and total revenue of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It is admitted that, up to 1848, there were not more than 5,000 Scotch, and 8,000 Irish land-owners; and good reasons have been adduced (page 195) for the opinion, that there are only 46,000 who should be classed as landed proprietors in England. About 60,000 families, then, own all the territory which is occupied by over 27 millions of inhabit

ants.

In France, on the other hand, under the laws requiring the equal partition of the property of persons deceased, the aristocracy have virtually ceased to exist, and out of a population of about thirty-five millions, at least five and a half millions are landholders. Considering these as heads of families, and allowing on an average four persons to a family, we find that twenty-two millions, or nearly two thirds of the whole population, are owners of the soil. Making the same allowance for the families of British landholders, we have but 240,000 individuals, or about the 112th part of the people, who share among them the total rental of the United Kingdom, which amounts to more than sixty millions sterling. In France, it is estimated that there are two and a half millions of proprietors whose estates do not exceed an average of ten acres each, and three millions of others whose properties average about thirty

acres.

These results of a comparison of the two countries in respect to the distribution of landed property are very startling, and would almost exceed belief, if it were not evident that the policy of the law so strongly favors aggregation in the one case, and partition in the other, that such consequences, sooner or later, are inevitable. A race of husbandmen living on their own small properties, and constituting what was called the yeomanry of the land, were formerly the principal cultivators in England and Wales. The larger portion of the population were then engaged in tilling the ground, which then produced more than enough for the national consumption, and there were no complaints that the country was over-peopled. But the race of small proprietors is now extinct; large estates and large farms have absorbed the small ones, and the agriculturists, who were once two thirds, now form but one fifth, of the whole population. The doctrine of the dominant school of

English economists is, that farming must be carried on like every other trade; that large farms, like large machine-shops, large cotton-mills, and large iron-works, can produce cheaper than small ones, and therefore, very properly, supersede and obliterate them. Whatever may be thought of the correctness of this doctrine, it has certainly been carried out in practice. According to the census of 1851, there are in Great Britain, 1,132 farms containing each 1,000 acres and upwards, and 2,816 others which are over 600 acres in extent. There are but 190,573 farms of less than 100 acres each, while in France, as we have just seen, there are two and a half millions which do not exceed ten acres.

The chief argument in favor of this "monster-farm" system is, that it economizes labor, and admits the application of capital on a large scale, so that machinery can take the place of human beings, great operations in draining and manuring can be effected, and the most improved processes of agriculture can be carried out in their full perfection. It may be so, if by rent we understand only that portion of the produce which accrues to the exclusive benefit of the landlord. In many cases, his estate will give him a larger income if devoted to pasturage than to tillage; for in the former case, only a few herdsmen are required to perform all the labor that is needed on a thousand acres. But it does not produce so much food; it does not afford sustenance to so many people. He who turns his land into a sheep-pasture or a deer-park, acts on the same principle as the Dutch, when, having a monopoly of the trade in spices, they destroyed a portion of what they imported in order to enhance the price of the remainder. It behooves the landholders who reason in this manner to ask themselves, if they do not lose as much by the increased cost of pauperism as they may possibly gain by the enhancement of their rents. In England alone, the amount levied for the poor rate in 1850 exceeded seven and a quarter millions sterling (about $ 36,000,000); the average number of paupers receiving relief on any one day was almost exactly one million; and the whole number of different persons relieved during some part of the year, was three millions.*

* Pashley on Pauperism and the Poor Laws, (London, 1852,) pp. 8–12.

The proper object of all cultivation is to increase the quantity of the marketable produce of the land, and this is what the interest of the community, especially in such a country as England, requires; the object of the land-owner who does not till the ground himself, but lets it out to others, is to reserve as much as possible of this produce for himself. He may often obtain a greater net return by diminishing the gross amount of produce. If fifty laborers upon his estate, for instance, will enable him to send 1,000 bushels of grain to market, the price of 800 bushels being needed to pay the wages of these laborers; while ten laborers will produce 500 bushels for sale, and require only 160 bushels for wages; his rent in the former case will be only 200, while in the latter it will amount to 340 bushels.. It is for his interest, then, to employ the smaller number of laborers, and thereby to produce the smaller quantity of food, especially since the inadequate supply in the market will then enhance the price of the grain. It may be, that 500 will sell for as much as could, under the other supposition, be obtained for 1,000 bushels. But it is certainly not for the interest of the public, in a country teeming with population and deficient in the supply of food, that he should adopt this course. Here is another instance, then, of the fallacy of the often quoted maxim, that individual and national interests are identical. Only half a century ago, the most profitable use which the farmers of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania could make of their grain was to distil it into whiskey; for in this highly concentrated form alone would it bear the expense of transportation to the eastward. The interests of the individual here prompted him to deprive the grain of its nutritious properties and convert it into a poison; the interests of the public required a very different proceeding.

That a larger gross product of food may be obtained from the land when it is divided into small properties than when it is held in large farms, is a fact which no English traveller on the Continent can think of disputing. "In Flanders," says Mr. Laing, "the face of the country resembles a carpet, little patches of gound being covered with a great variety of crops of different shades and hues, not separated from each other by enclosures, and all blooming like a garden from the care and skill of the cultivator. Not a bit of ground is allowed to run

to waste, every nook and corner, every patch in the angle of a fence, being searched by the spade and hoe, and weeded by hand." The wonders of English farming are accomplished on a large scale, with high finish indeed, but with much necessary neglect or slighting of the nooks and corners, which cannot be tilled by machinery, but will yield returns only to manual labor. Spade-husbandry, of course, is less profitable, and even less productive, than husbandry by the plough, wherever land is cheap and labor is dear. But where only the nobility and gentry own the land, while a large portion of the people are constantly in want of employment and food, precisely the reverse holds; cultivation by the spade is then true economy, and husbandry on a large scale is criminal wastefulness of the bounties of Providence. The utmost amount which land is capable of producing can be estimated only on the small patches of ground, in the neighborhood of a large city, which are cultivated by the market gardeners. Here, every clod is broken, every shovelful of earth is raked and sifted, every pebble and weed is carefully removed by hand, and an abundance of hoarded manure being applied, while every accident of rain or sunshine is economized or averted, the crops are immense out of all proportion with the little space that is cultivated. Usually two or three crops of different kinds of vegetables are raised from the same land in one season. If the cultivator is also the owner of the soil, he works with a degree of diligence, earnestness, and care which can never be obtained from a hireling. The land is then, to adopt Mr. Laing's happy illustration, his Savings' Bank, in which he invests the labor of what would otherwise be his spare minutes; for though such labor may not perceptibly increase the amount of the next crop, it will add to the value of the ground. Even the little household refuse, which would otherwise be wasted, though really valuable as manure, is economized and applied to the land. The common description of a farm which is worked to the utmost is, that it is cultivated "like a garden"; and what is a garden but a small farm? A whole country divided into small properties is a constant succession of such gardens. In England, the large farmer, who often pays a rent of a thousand pounds a year, is in fact a commercial speculator on a grand scale. He cannot afford to pay much attention to minutiæ; a too

one season.

jealous and closely calculated economy, by leading him to fritter away on details the care and thought which are required for the general management, might ruin him. There is always considerable waste in large enterprises; it will not do for the manager of them to cultivate corners and patches. The large farmer wields a heavy capital with great skill and science, economizes human labor by the introduction of costly and powerful machines, and may either make or lose a fortune in His operations are of a sweeping character, and his returns are counted in the gross. He often makes more money by raising a smaller amount to the acre. To turn all his land into a kitchen garden would require a whole army of laborers, whose wages would eat up all his profits. The laborers would be fed, but he would sacrifice his capital. The method which he pursues has an opposite effect; he makes large profits, while the laborers are driven off the estate, and too often become dependent on public charity. Large farms economize human labor, it is true; but it depends on circumstances whether this is a benefit to the nation. Here in the United States, indeed, it would be a real saving, equivalent to the production of more wealth; but it is difficult to see what advantage it could bring to a country like England, where, in 1850, there were over 300,000 able-bodied male paupers.*

But this question respecting the comparative advantages of large and small farms can be best determined by observing the results of the two systems in actual operation, side by side. The following is taken from Mr. Laing's "Notes of a Traveller," First Series.

"Why should the physical and moral condition of this population [that of Tuscany] be so superior to that of the Neapolitans, or of the neighboring people in the Papal States? The soil and climate and productions are the same in all these countries. The difference must be accounted for by the happier distribution of the land in Tuscany. In 1836, Tuscany contained 1,436,785 inhabitants, and 130,190 landed estates. Deducting 7,901 estates belonging to towns, churches, or other corporate bodies, we have 122,289 belonging to the people, or, in other words, 48 families in every 100 have land of their

*Pashley on Pauperism and Poor Laws, p. 19.