Under this system, the peasant has an interest in the property, as if it were his own ; without the anxieties of wealth; he finds in his farm every enjoyment, with which na ture's liberality rewards the labour of man. His industry, his economy, the development of his understanding, regu larly increase his little stock. In good years, he enjoys a kind of opulence ; he is not entirely excluded from the feast of nature which he prepares; his labour is directed according to the dictates of his own prudence, and he plants that his children may gather the fruit. The high state of culture to be found in the finest parts of Italy, above all of Tuscany, where the lands are generally managed in this way ; the accumulation of an immense capital upon the soil ; the invention of many judicious rotations, and industrious processes, which an intelligent, observing spirit alone could have deduced from the opera tions of nature ; the collection of a numerous population, upon a space very limited and naturally barren, shows plainly enough that this mode of cultivation is as profit able to the land itself as to the peasant, and that, if it imparts most happiness to the lower class who live by the labour of their hands, it also draws from the ground the most abundant produce, and scatters it with most profusion among men.
But whenever a country arrives at complete civilization, whenever the property and safety of individuals are suffi ciently protected, the usual population increases beyond what husbandry can employ ; the extent of land is limited, the population is not so. A great number of families are brought up on one farm, and sent away by some accidental cause ; penury compels them to offer their services to some proprietor, for a recompence smaller than what is given to such as arc actually employed. Labourers outbid each other, and at length go so far as to content them selves with the most niggardly subsistence, with a portion which is barely sufficient in good years, and which in bad years leaves them a prey to famine. This foolish species of competition has reduced the peasantry, on the coast of Genoa, in the republic of Lucca, in several provinces of the kingdom of Naples, to content themselves with a third of the crop, in place of a half. In a magnificent country, which nature has enriched with all her gifts ; which art has adorned with all its luxury ; which annually gives forth a most abundant harvest—the numerous class that pro duce the fruits of the ground never taste the corn which is reaped, or the wine which is pressed, by their labour, and struggle continually with famine. The same misfortune would probably have happened to the people of Tuscany, if public opinion had not guarded the farmer; but there no proprietor dares to impose terms unusual in the country ; and when he changes one metayer for another, he changes no article of the primitive contract. So soon, however, as public opinion becomes necessary for the maintenance of public prosperity, it ought, in strict propriety, to be sanc tioned by law. Whenever vacant lands are no longer to be found, proprietors of the soil come to exercise a kind.
of monopoly against the rest of the nation ; and wherever monopoly exists, the legislature ought to interpose, lest they who enjoy may also abuseqt.
Cultivation by corvees was very far from being as happy an invention. No doubt it gave to the peasantry a kind of property, an interest in life ; but it reduced them to see their domestic economy disturbed every moment, by the vexatious demands of a landlord or his stewards. The peasant could not perform the operations of his husbandry at the day fixed upon ; the landlord's work must always be done before his own ; the rainy days constantly fell to the share of the weaker party. Under this system, the labourer performs every service for his master with repugnance, without care for its success, without affection, and without reward. In the landlord's fields, he works as badly as lie can without incurring punishment. The steward, on the other hand, declares it absolutely necessary that corporal penalties be employed ; and the infliction of them is aban doned to his own discretion. Servitude of the soil has nominally been abolished in several countries, which have adopted the system of cultivation by corvecs; but so long as this general system of agriculture is 14 force, there can not be any liberty for the peasant. And although the abolition of servitude has given vassals a property and rights, which the landlord did not formerly acknowledge, it has hardly at all bettered their conditions. They are as constantly thwarted and disturbed in their own operations as before ; they work quite as ill during the landlord's days ; they are quite as miserable within their huts ; and the master, who had been flattered with hopes that tho abolition of slavery would increase his revenue, has deriv ed no advantage from it. On the contrary, he is ever an object of hatred and distrust to his vassals ; and social order, threatened so incessantly, cannot be maintained ex cept by violent means.
The ground of the metayer's contract is every way the same, as that of a contract with the cultivator by cot vecs. The landlord in Hungary, as in Italy, has given up his land to the peasant, on condition of receiving half its fruits in return. In both countries, the other half has been reckoned sufficient for supporting the cultivator, and repaying his advances. A single error in political economy has render ed what is highly advantageous for one of these countries disastrous for the other. The Hungarian has not inspired the labourer with any interest in his own industry ; by shar ing the land and the days of the week, he has made an enemy of the man, who should have been his coadjutor. The labour is performed without zeal or intelligence ; the master's share, inferior to what it would have been accord ing to the other system, is collected with fear ; the peasant's share is so reduced, that he lives in constant penury ; and some of the most fertile countries in the world have already been for ages doomed to this state of wretchedness and oppression.