'hilst, in England, the peasantry are hastening to de struction, their condition is improving in France ; they are gathering strength, and without abandoning manual labour, they enjoy a kind of affluence; they unfold their minds, and adopt, though slowly, the discoveries of science. But in France, the peasants are mostly proprie tors number of those who cultivate their own lands prodigiously increased in the revolution; and to this cause must be attributed the rapid progress which agriculture is making in that country, in spite of a long war and heavy contributions. Perhaps England might partly obtain a similar advantage, if these vast commons were shared among her cottagers, to whom the charm of property would thus be restored.
The most industrious provinces of France are, at this time, experiencing the unlooked-for effects of dividing• property among its true cultivators ; we mean the distri bution of great farms among the contiguous peasantry, by a great number of particular contracts. A large proprie tor now rarely gives his farm to be cultivated by a single person ; he finds it infinitely more advantageous, at pre sent, to share his domain Atom; a number of neighbour ing peasants, each of whom takes as much land as is re quisite to occupy hint all the year. No doubt, the pea sant will generally sacrifice the larch which lie farms, to that which is his property ; but both those portions are cultivated with the ardour which a direct interest excites in the labourer, and with the intelligence which is d, vcloped in him, now that his lord can no longer oppress him. The agricultural classes are as happy as the politi cal circumstances of a country, loved with enthusiasm, permit them to be.
To conclude our review of the systems, by which terri torial wealth is incessantly renewed, we ought yet to be stow a moment of attention on the system of emphyteuses or perpetual farms, the most suitable of all when govern ment has grants of land to make.
In other systems of cultivation, the agriculturist ac quires all the fruit of his annual advances, but he can never be sure of profiting from those irredeemable ad vances by which a perpetual value is added to land, from drainings, plantations, and breaking up of the soil. Pro prietors, of themselves are seldom enabled to make such advances. if they sell the land, the purchaser, in order to acquire it, must surrender that very capital, with which he might have made those improvements. The lease of cmphyteusis, or plantation, which is the proper meaning of the word, was thus a very useful invention, as by it the cultivator engaged to break up a desert, on condition of acquiring the dominium utile of it for ever, whilst the pro prietor reserved for himself all invariable rent to represent the dominium directum. No expedient could more hap
pily combine, in the same individual, affection for pro perty, with zeal for cultivation ; or more usefully employ, in improving land, the capital destined to break it up. Although this kind of lease is known in England under the name of freehold for many lives ; and though it is even of great importance in this kingdom, as the right of voting in county elections depends upon it, its beneficial influence has chiefly been experienced in Italy, where it is named livello. In the latter country, it has restored to the most brilliant state of cultivation whole provinces, which had been allowed to run waste. It cannot, however, be come a universal mode of cultivation, because it deprives the direct proprietor of all the enjoyment of property, ex posing him to all the inconveniences, with none of the ad vantages, in the condition of the capitalist ; and because the father of a family can never be looked upon as prudent or economical, when he thus alienates his property for ever, without at least retaining the disposal of the price to be received in exchange for it.
For re-producing territorial wealth, it is sufficient, in general, that the use of the ground be transmitted to the industrious man, who may turn it to advantage, whilst the property of it continues with the rich man, who has no longer the same incitements or the same fitness for labour, and who thinks only of enjoyment. The national interest, however, sometimes also requires that property itself shall pass into hands likely to make a better use of it. It is not for themselves alone that the rich elicit the fruits of the earth ; it is for the whole nation ; and if, by a derangement in their fortune, they suspend the productive power of the country, it concerns the whole nation to put their proper ty under different managers. Personal interest is, indeed, sufficient to bring about this transmission, provided the law offers no obstacle. When a soldier comes to inherit a machine for making stockings, he does not keep it long; in his hands, the machine is useless for himself and the nation ; in the hands of a stocking-maker it would be pro ductive, both for the nation atid the individual. Both feel this; and a bargain is soon struck. The soldier receives money, which he well knows how to employ ; the stocking maker receives possession of his frame, and production re commences. host of our European laws respecting im movable property, are like a law made to hinder the soldier from parting with the frame, of whose use he is ignorant.