Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/50

Rh workmen at fixed wages would be likely to do. The most common division has been that into two equal parts, whereof one belonged to the Peasant and the other to the Proprietor. It is this that has given rise to the name of Métayer (medietarius) or Peasant with equal share. In the arrangements of this kind which are to be found in the greater part of France, the Proprietor makes all the advances of the cultivation; that is to say, he furnishes at his own expense the labouring cattle, the ploughs and other instruments of husbandry, the seed and the maintenance of the Peasant and his family from the moment when the latter enters on the métairie until the first harvest.

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Fifth method: farming or the letting-out of land.

Intelligent and rich Cultivators, who suspected to what a point an active and well-directed cultivation, in which neither labour nor expense should be spared, would carry the fruitfulness of the land, judged with reason that they would gain more if the Proprietor consented to give up to them, for a certain number of years, the whole of every harvest, on condition of their paying him annually a fixed revenue and making all the advances of the cultivation. Hereby they would make sure that the increase of production obtained by their outlay and labour would belong entirely to themselves. The Proprietor, on his side, gained thereby a more tranquil enjoyment of his revenue, since he was relieved of the care of making the advances and of