第23章 Chapter 3(10)

And first, it were always for the national advantage, and favourable to the increase of its production, that the proprietor, whenever his fortune is embarrassed, should sell his property, instead of borrowing on it; yet, on the contrary, facilities have been held out to him for borrowing, rather than for sale. A particular system of law has been created for territorial debts; marked differences have been established between real and personal property; the rank of creditors on land has been regulated according to their date, whilst an absolute equality prevails among creditors of all dates, who claim only on movable property. And thus thousands of law-suits have been created, interminable difficulties have been started, and the time is almost come when half the lands of Europe are possessed by a people who far from possessing the power to dispose of a capital that might increase their productiveness, on the contrary, are debtors by a pretty large capital, which they cannot extract from those funds. Hence those embarrassed proprietors have incessantly had recourse to ruinous expedients not to put money on their lands, but to take it off; to borrow of their farmers, to diminish the funds of cultivation, to sell their woods, and deteriorate their estates. If the law had given no preference to territorial creditors; if, on the other hand it had given as much facility to a creditor for selling an immovable property, as for making seizure of a movable one; especially, if, in protecting personal liberty, sacrificed too slightly, it had permitted lands to be sold as often as it now permits the debtor to be put in prison - most old debts would be extinguished, and those immovable possessions, which ought to support the nation, would be in the hands of such as could force them, by capital and labour, to furnish the means of subsistence.

But the props lent to the pride of family by entails, fideicommissa, primogenitures, and the laws invented to hinder families in a ruinous condition from selling their property, have still further impeded the development of agriculture and industry. The legislator aimed at fixing fortune in great families: he has fixed beggary and want in them. On pretext of securing the patrimony of children, he has forbidden the heir of entail to sell or borrow with a sufficient security to his creditors; but he could not hinder him from going to ruin, and overwhelming himself with clamorous debts. In that case, even the care of his honour, the feeling of justice, and his own security, oblige him to employ all the resources of his mind, all his industry in destroying his patrimony, that he may obtain the disposal of what law has reserved to his heir. Whatever produce he can detach from the ground without replacing it, whatever advance he can dispense with laying out, is, in his eyes, just so much profit; and Europe has come to see the proprietors of noble estates, almost everywhere, the enemies of their property. At the same time, if the legislator's object was the preservation of families, he has failed in this object; because entails condemn all the sons of a rich family to idleness; the elder out of pride, the younger out of inability. The system has proscribed all from industry, the sole mean of increasing property; whilst it leaves them subject to all human chances, which never cease to attack whatever is ancient, and which must always, in the end, destroy whatever opulence is not renewed.