第21章 Chapter 3(8)

The most industrious provinces of France are, at this time, experiencing the unlooked - for effects of dividing property among its true cultivators; we mean the distribution of great farms among the contiguous peasantry, by a great number or particular contacts. A large proprietor now rarely gives his farm to be cultivated by a single person; he finds it infinitely more advantageous, at present, to share his domain among a number of neighbouring peasants, each of whom takes as much land as is requisite to occupy him all the year. No doubt, the peasant will generally sacrifice the land which he farms, to that which is his property; but both those portions are cultivated with the ardour which a direct interest excites in the labourer and with the intelligence which is developed in him, now that his lord can no longer oppress him. The agricultural classes are as happy as the political circumstances of a country, loved with enthusiasm, permit them to be.

To conclude our review of the systems, by which territorial wealth is incessantly renewed, we ought yet to bestow a moment of attention on the system of emphyteuses or perpetual farms, the most suitable of all when government has grants of land to make.

In other systems of cultivation, the agriculturist acquires all the fruit of his annual advances, but he can never be sure of profiting from those irredeemable advances by which a perpetual value is added to land, from drainings, plantations, and breaking up of the soil. Proprietors, of themselves, are seldom enabled to make such advances. If they sell the land, the purchaser, in order to acquire it, must surrender that very capital, with which he might have made those improvements. The lease of emphyteusis or plantation, which is the proper meaning of the word, was thus a very useful invention, as by it the cultivator engaged to break up a desert, on condition of acquiring the dominium utile of it for ever, whilst the proprietor reserved for himself an invariable rent to represent the dominium directum. No expedient could more happily combine, in the same individual, affection for property, with zeal for cultivation; or more usefully employ, in improving land, the capital destined to break it up. Although this kind of lease is known in England under the name of freehold for many lives; and though it is even of great importance in this kingdom, as the right of voting in county elections depends upon it, its beneficial influence has chiefly been experienced in Italy, where it is named livello. In the latter country, it has restored to the most brilliant state of cultivation whole provinces, which had been allowed to run waste. It cannot, however, become a universal mode of cultivation, because it deprives the direct proprietor of all the enjoyment of property, exposing him to all the inconveniences, with none of the advantages, in the condition of the capitalist; and because the father of a family can never be looked upon as prudent or economical, when he thus alienates his property for ever, without at least retaining the disposal of the price to be received in exchange for it.

For re-producing territorial wealth, it is sufficient, in general, that the use of the ground be transmitted to the industrious man, who may turn it to advantage, whilst the property of it continues with the rich man, who has no longer the same incitements or the same fitness for labour, and who thinks only of enjoyment. The national interest, however. sometimes also requires that property itself shall pass into hands likely to make a better use of it. It is not for themselves alone that the rich elicit the fruits of the earth; it is for the whole nation; and if, by a derangement in their fortune, they suspend the productive power of the country, it concerns the whole nation to put their property under different managers. Personal interest is, indeed, sufficient to bring about this transmission, provided the law offers no obstacle. When a soldier comes to inherit a machine for making stockings, he does not keep it long; in his hands, the machine is useless for himself and the nation; in the hands of a stocking-maker it would be productive, both for the nation and the individual. Both feel this; and a bargain is soon struck. The soldier receives money, which he well knows how to employ; the stocking-maker receives possession of his frame, and production recommences. Most of our European laws respecting immovable property, are like a law made to hinder the soldier from parting with the frame, of whose use he is ignorant.

The value of land cannot be unfolded, except by employing a capital sufficient to procure the accumulation of that labour which improves it. Hence, it is essential to the very existence of a nation that its land be always in the hands of those who can devote capital to its cultivation. If it were not in any case allowed to sell a workman's implement, it would not, certainly, at least, be forbidden to make new ones for the use of new workmen; but new lands cannot be made, and so often as the law prevents the alienation of an estate by one that cannot use it, so often does it suspend the most essential of all productions.