Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 1.djvu/398

376 arguments that might be used against it. The hard plea of necessity can alone be urged in its favour; the poverty of the farmers being so great, that the landlord must stock the farm, or it could not be stocked at all: this is a most cruel burden to a proprietor, who is thus obliged to run much of the hazard of farming in the most dangerous of all methods, that of trusting his property absolutely in the hands of people who are generally ignorant, many careless, and some undoubtedly wicked.... In this most miserable of all the modes of letting land, the defrauded landlord receives a contemptible rent; the farmer is in the lowest state of poverty; the land is miserably cultivated; and the nation suffers as severely as the parties themselves. ... Wherever this system prevails, it may be taken for granted that a useless and miserable population is found. ... Wherever the country (that I saw) is poor and unwatered, in the Milanese, it is in the hands of metayers: they are almost always in debt to their landlord for seed or food, and "their condition is more wretched than that of a day labourer.... There are but few districts" (in Italy) "where lands are let to the occupying tenant at a money-rent; but wherever it is found, their crops are greater; a clear proof of the imbecility of the metaying system." "Wherever it" (the metayer system) "has been adopted," says Mr. M'Culloch, "it has put a stop to all improvement, and has reduced the cultivators to the most abject poverty." Mr. Jones shares the common opinion, and quotes Turgot and Destutt-Tracy in support of it. The impression, however, of all these writers (notwithstanding Arthur Young's occasional references to Italy) seems to be chiefly derived from France, and France before the