of fifty crowns, twenty paid down, and the rest by instalments of two every year. The Tuscan crown is worth six francs [48. 10d]. The commonest marriage portion of a peasant girl in the other parts of Tuscany, where the metairies are larger, is 100 crowns, 600 francs." Is this poverty, or consistent with poverty? When a common, M. de Sismondi even says the common, marriage portion of a metayer's daughter is 241. English money, equivalent to at least 501. in Italy and in that rank of life; when one whose dowry is only half that amount, has the wardrobe described, which is represented by Sismondi as a fair average; the class must be fully comparable, in general condition, to a large proportion even of capitalist farmers in other countries; and incomparably above the daylabourers of any country, except a new colony, or the United States. Very little can be inferred, against such evidence, from a traveller's impression of the poor quality of their food. Its inexpensive character may be rather the effect of economy than of necessity. Costly feeding is not the favourite luxury of a southern people; their diet in all classes is principally vegetable, and no peasantry on the Continent has the superstition of the English labourer respecting white * Inventory of the trousseau of Jane, daughter of Valente Papini, on her marriage with Giovacchino Landi, the 29th of April 1835, at Porta Vecchia, near Pescia: 28 shifts, 7 best dresses (of particular fabrics of silk), 7 dresses of printed cotton, 2 winter working dresses (mezza lana), 3 summer working dresses and petticoats (mola), 3 white petticoats, 5 aprons of printed linen, 1 of black silk, 1 of black merinos, 9 coloured working aprons (mola), 4 white, 8 coloured, and 3 silk, handkerchiefs, 2 embroidered veils and one of tulle, 3 towels, 14 pairs of stockings, 2 hats (one of felt, the other of fine straw); 2 cameos set in gold, 2 golden earrings, 1 chaplet with two Roman silver crowns, 1 coral necklace with its cross of gold, All the richer married women of the class have, besides, the veste di seta, the great holiday dress, which they only wear four or five times in their lives." Salt bread. But the nourishment of the Tuscan peasants, according to Sismondi, "is wholesome and various: its basis is an excellent wheaten bread, brown, but pure from bran and from all mixture."' In the bad season, they take but two meals a day: at ten in the morning they eat their pollenta, at the beginning of the night their soup, and after it bread with a relish of some sort (companatico). In summer they have three meals, at eight, at one, and in the evening; but the fire is lighted only once a day, for dinner, which consists of soup, and a dish of salt meat or dried fish, or haricots, or greens, which are eaten with bread. meat enters in a very small quantity into this diet, for it is reckoned that forty pounds of salt pork per head suffice amply for a year's provision; twice a week a small piece of it is put into the soup. On Sundays they have always on the table a dish of fresh meat, but a piece which weighs only a pound or a pound and a half suffices for the whole family, however numerous it may be. It must not be forgotten that the Tuscan peasants generally produce olive oil for their own consumption: they use it not only for lamps, but as seasoning to all the vegetables prepared for the table, which it renders both more savoury and more nutritive. At breakfast their food is bread, and sometimes cheese and fruit; at supper, bread and salad. Their drink is composed of the inferior wine of the country, the vinella or piquette made by fermenting in water the pressed skins of the grapes. of their best wine for the day when They always, however, reserve a little they thresh their corn, and for some festivals which are kept in families. About fifty bottles of vinella per annum, and five sacks of wheat (about 1000 pounds of bread) are considered as the supply necessary for a full grown man.' The remarks of Sismondi on the moral influences of this state of society are not less worthy of attention. The rights and obligations of the metayer being fixed by usage, and all taxes and rates being paid by the pro |