The most obvious result would be that the population would be diminished by more than a half. At present the produce of the valley, with no very considerable deductions, is consumed in the valley. What is produced is what is required for supplying its large population with the first wants of life. But this will no longer be the case. The land will be let. We will suppose that this change has been completely effected; and that its irrigated meadows, with the contiguous little plots of corn-land, have been formed into farms, and that all is now treated in the way those who rent them find it pays best to manage them. We will suppose they have to pay a rent of 30s. an acre. The rent of the valley will then be 6,000l. a-year. How will this sum be made up? Cheese, of course, will be the main means. The young bullocks and the old cows will come next. We will take little credit for corn or potatoes, because it is evident that not nearly so much of them will be grown as was done under the old system; for much of the mountain corn-land will not pay now for cultivation with hired labour.
The economist, pure and simple, may say that this is all right. The course of events must be submitted to. Whatever they dictate is best; and best as it is. Interference with natural laws is always bad. The cheese and the cattle will sell for as much as they are worth. The sovereigns they will fetch are worth as much as the produce. There will be no diminution of wealth. But, however, it has to be proved that the new system is unavoidable in the sense of being either a natural step in the unobstructed course of human affairs, or, as some would tell us, the natural consummation of their long course, now at last happily effected. Perhaps it may be possible to show that there has been serious interference with their natural evolution; so serious as greatly to affect their character. And, if so, then the question of whether or no there has been any loss of value does not arise, for the antecedent question may render its discussion unnecessary. Be, however, these matters as they may, they do not cover all the ground we are desirous of investigating. We are thinking not of exchangeable wealth only, but also of men and women; and they, perhaps, may be regarded as wealth in its highest form; a kind of wealth, in which, if the men and women are not corrupt or counterfeit, but good and true, all may to some extent participate, and be the better for.
Under the system we are now considering, it jars against a sense of something or other in the minds of many, to see so much of the results of the labour of the people of the valley passing away from them, never to return in any form or degree. As far as they are concerned it is a tribute they are paying to the man who owns the land of the valley. And whether it be, year by year, paid to him, or whether all this cheese and all these cattle be every year on a stated day collected and burnt at the mouth of the valley; or the price, for which they may have been sold, thrown into the mid-ocean, would make no difference to them. They will get no advantage from it at all, for it is evident that a man who has an income of at least 6,000l. a-year will never live in the Valley of the Visp. He will, perhaps, have his mansion on the bank of the Lake of Geneva; or perhaps at Paris: at all events, it will be somewhere at a distance. The case of so many bales of calico being sent out of Manchester, to all parts of the world, is not similar. They are sent out for the very purpose of coming back again in the form of what will not only support those who produce them, but will also, if trade be good, increase the fund that supports the trade, that is to say, will increase the number of those who in various ways are supported by the trade: hence the growth of Manchester. Nor is it the same thing as so many quarters of corn being sent from America to this country, for in that case also the price of the corn returns to the hands of those who grew it. Their corn-fields have produced for them, only in a roundabout fashion, a golden harvest; and they have, themselves, the consumption of this harvest, precisely in the same way as the now existing Visp-side population have the direct consumption of the produce of their little plots of land. Some, of course, of the price of the cheese and cattle sent away will enable the farmers to live and to pay their labourers; but none of the 6,000l. a-year will come back in any form.
But the point now actually before us is the effect this change will produce on the amount of population. In order that the land might be let profitably, it was necessary to clear it of its old proprietors, for they could pay no rent at all. Their little estates were barely sufficient, with the most unremitting labour, and the most careful frugality, to support life. The valley has now been formed into cheese-farms; and we will suppose that for keeping up the irrigation, cutting the grass, tending the cows in summer on the mountains, and during the winter doing everything for them, and for cultivating whatever amount of land is still cropped with corn and potatoes, five men are wanted for a hundred acres. This will give for the 4,000 acres 200 men. Let each man, as before, represent a family of six souls. Here, for the labourers and their families, will be a population of 1,200. We will also suppose that, under the circumstances of the valley, the average size of the farms is not more than fifty acres. This will give eighty farmers. If their households average eight souls, we have 640 more. These, and the labourers, will not, as was formerly done, under the old order of things, by every family, produce themselves pretty nearly all that is necessary for their households. It will not be so, because the farmers, who must also attend to their farms, will require many things that none required before; and because the labourers, having to give all their time and strength for wages, will be obliged to buy almost all that they will require. This will necessitate the introduction into the valley of a considerable number of tradesmen. We will suppose a hamlet every five miles, in which, besides farmers and labourers, will reside eight tradesmen and petty shopkeepers. That is five hamlets, and forty tradesmen and shopkeepers. These, with six to a family, will add 240 to the population. These different contributories, then, will raise the total to 2,080. As the distances will remain what they were, and as there will be more stir and ambition among a population of farmers and shopkeepers, than there was formerly among the peasant proprietors, we will take the number of school-teachers as much the same under either system. The reduction of the population to one-third of its former amount will somewhat reduce the number of priests; but as thought will now be more active, and, therefore, more varied, this reduction will be counterbalanced by an increase in the number of prophets.
The next step in our inquiry is, how will this revolution affect the character of the population of the valley? We have seen that under the old system their whole character was the direct result of the fact that everyone was either the actual, or the prospective, possessor of a small plot of land, just enough to sustain the life of a family. That was the root out of which their lives grew; and their industry, frugality, forethought, patience, and honesty were the fruits such lives as theirs produced. That root is now dead. The conditions of life are different; and with different conditions have come corresponding differences of character. For instance, we all know that those who labour primarily for others, that others may make the profit that will accrue from their labour, are not so industrious as those who labour entirely for themselves. Nor will they have the same forethought, because their dependence is on wages, and wages require no forethought. Formerly forethought was a condition of existence. They are also now in a school which is a bad one for frugality and patience, and which is very far from being a good one for honesty. These, however, are still the main constituents of morality, for in them there can be no change, because morality is the regulative order of the family and of society: and now, with respect to all of these points, among the mass of the population, there is, necessarily a deterioration. Nor is petty trade, at least so says the experience of mankind, favourable to morality. As to those who hire the land, we will suppose that the more varied relations, than any which existed under the old system, into which they have been brought with their neighbours, and with the world outside the valley, have in some cases had an elevating and improving effect. The moral influences, however, of occupations of this kind are far from being universally good, because those who live by the labour of others, will in many cases be of opinion, that their own interests are antagonistic to the interests of those they employ in such a sense, that it is to their advantage to pay low wages, which means to lessen the comforts, and even the supply of necessaries, to those by whose labour they live. This may be an unavoidable incident of the relation in which the two stand towards each other, but it is not conducive to the result we are now wishing to find.
The intellectual gains and losses are harder to estimate. As to the labourers, one cannot believe that a body of men that has been lowered morally has been raised intellectually. Among the tradesmen class there will be some who will have more favourable opportunities for rising into a higher intellectual life than any had among the old peasant-proprietors. And among the small occupiers of land, for the farms only average fifty acres, these chances will, perhaps, be still greater. But all this will not come to much. The great question here is about the one family, for whose benefit mainly, almost, indeed, exclusively, the whole of the change has been brought about. This family now stands for 4,000 of the old inhabitants of the valley. One of the greatest of all possible revolutions has been carried out in its favour, for it is a revolution that has swept away the greater part of the population, and completely altered the material, moral, and intellectual life of all that remained. We will, however, suppose that they are everything that can be expected of a family so favourably circumstanced. That their morality is pure and elevated. That, intellectually, they are refined and cultivated. That they promote art. That science is at times their debtor. That among its members have been men who have advanced the thought of their day, and have made additions to the common fund of intellectual wealth; and others who have done their country good service in peace and in war.
When I say that this family stands in the place of the 4,000 who have disappeared from the valley, I limit the observation to the valley, for I do not mean that the population of the world has been diminished to that extent to make space for them, because the cheese and cattle sent out of the valley for their 6,000l. a-year, will contribute to the support elsewhere of a great many people who must work, and so live, in order that they may be able to purchase them.
But to return; those who were not satisfied with the original Arcadian state of things, we may be sure will not be satisfied with that which we are now imagining has taken its place. For nothing will satisfy them, if there must be a change, except some such condition of things as will work as favourably both for morality, and for intellect, as that did for morality alone; and which will, at the same time, provide, generally, a better supplied material life than that did.
We have now endeavoured, first, to analyze the land-system of the valley, such as it presents itself to the eye of a contemplative pedestrian; and which may be regarded as the natural working out of proprietorship in land, when it is the sole means of supporting life. We then proceeded to compare with this a system we wot of, carried out to its full-blown development. This second system is what people refer to when they talk of English landlordism. These two forms, however, of the distribution and tenure of land are very far from exhausting all that have existed, and that do and that might exist. Distribution and tenure are capable of assuming many other forms; and some of these must be considered before we can hope to arrive at anything like a right and serviceable understanding of the matter.