CH. V.

PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP.

141

the law of equal inheritance, which has become a part of our national character, renders the Frenchman still more prudent from the perpetual anxiety which he feels about the future of his family. Now, if you bear in mind that all French inheritance, real or personal estate, is constantly divided in equal proportions amongst the children, that they have no India or Australia to go to, and that emigration is generally considered as a kind of penalty or desperate remedy for great faults, you will at once understand the cause of the two facts which separate most deeply the French family from the British one, to wit, the small number of children, and our peculiar way of contracting marriages. On the small number of children, I won't dwell here; but a curious fact is, that the apprehension about bringing up children keeps pace among us with the acquisition and increase of property. Our peasant, as a landowner, does not like to see its lot dwindling to nothing after him, and dreads a large family, and the same feeling pervades all classes.'

But how is it that the French do not colonise? That question has been generally answered by the assertion. that their country is so beautiful and so fertile that the inhabitants have no desire to leave it. It cannot be said, however, that emigrants leave their native soil on account of the want of these qualities, but rather either because they find life too hard for them or they are assured it will be much easier in the land to which they are going. Now, while it is certainly true that the greater proportion of French agriculturalists have prospered well and regularly, there are considerable numbers of them who, possessing only small patches of land, cannot gain a sufficient livelihood thereby; and, indeed, many are too apt to lead a life of great poverty upon their patch of patrimonial estate. Thus there are nume

rous instances of extraordinary morcellement which are

truly regarded as deplorable. The individual owners are not situated advantageously to engage in industrial occupation of a remunerative kind. There can be little doubt that it would be better for those individuals, for the land, and for the community, that they should remove to positions where their toil would be more successful. But the necessity of employing a notary, and the high rate and uncertainty of the cost of sale and transfer of their land virtually often prohibits such removal. It appears that the whole expenses of such a process, including registration fees, seldom fall below 10 per cent. of the whole value, and they are frequently considerably more. In Norway and Sweden, upon the other hand, the exchange of landed property is performed without judicial aid, is extremely simple, and its costs are strictly defined and very low; namely, little above 1 per cent. upon the whole value. The result is that the small proprietors, and sometimes whole groups of them, emigrate freely, furnishing themselves, however, with prudent forethought, with every possible requisite for comfortable subsistence in the land of their choice,-very differently from the Irish and some of the English, who possess often, unfortunately, little more than what they stand in.

Again, in Belgium, from which country, though most densely populated, there is extremely little emigration, the land is extremely divided, and the charges and taxes upon land transfer compare with those of France; whereas in Bavaria, the Grand-Duchy of Hesse, SaxeCoburg Gotha, and other German States, in and from all of which there is an appreciable movement of population, and where the soil is held in larger breadths than in Belgium, the costs of transfer are very small, and the process is simple and easy.

Indeed, it must be apparent that heavy charges upon the transfer and sale of land must restrain the population

CH. V.

EMIGRATION.

143

from either migrating to the industrial centres of their own country, or from emigrating to another, and thus when coupled, as it is in France, with a law of inheritance enforcing an equal division of real estate among the children, the tendency towards a minute division of the soil, and a separation of properties into small fragments divided from each other, is inevitable. While the law of inheritance in France compels division, the law of transfer virtually forbids the requisite consolidation of landed properties.

It is interesting to compare the results of these laws in France with the results of the corresponding laws in Great Britain. While in the former country the people own the soil, and derive their subsistence in a great degree directly from it, scarcely increasing in number or emigrating at all; in the latter, the people are virtually precluded from ownership, and, therefore, having no interest in the soil, they migrate, emigrate, and multiply freely. The extraordinary influence which the existence. of such laws exercises is, therefore, easily discerned ; indeed, it may be said they are competent to cause the reduction or the augmentation of the numbers of a particular nationality; so that while the individuals of one country are seldom to be met with outside of it, those of another extend over the whole world, often being driven from their native shores in utter poverty; the influence in France and Belgium being towards the formation of opinions and habits opposed to emigration, while in other countries, particularly in the United Kingdom, such tendency is not felt or even understood.

We shall now turn to Prussia. In that country, the proportion of the inhabitants engaged in agriculture is 45 per cent., being somewhat less than it is in France, the difference being amply accounted for by the superior

stores of mineral wealth which the former enjoys, which enable manufacturers to work at greater advantage. The greater part of Prussia is now held by small proprietors. In 1859 there were upwards of 600,000 small holdings, averaging rather more than six acres each, and 344,000 averaging ten times that area, which, when added together, equalled in extent the amount of land held by the larger class of proprietors.1

There is no sort of restriction over the disposal of four-fifths of the land; the remainder, however, equalling about fifteen and a half millions of acres, is in a measure tied up, so that its free exchange is prevented. The steps in the progress of this change in the condition of the agricultural classes of Prussia, as well as those of other European countries, have characterised the nature of the revolution effected. We have already adverted to the fact that the statesmen of Europe were alarmed and spurred into action by the outbreak of the first French Revolution. Hence, the ample legislation, affecting agricultural interests and the agricultural population, undertaken shortly after that period. But the absence of the prospect of foreign danger, or of internal disquietude, which followed the period of general war and political perturbation at the beginning of the century, allowed the political mind to reassure itself and, as it were, to go asleep, so that in Prussia the agricultural legislation took a retrograde direction, and the operation of the previous enactments was much restricted. The French revolution of 1848, however, again awoke slumbering statesmanship; and not only were the former regulations confirmed, but new ones of a more revolutionary character were set in motion. The instinct of self-preservation was, undoubtedly, the acting agent, throughout the most part of

1 Report on the Tenure of Land in Prussia, by Mr. Harriss-Gastrell, dated Oct. 27, 1869.

CH. V.

AGRICULTURE IN PRUSSIA.

145

Europe, in promoting in the minds of statesmen, and the upper classes generally, those movements towards legislation in favour of the labouring agricultural classes, which we have already seen to have been so generally instituted since the commencement of the century. The first French Revolution manifested the tremendous power which lay unsuspected in classes that had hitherto been despised and downtrodden; and after the terrific punishment it had dealt upon the upper classes of Franceparticularly upon the old nobility, who were at that time. permanently expatriated—there could be no mistaking the direction and force of the lesson which was inculcated for all the future.

The progress in agriculture, which has taken place in Prussia since the emancipation of the serfs, is becoming ore and more decided. It is assisted in the industrial

6

tions of the kingdom, and particularly in Silesia, by ne demand for a greater amount of produce, by a population increasing in wealth more rapidly than it is in numbers. The Report of the Agricultural Board for 1868 states that agriculture has been improving in Prussia, and the advantages of deep ploughing, irrigation, drainage, improved implements, introduction of high-bred cattle, scientific feeding and rearing of cattle, more careful attention to manures, and use of artificial manures, are receiving more and more recognition by small as well as large proprietors; and in some provinces, such as Silesia, Saxony, and Pomerania, more than in others.' The parts of the kingdom where the greatest strides have been made in the improvement of agriculture are also those where the greatest strides have been made in industrial progress; the one reacts beneficially upon the other, and many who would have been competing by hard agricultural labour on their little properties with their neighbours in the sale of their marketable produce, find a certain relief and a

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