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feel that they are labouring for them- | lay in a sufficient stock of wood, find selves. The German peasants plenty of work in ascending into the work hard, but they have no actual mountainous woods, and bringing want. Every man has his house, his thence fuel. It would astonish the orchard, his roadside trees, commonly English common people to see the inso heavy with fruit, that he is obliged tense labour with which the Germans to prop and secure them all ways, or earn their firewood. In the depth of they would be torn to pieces. He has frost and snow, go into any of their his corn-plot, his plot for mangel- hills and woods, and there you find wurzel, for hemp, and so on. He is them hacking up stumps, cutting off his own master; and he, and every branches, and gathering, by all means member of his family, have the strongest which the official wood-police will motives to labour. You see the effect allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of of this in that unremitting diligence wood, which they convey home with which is beyond that of the whole the most incredible toil and patience."* world besides, and his economy, which After a description of their careful and is still greater. The Germans, indeed, laborious vineyard culture, he conare not so active and lively as the tinues,+ "In England, with its great English. You never see them in a quantity of grass lands, and its large bustle, or as though they meant to farms, so soon as the grain is in, and knock off a vast deal in a little time. the fields are shut up for hay grass, the They are, on the contrary, slow, country seems in a comparative state but for ever doing. They plod on from of rest and quiet. But here they are day to day, and year to year-the everywhere, and for ever, hoeing and most patient, untirable, and persever- mowing, planting and cutting, weeding of animals. The English peasant ing and gathering. They have a is so cut off from the idea of property, succession of crops like a marketthat he comes habitually to look upon gardener. They have their carrots, it as a thing from which he is warned poppies, hemp, flax, saintfoin, lucerne, by the laws of the large proprietors, rape, colewort, cabbage, rotabaga, and becomes, in consequence, spirit- black turnips, Swedish and white turless, purposeless. The German nips, teazles, Jerusalem artichokes, bauer, on the contrary, looks on the mangel-wurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, country as made for him and his field-beans and peas, vetches, Indian fellow-men. He feels himself a man; corn, buckwheat, madder for the manuhe has a stake in the country, as good facturer, potatoes, their great crop of as that of the bulk of his neighbours; tobacco, millet-all, or the greater part, no man can threaten him with ejec- under the family management, in their tion, or the workhouse, so long as he own family allotments. They have is active and economical. He walks, had these things first to sow, many of therefore, with a bold step; he looks them to transplant, to hoe, to weed, to you in the face with the air of a free clear off insects, to top; many of them man, but of a respectful one." to mow and gather in successive crops. They have their water-meadows, of which kind almost all their meadows are, to flood, to mow, and reflood; watercourses to reopen and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market with their green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep, calves, foals, most of them prisoners, and poultry to look after; their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the sum*Rural and Domestic Life of Germany + Tbid, D. 50,

Of their industry, the same writer thus further speaks: "There is not an hour of the year in which they do not find unceasing occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather permits them by any means to get out of doors, they are always finding something to do. They carry out their manure to their lands while the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy cleaning ditches and felling old fruit trees, or such as do not bear well. Such of them as are too poor to P. 44.

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mer heat, to prune, and thin out the leaves when they are too thick: and any one may imagine what a scene of incessant labour it is."

This interesting sketch, to the general truth of which any observant traveller in that highly cultivated and populous region can bear witness, accords with the more elaborate delineation by a distinguished inhabitant, Professor Rau, in his little treatise "On the Agriculture of the Palatinate." Dr. Rau bears testimony not only to the industry, but to the skill and intelligence of the peasantry; their judicious employment of manures, and excellent rotation of crops; the progressive improvement of their agriculture for generations past, and the spirit of further improvement which is still active. "The indefatigableness of the country people, who may be seen in activity all the day and all the year, and are never idle, because they make a good distribution of their labours, and find for every interval of time a suitable occupation, is as well known as their zeal is praiseworthy in turning to use every circumstance which presents itself, in seizing upon every useful novelty which offers, and even in searching out new and advantageous methods. One easily perceives that the peasant of this district has reflected much on his occupation: he can give reasons for his modes of proceeding, even if those reasons are not always tenable; he is as exact an observer of proportions as it is possible to be from memory, without the aid of figures: he attends to such general signs of the times as appear to augur him either benefit or harm."+

The experience of all other parts of Germany is similar. "In Saxony," says Mr. Kay, "it is a notorious fact, that during the last thirty years, and since the peasants became the proprietors of the land, there has been a rapid and continual improvement in the condition of the houses, in the manner of living, in the dress of the peasants,

* On the Agriculture of the Palatinate, and particularly in the territory of Heidelberg. By Dr. Karl Heinrich Rau. Heidelberg, 1830.

+ Rau, pp. 15, 16.

and particularly in the culture of the land. I have twice walked through that part of Saxony called Saxon Switzer land, in company with a German guide and on purpose to see the state of the villages and of the farming, and I can safely challenge contradiction when I affirm that there is no farming in all Europe superior to the laboriously careful cultivation of the valleys of that part of Saxony. There, as in the cantons of Berne, Vaud, and Zurich, and in the Rhine provinces, the farms are singularly flourishing. They are kept in beautiful condition, and are always neat and well managed. The ground is cleared as if it were a garden. No hedges or brushwood encumber it. Scarcely a rush or thistle or a bit of rank grass is to be seen. The meadows are well watered every spring with liquid manure, saved from the drainings of the farm yards. The grass is so free from weeds that the Saxon

meadows reminded me more of English lawns than of anything else I had seen. The peasants endeavour to outstrip one another in the quantity and quality of the produce, in the preparation of the ground, and in the general cultivation of their respective portions. All the little proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the greatest results; they diligently seek after improvements; they send their children to the agricultural schools in order to fit them to assist their fathers; and each proprietor soon adopts a new improvement introduced by any of his neighbours." If this be not overstated, it denotes a state of intelligence very different not only from that of English labourers but of English farmers.

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Mr. Kay's book, published in 1850, contains a mass of evidence gathered from observation and inquiries in many different parts of Europe, together with attestations from many distinguished writers, to the beneficial effects of pea

*The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe; showing the Results of the Primary Schools, and of the division of Landed Property in Foreign Countries. By Joseph Kay, Esq., M.A. Barrister-at-Law, and late Travelling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge. Vol. i. pp. 138-40.

of agriculture, in one of his later works (Principles of Rational Agriculture) expresses his decided conviction, that the net produce of land is greater when farmed by small proprietors than when farmed by great proprietors or their tenants. . . . This opinion of Thaer is all the more remarkable, as, during the early part of his life, he was very strongly in favour of the English systen of great estates and great farms."

Mr. Kay adds, from his own observation, "The peasant farming of Prussia, Saxony, Holland, and Switzerland is the most perfect and economical farm ing I have ever witnessed in any country.'

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sant properties. Among the testimonies | German writer on the different systems which he cites respecting their effect on agriculture, I select the following. "Reichensperger, himself an inhabitant of that part of Prussia where the land is the most subdivided, has published a long and very elaborate work to show the admirable consequences of a system of freeholds in land. He expresses a very decided opinion that not only are the gross products of any given number of acres held and cultivated by small or peasant proprietors, greater than the gross products of an equal number of acres held by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by tenant farmers, but that the net products of the former, after deducting all the expenses of cultivation, are also greater than the net products of the latter. . . . He mentions one fact which seems to prove that the fertility of the land in countries where the properties are small, must be rapidly increasing. He says that the price of the land which is divided into small properties in the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. He and Professor Rau both say that this rise in the price of the small estates would have ruined the more recent purchasers, unless the productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually becoming more and more prosperous notwithstanding the increasing prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent justness, that this would seem to show that not only the gross profits of the small estates, but the net profits also, have been gradually increasing, and that the net profits per acre, of land, when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed by a great proprietor. He says, with seeming truth, that the increasing price of land in the small estates cannot be the mere effect of competition, or it would have diminished the profits and the prosperity of the small proprietors, and that this result has not followed the rise.

"Albrecht Thaer, another celebrated

§ 5. But the most decisive example in opposition to the English prejudice against cultivation by peasant proprietors, is the case of Belgium. The soil is originally one of the worst in Europe. "The provinces," says Mr. M'Culloch,† "of West and East Flanders, and Hainault, form a farstretching plain, of which the luxuriant vegetation indicates the indefatigable care and labour bestowed upon its cultivation; for the natural soil consists almost wholly of barren sand, and its great fertility is entirely the result of very skilful management and judicious application of various manures." There exists a carefully prepared and compre hensive treatise on Flemish Husbandry, in the Farmer's Series of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The writer observes, that the Flemish agriculturists "seem to want nothing but a space to work upon: whatever be the quality or texture of the soil, in time they will make it produce some thing. The sand in the Campine can be compared to nothing but the sands on the sea-shore, which they probably were originally. It is highly interesting to follow step by step the progress of improvement. Here you see a cottage and rude cow-shed erected on a spot of the most unpromising aspect. The loose white sand blown into irre

*Kay, i. 116-8.

t Geographical Dictionary, art. "Belgium," Pp. 11-14

among modern discoveries: and even now the superiority of their agriculture, as a whole, to that of England, is admitted by competent judges. "The cultivation of a poor light soil, or a moderate soil," says the writer last quoted,* "is generally superior in Flanders to that of the most improved farms of the same kind in Britain. We surpass the Flemish farmer greatly in capital, in varied implements of tillage, in the choice and breeding of cattle and sheep," (though, according to the same authority,+ they are much "before us in the feeding of their cows,") "and the British farmer is in general a man of superior education to the Flemish peasant. But in the minute attention to the qualities of the soil, in the management and application of manures of different kinds, in the judicious succession of crops, and especially in the economy of land, so that every part of it shall be in a constant state of production, we have still something to learn from the Flemings," and not from an instructed and enterprising Fleming here and there, but from the general practice.

gular mounds is only kept together by the roots of the heath: a small spot only is levelled and surrounded by a ditch part of this is covered with young broom, part is planted with potatoes, and perhaps a small patch of diminutive clover may show itself:" but manures, both solid and liquid, are collecting, "and this is the nucleus from which, in a few years, a little farm will spread around. If there is no manure at hand, the only thing that can be sown, on pure sand, at first, is broom: this grows in the most barren soils; in three years it is fit to cut, and produces some return in fagots for the bakers and brickmakers. The leaves which have fallen have somewhat enriched the soil, and the fibres of the roots have given a certain degree of compactness. It may now be ploughed and sown with buckwheat, or even with rye without manure. By the time this is reaped, some manure may have been collected, and a regular course of cropping may begin. As soon as clover and potatoes enable the farmer to keep cows and make manure, the improvement goes on rapidly; in a few years the soil undergoes a complete change: it be- Much of the most highly cultivated comes mellow and retentive of moisture, part of the country consists of peasant and enriched by the vegetable matter properties, managed by the proprietors, afforded by the decomposition of the always either wholly or partly by spade roots of clover and other plants. industry. "When the land is cultiAfter the land has been gradually vated entirely by the spade, and no brought into a good state, and is culti-horses are kept, a cow is kept for every vated in a regular manner, there appears much less difference between the soils which have been originally good, and those which have been made so by labour and industry. At least the crops in both appear more nearly alike at harvest, than is the case in soils of different qualities in other countries. This is a great proof of the excellency of the Flemish system; for it shows that the land is in a constant state of improvement, and that the deficiency of the soil is compensated by greater attention to tillage and manuring, especially the latter."

The people who labour thus intensely, because labouring for themselves, have practised for centuries those principles of rotation of crops and economy of manures, which in England are counted

three acres of land, and entirely fed on
artificial grasses and roots. This mode
of cultivation is principally adopted in
the Waes district, where properties are
very small. All the labour is done by
the different members of the family;"
children soon beginning "to assist in
various minute operations, according to
their age and strength, such as weed-
ing, hoeing, feeding the cows.
If they
can raise rye and wheat enough to
make their bread, and potatoes, tur-
nips, carrots, and clover, for the cows,
they do well; and the produce of the
sale of their rape-seed, their flax, their
hemp, and their butter, after deducting
the expense of manure purchased, which
* Flemish Husbandry, p. 3.
+ Ibid. p. 13.

Ibid., pp. 73 et seq.

:

of his life." But the indefatigable in dustry by which he accomplishes this, and of which so large a portion is expended not in the mere cultivation, but in the improvement, for a distant return, of the soil itself has that industry no connexion with not paying rent? Could it exist, without presupposing, at least, a virtually permanent tenure?

As to their mode of living, "the Flemish farmers and labourers live much more economically than the same class in England: they seldom eat meat, except on Sundays and in harvest: buttermilk and potatoes with brown bread is their daily food." It is on this kind of evidence that English travellers, as they hurry through Europe, pronounce the peasantry of every Continental country poor and miserable, its agricultural and social system a failure, and the English the only régime under which labourers are well off. It is, truly enough, the only régime under which labourers, whether well off or not, never attempt to be better. So little are English labourers accustomed to consider it possible that a labourer should not spend all he earns, that they habitually mistake the signs of economy for those of poverty. Observe the true interpretation of the phenomena.

is always considerable, gives them a very good profit. Suppose the whole extent of the land to be six acres, which is not an uncommon occupation, and which one man can manage;" then (after describing the cultivation), "if a man with his wife and three young children are considered as equal to three and a half grown up men, the family will require thirty-nine bushels of grain, forty-nine bushels of potatoes, a fat hog, and the butter and milk of one cow an acre and a half of land will produce the grain and potatoes, and allow some corn to finish the fattening of the hog, which has the extra buttermilk another acre in clover, carrots, and potatoes, together with the stubble turnips, will more than feed the cow; consequently two and a half acres of land is sufficient to feed this family, and the produce of the other three and a half may be sold to pay the rent or the interest of purchase-money, wear and tear of implements, extra manure, and clothes for the family. But these acres are the most profitable on the farm, for the hemp, flax, and colza are included; and by having another acre in clover and roots, a second cow can be kept, and its produce sold. We have, therefore, a solution of the problem, how a family can live and thrive on six acres of moderate land." After showing by calculation that this extent of land can be cultivated in the most perfect manner by the family without any aid from hired labour, the writer continues, "In a farm of ten acres entirely cultivated by the spade, the addition of a man and a woman to the members of the family will render all the operations more easy; and with a horse and cart to carry out the manure, and bring home the produce, and occasionally draw the harrows, fifteen acres may be very well cultivated. . . . Thus it will be seen," (this is the result of some pages of details and calculations,*) With facts like these, known and "that by spade husbandry, an industri- accessible, it is not a little surprising ous man with a small capital, occupying to find the case of Flanders referred to only fifteen acres of good light land, not in recommendation of peasant promay not only live and bring up a fa-perties, but as a warning against them; mily, paying a good rent, but may accumulate a considerable sum in the course

• Flemish Husbandry, p. 81.

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Accordingly they are gradually acquiring capital, and their great ambition is to have land of their own. They eagerly seize every opportunity of purchasing a small farm, and the price is so raised by competition, that land pays little more than two per cent interest for the purchase money. Large properties gradually disappear, and are divided into small portions, which sell at a high rate. But the wealth and industry of the population is continually increasing, being rather diffused through the masses than accumulated in individuals."

on no better ground than a presumptive excess of population, inferred from the distress which existed among the pea

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