Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/279

 LAND 263 cultivators, and brought them to look on their dependants as little more than beasts of burden, valuable only for the profit that might be made of them. The feeling engendered on the other side broke out in the Revolution. The country estates, from which the emigres had fled, were sold in portions, and in many cases bought in fee simple for a trifle by the former tenants of the farms. The law of equal division among children continued the process of sub division. It proceeds in an augmenting ratio, and though a few large properties still subsist, the bulk of the land in France is now held in small properties. It is not, however, universally cultivated by the owner. There is a large proportion of tenants, holding generally under leases not exceeding nine years; and there is no doubt that the shortness of the term impairs production. Another evil is the mercellement caused by the law of compulsory division on inheritance, but this must not be understood as objected to chiefly on the ground of the small extent of ground held by each proprietor. The real disadvantage complained of by French writers on agriculture is that through successive family divisions each man s total property consists of a number of small plots scattered up and down ; and the remedy desired is not an interference with the present law of succession, but only an enactment to facilitate exchange and consolidation of plots, so as to give to each cultivator his whole property within one boundary. In France there are now about 2,000,000 properties under 12 acres, and 1,000,000 between 12 and 25 acres, while there are only 150,000 above 100 acres. Of the whole population there are 1,750,000 who cultivate their own land with their own hands, and who are not tenants, 850,000 who cultivate as tenants, and only 57,000 who cultivate by aid of a foreman or steward. Of farm labourers there are only 870,000. Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and great portions of Italy are similarly divided into small holdings cultivated in general by the owner and his family. Modem In Germany, although feudalism was fully developed as Ger- a legal system and as the foundation of the aristocracy, it many. jj^ no j. succeec l f n extirpating entirely the ancient rights of the people. A large portion of the land was held always as peasant properties, entirely free from any dues of service. Among these, in certain districts, there survived an organization essentially identical with that described by Tacitus. The village had its domain or mark, subdivided into the arable, the pasture, and the forest. In some cases the first of these was partitioned into individual and permanent properties, but in all the pasture and forest remained the joint property of the village. Instances, however, were not wanting even in our own days where the arable portion was subject to annual or less frequent repartition, and to apportionment by lot to each cultivator for the time which custom ordained. But even where this usage did not prevail, it was incumbent on all the villagers (as in Russia) to cultivate their several portions of the arable mark with the same crops and at the same seasons, for as soon as the crops were removed the whole community enjoyed a right of pasturage on the stubble. The rotation was, therefore, of the simplest, consisting in general of a triennial succession of wheat or rye as winter-sown grain, followed by oats and barley as spring-sown crop, and then fallow. It differed for the worse from that of the ancient Germans in that the circumscribed limits of each village domain made it now impossible to allow to the whole arable mark a period of rest under pasturage. But intermixed everywhere with the relics of the free village institutions the tree of feudalism struck its roots, and carried with it a species of serfage. Xone who were not noble could as a rule purchase land. On the lands of the nobles the tenants were bound to give to their lord a portion of their time in gratuitous labour. They held, however, their farms under conditions of permanency, subject to this tax of labour, and to a variety of small and irregular exactions of the nature of rent. On this state of things in Prussia the Stein and Hardenberg reforms took effect. They gave to every peasant the same power as the noble enjoyed to become a landowner. Between the nobles and their tenants they partitioned the land in absolute property, the landlord retaining one-third, the tenant receiving two-thirds. Common rights, and rents, were made purchaseable by the owner of the soil at twenty years purchase of their estimated value. And laws of 1821 and 1850 sanctioned the division of common lands among all who previously had an interest in them. To aid the peasantry in purchasing up the dues still payable to their former landlords, land credit banks were introduced in 1850. These institutions advanced to the peasanb owner the sum necessary for the purchase of the old rights over his property, commuted as they had already been to a definite sum. The advance thus made constituted a first charge on the land, and was represented by debenture bonds for small amounts. The owner might pay to their credit, at whatever time and in whatever sums he was able, instalments towards their redemption, but he was bound to redeem them fully within fifty years. These reforms have converted large parts of Germany into the property of small owners residing on and tilling their own land, free from obligation to any other person. There do not seem to be data for judging of the economic result, because statistics do not distinguish between the produce of small properties and that of the large properties intermixed with them. But the most careful observers agree that the social results are similar in Germany to what they are elsewhere. The peasants, attached to their holdings, form the most stable element in the common wealth. Their love of the land shows itself in the high prices given for it, and, as we shall see elsewhere, in the tendency to borrow in order to purchase more. It can at least be said that, whatever be the hardships of their lot, they would not exchange it for any other. The tenure of land in Great Britain may be traced with Great sufficient accuracy from the character of the elements of Britain, which the nation is composed. Under the Celtic tribes there can be no doubt that the ideas which we know prevailed among the ancient Irish and among the Scottish clans down to modern times formed the universal rule. The land was the possession of the clan ; the chief was the leader but not the owner. The temporary and partial occupation by the Romans may have introduced the notion of absolute private property, and we may assume that it was at least asserted by such of the conquerors as cared to cultivate estates taken from the barbarians. But the with drawal of the Romans, followed by the Saxon invasion, must have re-established the principle of common village ownership which formed the basis of both Celtic and German tenure. In the later Saxon period, however, there is no doubt that private ownership became gradually more extended. Then the feudal idea began to make progress in England, as it did at the same period on the Continent. It received an immense impulse from the Xorman Conquest, William may not have claimed the whole land of England as his own, but the vast tracts which fell into his hands through confiscation of rights of so-called rebels were granted by him in the character of lord to such of the Saxons as he could trust, and to those of his own followers whom he desired to reward. When law began to form a system, the early Norman lawyers took this principle as the basis of their system. Thenceforth it became the un disputed maxim of English law, as well as of Scottish (with the exception of some isolated remains of &quot;udal&quot;