Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/51

24 keeping an account of the produce; a more equable enjoyment, since he received every year the same price of his farm; and a more certain enjoyment, because he never ran the risk of losing his advances, and the cattle and other effects with which the Farmers had stocked his farm became a pledge which assured him of payment. Besides, the lease being only for a few years, if his Farmer had given too low a price for his land he could augment it at the end of the lease.

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This last method is the most advantageous of all, but it presupposes a country already rich.

This method of putting out lands to farm is the most advantageous of all both to the Proprietors and to the Cultivators; it establishes itself everywhere where there are rich Cultivators, in a position to make the advances of the cultivation; and as rich Cultivators can provide the land with much more labour and manure, there results from it a prodigious increase in the produce and revenue of estates.

In Picardy, Normandy, the neighbourhood of Paris, and in most of the Provinces of the North of France, the lands are cultivated by Farmers. In the Provinces of the South they are cultivated by Métayers; the Provinces of the North of France are likewise incomparably richer and better cultivated than those of the South.