Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

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."

[ocr errors]

§ 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 however 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.*

[blocks in formation]

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 opporseasons; 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."

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 cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the little stock which they might save

[ocr errors]

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-atwill: or (if Arthur Young is right) 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 we are discussing, he enjoys by custom, renders his consent a necessary condition; 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.

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 competition appear to them only very confusedly, and at a considerable distance. It is, there fore, the most advantageous condition of a 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 § 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- |
verty 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 burthen to a proprietor,
who is thus obliged to run much of the
hazard of farming in the most dan-
gerous 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 con-
temptible rent; the farmer is in the
lowest state of poverty; the land is
miserably cultivated; and the nation
suffers as severely as the parties them-
selves. 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
labourer. There are but few
districts" (in Italy) "where lands
are let to the occupying tenant at
a money-rent; 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," says
Mr. M'Culloch, "it has put a stop
to all improvement, and has reduced
the cultivators to the most abject po-
verty." Mr. Jones § shares the common
opinion, and quotes Turgot and Destutt-
Tracy in support of it. The impression,
however, of all these writers (notwith-
standing 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

* Travels, vol. ii. 151-3.
+ Ibid. ii. 217.
Principles of Political Economy, 3rd

p. 471.

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,† "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.

[ocr errors]

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, 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," 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 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),

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

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. 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,

...

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

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 "I 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

[blocks in formation]

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 inte
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 cul-
* Pp. 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."

is

Florence) much at their ease; that on
holidays they are dressed remarkably
well, and not without objects of luxury,
as silver, gold, and silk and live well,
on plenty of bread, wine, and legumes.
In some instances this may possibly be
the case, but the general fact is con-
trary. It is absurd to think that me-
tayers, upon such a farm as is cul-
tivated by a pair of oxen, can live at
their ease; and a clear proof of their
poverty is this, that the landlord, who
provides half the live stock, is often
obliged to lend the peasant money to
procure his half.
The meta-
yers, not in the vicinity of the city, are
so poor, that landlords even lend them
corn to eat their food is black bread,
made of a mixture with vetches; and
their drink is very little wine, mixed
with water, and called aquarolle; meat
on Sundays only; their dress very
ordinary.' Mr. Jones admits the su-
perior comfort of the metayers near
Florence, and attributes it partly to
straw-plaiting, by which the women of
the peasantry can earn, according to
Châteauvieux,* from fifteen to twenty
pence a-day.

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 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 houses, clothed with vines, and decorated with flowers; but, on entering them, we find a total want of all the conveniences of life, a table more than frugal, and a general appearance of privation." Is not Châteauvieux here unconsciously contrasting the condition of the metayers with that of the farmers of other countries, when the proper standard with which to compare 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.

But even this fact tells in favour of the metayer system; for in those parts of England in which either straw-plaiting or lace-making is carried on by the women and children of the labouring class, as in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the condition of the class is not better, but rather worse than elsewhere, the wages of agricultural labour being depressed by a full equivalent.

In spite of Châteauvieux's statement respecting the poverty of the metayers, his opinion, in respect to Italy at least, is given in favour of the system. "It occupiest and constantly interests the proprietors, which is never the case with great proprietors who lease their estates at fixed rents. It establishes a community of interests, and relations of kindness between the proprietors and the metayers; a kind

from which result great advantages in
the moral condition of society. The
proprietor, under this system, always
*Letters from Italy, p. 75.
+ Ibid. pp. 295-6.

« НазадПродовжити »