beneficially to such cultivation, the owner's own time and labor may. He is working for no higher terms at first from his land than a bare living. But in the course of generations fertility and value are produced; a better living, and even very improved processes of husbandry, are attained. Furrow draining, stall feeding all summer, liquid manures, are universal in the husbandry of the small farms of Flanders, Lombardy, Switzerland. Our most improving districts under large farms are but beginning to adopt them. Dairy husbandry even, and the manufacture of the largest cheeses by the co-operation of many small farmers,* the mutual assurance of property against fire and hail-storms, by the co-operation of small farmers-the most scientific and expensive of all agricultural operations in modern times, the manufacture of beet-root sugar-the supply of the European markets with flax and hemp, by the husbandry of small farmers the abundance of legumes, fruits, poultry, in the usual diet even of the lowest classes abroad, and the total want of such variety at the tables even of our middle classes, and this variety and abundance essentially connected with the husbandry of small farmers-all these are features in the occupation of a country by small proprietor-farmers, which must make the inquirer pause before he admits the dogma of our land doctors at home, that large farms worked by hired labor and great capital can alone bring out the greatest productiveness of the soil and furnish the greatest supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life to the inhabitants of a country."

§ 4. Among the many flourishing regions of Germany in which peasant properties prevail, I select the Palatinate, for the advantage of quoting, from an English source, the results of recent personal observation of its agriculture and its people.

The manner in which the Swiss peasants combine to carry on cheesemaking by their united capital deserves to be noted: "Each parish in Switzerland hires a man, generally from the district of Gruyère in the canton of Freyburg, to take care of the herd, and make the cheese. One cheeseman, one pressman or assistant, and one cowherd, are considered necessary for every forty COWS. The owners of the cows get credit each of them, in a book daily, for the quantity of milk given by each cow. The cheeseman and his assistants milk the cows, put the milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the end of the season each owner receives the weight of cheese proportionable to the quantity of milk his cows have delivered. this co-operative plan, instead of the

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small-sized unmarketable cheeses only. which each could produce out of his three or four cows milk, he has the same weight in large marketable cheese superior in quality, because made by people who attend to no other business. The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so much per head of the cows, in money or in cheese, or sometimes they hire the cows, and pay the owners in money or cheese.' "Notes of a Trav eller," p. 351. A similar system existe in the French Jura. See, for full details, Lavergne, "Rural Economy of France," 2d ed., pp. 139 et seqq. One of the most remarkable points in this interesting case of combination of labor, is the confidence which it supposes, and which experience must justify in the integrity of the persons employed.

Mr. Howitt, a writer whose habit it is to see all English objects
and English socialities on their brightest side, and who, in treat-
ing of the Rhenish peasantry, certainly does not underrate the
rudeness of their implements, and the inferiority of their plough-
ing, nevertheless shows that under the invigorating influence
of the feelings of proprietorship, they make up for the imper-
fections of their apparatus by the intensity of their application.
"The peasant harrows and clears his land till it is in the nicest
order, and it is admirable to see the crops which he obtains." *
"The peasants are the great and ever-present objects of coun-
try life. They are the great population of the country, because
they themselves are the possessors. This country is, in fact,
for the most part, in the hands of the people. It is parcelled
out among the multitude. . . . The peasants are not, as
with us, for the most part, totally cut off from property in the
soil they cultivate, totally dependent on the labor afforded by
others they are themselves the proprietors. It is, perhaps,
from this cause that they are probably the most industrious
peasantry in the world. They labor busily, early and late, be-
cause they feel that they are laboring for themselves. .
The German peasants work hard, but they have no actual want.
Every man has his house, his orchard, his roadside trees, com-
monly so heavy with fruit, that he is obliged to prop and secure
them all ways, or they would be torn to pieces. He has his
corn-plot, his plot for mangel-wurzel, for hemp, and so on. He
is his own master; and he, and every member of his family,
have the strongest motives to labor. You see the effect of this
in that unremitting diligence which is beyond that of the whole
world besides, and his economy, which is still greater. The
Germans, indeed, are not so active and lively as the English.
You never see them in a bustle, or as though they meant to
knock off a vast deal in a little time. . . . They are, on the
contrary, slow, but forever doing. They plod on from day to
day, and year to year-the most patient, untirable, and perse-
vering of animals. The English peasant is so cut off from
the idea of property, that he comes habitually to look upon it
as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the large
proprietors, and becomes, in consequence, spiritless, purpose-
less. . . . The German bauer, on the contrary, looks on the
country as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself

"Rural and Domestic Life of Germany," p. 27.
VOL. I.-17

Ibid. p. 40.

a man; he has a stake in the country, as good as that of the bulk of his neighbors; no man can threaten him with ejection, or the workhouse, so long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but of a respectful one."

Of their industry, the same writer thus further speaks: "There is not an hour of the year in which they do not find unceasing occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather permits them by any means to get out of doors, they are always finding something to do. They carry out their manure to their lands while the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy cleaning ditches and felling old fruit-trees, or such as do not bear well. Such of them as are too poor to lay in a sufficient stock of wood, find plenty of work in ascending into the moun tainous woods, and bringing thence fuel. It would astonish the English common people to see the intense labor with which the Germans earn their firewood. In the depth of frost and snow, go into any of their hills and woods, and there you find them hacking up stumps, cutting off branches, and gathering, by all means which the official wood-police will allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of wood, which they convey home with the most incredible toil and patience.' After a description of their careful and laborious vineyard culture, he continues: † "In England, with its great quantity of grass lands, and its large farms, so soon as the grain is in, and the fields are shut up for hay grass, the country seems in a comparative state of rest and quiet. But here they are everywhere, and forever, hoeing and mowing, planting and cutting, weeding and gathering. They have a succession of crops like a market-gardener. They have their carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, saint foin, lucerne, rape, colewort, cabbage, rutabaga, black turnips, Swedish and white turnips, teazles, Jerusalem artichokes, mangel-wurzel, parsnips, kidney beans, field beans and peas, vetches, Indian corn, buckwheat, madder for the manufacturer, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet-all, for the greater part, under the family management, in their own family allotments. They have had these things first to sow, many of them to transplant, to hoe, to weed, to clear off insects, to top; many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. They have their watermeadows, of which kind almost all their meadows are, to flood, "Rural and Domestic Life of Germany," p. 44. † Ibid. p. 50.

to mow, and reflood; watercourses to reopen and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market with their green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep, calves, foals, most of them prisoners, and poultry to look after; their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the leaves when they are too thick: and anyone may imagine what a scene of incessant labor it is."

This interesting sketch, to the general truth of which any observant traveller in that highly cultivated and populous region can bear witness, accords with the more elaborate delineation by a distinguished inhabitant, Professor Rau, in his little treatise "On the Agriculture of the Palatinate." * Dr. Rau bears testimony not only to the industry, but to the skill and intelligence of the peasantry; their judicious employment of manures, and excellent rotation of crops; the progressive improvement of their agriculture for generations past, and the spirit of further improvement which is still active. "The indefatigableness of the country people, who may be seen in activity all the day and all the year, and are never idle, because they make a good distribution of their labors, and find for every interval of time a suitable occupation, is as well known as their zeal is praiseworthy in turning to use every circumstance which presents itself, in seizing upon every useful novelty which offers, and even in searching out new and advantageous methods. One easily perceives that the peasant of this district has reflected much on his occupation: he can give reasons for his modes of proceeding, even if those reasons are not always tenable; he is as exact an observer of proportions as it is possible to be from memory, without the aid of figures: he attends to such general signs of the times as appear to augur him either benefit or harm." t

The experience of all other parts of Germany is similar. “In Saxony," says Mr. Kay, "it is a notorious fact, that during the last thirty years, and since the peasants became the proprietors of the land, there has been a rapid and continual improvement in the condition of the houses, in the manner of living, in the dress of the peasants, and particularly in the culture of the land. I have twice walked through that part of Saxony called Saxon Switzerland, in company with a German guide,

"On the Agriculture of the Palati nate, and particularly in the territory of

Heidelberg." By Dr. Karl Heinrich
Rau. Heidelberg, 1830.

↑ Rau, pp. 15, 16.

and on purpose to see the state of the villages and of the farming, and I can safely challenge contradiction when I affirm that there is no farming in all Europe superior to the laboriously careful cultivation of the valleys of that part of Saxony. There, as in the cantons of Berne, Vaud, and Zurich, and in the Rhine provinces, the farms are singularly flourishing. They are kept in beautiful condition, and are always neat and well managed. The ground is cleared as if it were a garden. No hedges or brushwood encumber it. Scarcely a rush or thistle or a bit of rank grass is to be seen. The meadows are well watered every spring with liquid manure, saved from the drainings of the farmyards. The grass is so free from weeds that the Saxon meadows reminded me more of English lawns than of anything else I had seen. The peasants endeavor to outstrip one another in the quantity and quality of the produce, in the preparation of the ground, and in the general cultivation of their respective portions. All the little proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the greatest results; they diligently seek after improvements; they send their children to the agricultural schools in order to fit them to assist their fathers; and each proprietor soon adopts a new improvement introduced by any of his neighbors."* If this be not overstated, it denotes a state of intelligence very different not only from that of English laborers but of English farmers.

Mr. Kay's book, published in 1850, contains a mass of evidence gathered from observation and inquiries in many different parts of Europe, together with attestations from many distinguished writers, to the beneficial effects of peasant properties. Among the testimonies which he cites respecting their effect on agriculture, I select the following:

"Reichensperger, himself an inhabitant of that part of Prussia where the land is the most subdivided, has published a long and very elaborate work to show the admirable consequences of a system of freeholds in land. He expresses a very decided opinion that not only are the gross products of any given number of acres held and cultivated by small or peasant proprietors, greater than the gross products of an equal number of acres held by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by tenant farm

"The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Eu rope; showing the Results of the Primary Schools, and of the Division of Landed Property in Foreign Countries."

By Joseph Kay, Esq., M.A., Barristerat-Law, and late Travelling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge. Vol. i. pp. 138-40.