The value of land cannot be unfolded, excel)t by em ploying a capital sufficient to procure the accumulation of that labour which improves it. Hence, it is essential to the very existence of a nation, that its land be always in the hands of those who can devote capital to its cultiva tion. If it were not in any case allowed to sell a worl• man's implement, it would not, certainly, at Jeast, be for bidden to make new ones for the use of new workmen ; but new lands cannot be made, and so often as the law prevents the alienation of an estate by one that cannot use it, so often does it suspend the most essential of all pro ductions.
The systems of cultivation, which we have now glanced over in review, certainly cause the earth to produce, by the hands of temporary cultivators, when the permanent advances have been made; hut they absolutely discourage such cultivators from making those permanent advances which, as they give a perpetual value to property, cannot be laid out except by those with whom that property is destined to continue. Legislators in general, altogether occupied with preventing the alienation of immovables, and preserving great fortunes in great families, have dreaded lest such an alienation might clandestinely be brought about by a lease, for a long term, and without re turn. They have eagerly attempted to defend the rights of proprietors against proprietors themselves ; they have guided that class of people by forfeits and resolutory clauses; they have fixed upon a short term for farm leases ; they seem continually repeating to the cultivator : " This land, on which you work, is not yours ; acquire not too much affection for it ; make no advances which you might run the risk of losing; improve the present moment, if you can, but think not of the future; above all, beware of labouring for posterity." Besides, independently of legislative errors, it belongs to the very nature of a farm lease never to allow the farm er to take as much interest in the land as its proprietor. It is enough that this lease must have an end, to induce the farmer, as this end approaches, to care less about his fields, and to cease laying out money for improving them. The metayer, with smaller power, at least never fears to improve the land committed to him as much as possible; because the conditions of his lease arc invariable, and lie is never dismissed except for bad behaviour. The farmer, again, is liable to be dismissed directly in consequence of his good management. The more he has improved his farm, the more will his landlord, at renewing the lease, be disposed to require an augmentation of rent; and, be sides, of the advances laid out by the cultivator, on the ground, create a perpetual value, it is neither just nor natural that they should be made by one whose interest is merely temporary. The farmer will carefully attend to the fields and meadows, which, in a few years, are to give him back all his advances; but he will plant few orchards; few high forests in the north ; few vineyards in the south; he will make few canals for navigation, irrigation, or drain ingl; he will transport little soil from one place to another; he will clear little ground ; be will execute, in short, few of those works which are most conducive to the public in terest, because they found the wealth of posterity.
None of those labours, on which the increase of the whole national subsistence depends, can be undertaken, save by a proprietor, rich in movable capital. It is not the preservation of great fortunes that concerns the nation, but the union of territorial fortunes with circulating ones. The fields do not flourish in the hands of those who have already too much wealth to watch over them, but in the hands of those who have enough of money to bring them into value. Territorial legislation ought, therefore, withotit
ceasing, to strive that movable capital be united with fixed ; property which we call personal with property which we call real. Legislation, over almost all the world, has striven to do quite the contrary.
And first, it were always for the national advantage, and favourable to the increase of its production, that the pro prietor, whenever his fortune is embarrassed, should sell his property, instead of borrowing on it; yet, on the con trary, facilities have been held out to him for borrowing, rather than for sale. A particular system of law has been created for territorial debts; marked differences have been established between real and personal property; the rank of creditors on land has been regulated according to their date, whilst an absolute equality prevails among creditors of all dates, who claim only on movable property. And thus thousands of law-suits have been created, interminable difficulties have been started, and the time is almost come when half the lands of Europe are possessed by a people who, far from possessing the power to dispose of a capi tal that might increase their productiveness, on the con trary, are debtors by a pretty large capital, which they cannot extract from those funds. Hence those embarrassed proprietors have incessantly had recourse to ruinous ex pedients, not to put money on their lands, but to take it off; to borrow of their farmers, to diminish the funds of cultivation, to sell their woods, and deteriorate their estates. If the law had given no preference to territorial creditors; if, on the other hand, it had given as much fa cility to a creditor for selling an immovable property, as for making seizure of a movable one; especially, if, in protecting personal liberty, sacrificed too slightly, it had permitted lands to be sold as often as it now permits the debtor to be put in prison—most old debts would be extinguished, and those immovable possessions, which ought to support the nation, would be in the hands of such as could force them, by capital and labour, to furnish the means of subsistence.
But the props lent to the pride of family by entails,fidei cmmissa, primogenitures, and the laws invented to hinder families in a ruinous condition from selling their property, have still further impeded the development of agriculture and industry. The legislator aimed at fixing fortune in great families: he has fixed beggary and want in them. On pretext of securing the patrimony of children, he has forbidden the heir of entail to sell or borrow with a suffi cient security to his creditors; but he could not hinder him from going to ruin, and overwhelming himself with clamo rous debts. In that case, even the care of his honour, the feeling of justice, and his own security, oblige him to em ploy all the resources of his mind, all his industry in de stroying his patrimony, that he may obtain the disposal of what law has reserved to his heir. Whatever produce he can detach from the ground without replacing it, whatever advance he can dispense with laying out, is, in his eyes, just so much profit; and Europe has conic to sec the pro prietors of noble estates, almost everywhere, the enemies of their property. At the same time, if the legislator's object was the preservation of families, he has failed in this object ; because entails condemn all the sons of a rich family to idleness; the elder out of pride, the younger out of inability. The system has proscribed all from industry, the sole mean of increasing property; whilst it leaves them subject to all human chances, which Dever cease to attack whatever is ancient, and which must always, in the end, destroy whatever opulence is not renewed.