METAYAGE SYSTEM. The cultivation of land for a pro prietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce. The system has never existed in England and has no English name, but in certain provinces of Italy and France it was once almost universal, and is still very common. It is also practised in the United States, in Portugal, in Greece, and in the countries border ing on the Danube. In Italy and France, respectively, it is called mezzeria and metayage, or halving—the halving, that is, of the produce of the soil between landowner and landholder. These expressions merely signify that the produce is divisible in cer tain definite proportions, which must obviously vary with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances. Sometimes the landlord supplies all the stock, and sometimes only part—the cattle and seed perhaps, while the farmer provides the imple ments; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves—taxes too being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both.
English writers were unanimous, until J. S. Mill adopted a different tone, in condemning the metayer system. They judged it by France where under the ancien regime all direct taxes were paid by the metayer, the noble landowner being exempt, which taxes, being assessed according to the visible produce of the soil, operated as penalties upon all endeavours to increase output.
Also, there was no fixity of tenure without which metayage can not prosper. French metayers in Arthur Young's time were "re movable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of their landlords," and so in general they are still. Yet even in France, although metayage and extreme rural poverty usually coincide, there are provinces where the contrary is the fact, as it is also in Italy. Indeed, Lombardy is a triumphant vin dication of metayage in the abstract. The contrasts may be ex plained. Metayage, to be a success, must be a genuine partner ship, one in which there is no sleeping partner, but in the affairs of which the landlord, as well as the tenant, takes an active part.
In France there is also a system termed metayage par groupes, which consists in letting a considerable farm, not to one metayer, but to an association of several, who work together for the general good, under the supervision either of the landlord himself, or of his bailiff. This arrangement avoids the difficulty of finding tenants possessed of capital enough for any but very small farms.
See further LAND TENURE and the section Agriculture in the articles FRANCE, GREECE, ITALY, etc. ; and consult J. Cruveilhier, Etude sur le metayage (Paris, 1894).