It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I conceive that in no circumstances, and under no conditions, can the soil be advantageously divided into minute properties. The rule which strikes me as applying to the matter is this:—where spade-husbandry, can be legitimately adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much, if not all, of its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry, while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain cases, develops in an economical manner the resources of the soil. The instance of market-gardens near a populous town is a case in point. But in a remote district, removed from markets, ill provided with the means of locomotion—where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised—spade-labour is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man digging a field which ought to have been ploughed. He told me that the spade produced more than the plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade-husbandry? "Because, although spade-husbandry was very productive, it was still more expensive. It paid a small proprietor who could do the work himself, but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate his labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of cultivation unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofitable, in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly for labour; the latter must pay for labour as well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious of the outlay—an outlay which is, nevertheless, not the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5s., can produce 20s. worth of produce—and if the spade, at an expense of 20s., can produce 30s. worth of produce—the difference between the proportionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the country in which the transaction takes place; and this because that difference of labour, or of money representing labour, if otherwise applied—as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be applied—might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total of the production to the stated amount of 30s.
Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests of the community in which they exist?
The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on either side of the question:
Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious population. A man always works hardest for himself.
Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance.
On the other hand—
Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of consumers; and—
Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging individual properties—and the result is the production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors.
At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they see no hope before them—save one—Socialism. French Socialism is simply the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a scramble. There is property—there is food—and it will go hard but he shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old song—
"Moll in the wad and I fell out, And this is what it was all about, She had money, and I had none, And that was the way the row begun."