A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

I relegate this note to the end of the volume, because its introduction into the body of the work would have been too great an interruption of the continuity of the narrative.

A little comparative history may add to the interest of the picture which the Prätigäu presents. In that valley, as in many others in Switzerland, the peasants are ready to give so high a price for an acre of land that large properties have become impossible; that is to say, there cannot be, as the general rule, any proprietors in localities so circumstanced excepting peasants. In England, however, where an acre of agricultural land does not sell for more than, or for as much as, half of what an acre sells for in these valleys, there are no peasant proprietors. Here, notwithstanding the cheapness of land, it is the small properties that have become impossible, and the general rule is that there can be none but large proprietors. The difference is diametrical. Can it in any way be accounted for?

The question suggested to us is, How has it come about that, while the peasant proprietors have extinguished the large proprietors in the Prätigäu, the large proprietors have extinguished the peasant proprietors in England? As respects the case of the former there can be no difficulty in seeing that, if the peasant cultivators will give more for land than those who would buy for investment could afford to give, then those who would buy for investment must disappear from the market, and that already existing large properties will gradually melt away under the action of this solvent. As respects ourselves the answer usually given is that the land in this country is too dear for peasant proprietors. This supposition, however, as I have just noticed, is the very reverse of the fact. In Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy peasant proprietors give a great deal more for land than it would cost them in England. It may, therefore, be true that in England the cheapness of land has been one of the conditions that has contributed to the formation of large estates; but it is quite impossible to maintain that in this country the dearness of agricultural land has extinguished the class of peasant proprietors, because here the price of land, so far from being an obstacle to the existence of the class, has presented, and at this moment presents, quite exceptionally favourable conditions for its maintenance and increase.

Can any other reason be alleged? In the Chapter to which this note is appended I have pointed out that the English agricultural labourer does not possess the knowledge and the habits of thought and life, which are indispensable in a peasant proprietor. They are indispensable in him, because they it is that enable him to live as a peasant proprietor. This, if it be true, must be a serious impediment to the re-establishment of the class amongst us, but cannot be regarded as the primary cause of its extinction, because Englishmen were as capable as other people of this knowledge and of these habits. What was really and primarily in fault was not the decay of this knowledge and of these habits, but that which engendered and brought about this decay amongst us alone of all people.

If, then, the cause is neither in the present price of land here, nor in any inherent incapacity in Englishmen, that is to say, if it be neither in the land, nor in the men, where else can we look for it? There remains no other direction in which we can look but law, and the interpretation of law. In the Middle Ages we had the peasant class of those times fully developed here. There were in this country, as was perhaps the case everywhere then, variations in the possessions and rights of the class, but still at that time peasant proprietors pretty generally, if not quite universally, formed the basis of the English village community. Why did they cease to do so? I think the answer is that in this country, from a combination of exceptional causes, legislation and the interpretation of law and custom became adverse to the maintenance of the class. The exceptional causes were, first, the strength of the governing class (locally represented by Lords of manors), which was a consequence of the Norman conquest; and the great rise in the money value of cheese, hides, and wool, especially the last, consequent on the influx of silver from the New World during the sixteenth century, while for the production of these articles the climate, and for their export the easily traversed surface of the country, nowhere far from the coast, and numerous excellent harbours offered pre-eminent advantages. There was, therefore, both a strong motive for the extinction of peasant properties, and power sufficient for effecting it. Peasant properties, which everywhere implied rights of appurtenant common pasturage, made the formation of large runs for numerous flocks of sheep, or for a large combination of cattle breeding with arable culture, impossible. They were, therefore, apparently in the interests of the community, gradually rendered valueless to their owners, absorbed, and extinguished. This process, though it commenced at an earlier date, was chiefly carried out in the reign of Elizabeth. Events in this matter only took the direction and course which might have been expected.

But it is clear that if the right of the peasant to maintain himself from the produce of a piece of land which he himself cultivates for the support of his family is abrogated, he must either cease to exist, and then the cultivation of the land would be impossible, or he must be maintained in some other way. For centuries wages, the alternative method, were not universally, or even generally, sufficient for this purpose. The operations of agriculture were not at that time as continuous as they are now; the demand for any amount of agricultural produce was not as unfailing as it is now; and the farmer had not access to such stores of capital as exist now. Under these circumstances the alternative was insufficient. What then was to be done? How was the existence of the peasant to be maintained? He could not be allowed the hide of plough land and the common pasturage rights of his forefathers, for these were obstacles to the formation of sheep farms, and to large culture; nor could wages be relied on continuously. The method hit upon showed the inventiveness of the English mind quite as much as any one of the many institutions and discoveries for which the world is indebted to the inhabitants of this island. It was to give to the dispossessed peasantry, who were henceforth to become agricultural labourers, a claim on the parishes, in which they resided and laboured, to the amount requisite for the support of themselves and of their families, when through failure of work or of wages, through sickness or age, they became incapable of supporting themselves.

Three centuries ago this was the rationale of the English poor law, and it is so at this day. It was a substitute for peasant proprietorship, and it aided in utterly extinguishing it. If a little bit of land is the only means of supporting the life of a family, the family will, however great the cost in labour, support itself by this means. But if you make wages, supplemented by a claim on the produce of the land, an alternative means; and at the same time bring into play causes which shall partly dispose, and partly drive, the peasantry to accept this alternative; they will accept it, and peasant proprietorship will cease. This I think is in a few words the explanation of the unique fact that in this country there is no class of peasant proprietors. Our legislation favoured the consolidation and accumulation of large estates. It did not favour the maintenance of peasant properties: with respect to them its action and pressure were in the opposite direction; while at the same time it gave the peasants an alternative means of support. The tendency of events, and the pressure of circumstances were irresistible; and the whole class either became disposed, or was driven, to accept the alternative; and so the class of peasant proprietors was utterly extinguished. Had circumstances, legislation, and the interpretation the law put on the rights of the class favoured its maintenance in this country, we should have had here a peasant class similar to that of Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and other countries. The existence here of exceptional conditions had an exceptional issue.

The extinction of the class has been followed by many large and important consequences. Of these the most obvious is the difference between the class that has been introduced as the basis of our social system, that of agricultural labourers, and the class that was extinguished, that of peasant proprietors. No greater difference can exist between men. Peasant proprietors in their industry, tenacity, and stability have just the qualities which might have fitted them for constituting an useful element in the foundation of so artificial and ill-balanced a social fabric as that of England, for as to their narrowness of view, their chief defect of character, that in so rich a community would have been of little detriment in any way; and besides, too, in this country we must compare what their narrowness would have been with the far greater narrowness of our agricultural labourers. On the other side agricultural labourers are a very poor foundation for the social fabric, and most especially in a commercial and manufacturing community, which already from these sources has a dangerously numerous prolétariat. As a class they are improvident, thriftless, shiftless, have no sense of self-dependence, and not much of self-respect, their self-acting effectual education having been that which results from the teaching of wages, supplemented by a poor law.

The question of peasant proprietorship, as now discussed among ourselves, is generally restricted to economical considerations. It is asked, as if this contained the whole question, whether the economical results of peasant culture are as satisfactory, acre for acre, as those of large farms? This, though an important part of the question, is not the whole of it: perhaps it is not the chief part of it. The character of the basis of our social fabric may be a matter of more consequence to the nation than even the amount of produce per acre. It will explain what is contained in this remark, if I say that I suppose that everybody would think that to admit to our parliamentary constituency a million voters, whose sentiments and ideas were in the main those of peasant proprietors, would be a less hazardous operation than to admit a million pauperized agricultural labourers, who, possibly, might endeavour to use the franchise for the purpose of securing a more liberal administration of the poor law. And, practically, there would be some justification for such an attempt, if made by them, for the poor law may be regarded historically as the compensation given to their class for the extinction of commonable rights in the land, and, together with those commonable rights, of peasant properties; for it is clear that if those common rights, and the associated peasant properties, had been retained, there would so far have been no occasion for a poor law.

It is obvious that the improvidence and misery of our agricultural labourers have for many generations given us a large supply of labour for building up our manufacturing and commercial establishments, and for peopling the New World, and our Australian and other colonies. The same cause may also have enabled us to maintain our military force by voluntary enlistment. But as the same amount of land in the hands of peasant proprietors maintains four or five times as large an agricultural population as it does when cultivated by hired labourers, it is quite possible that we might have received even a better supply from the alternative system. At all events, now, in consequence of a largely increased demand for men, contemporaneously with an actual decrease of our relatively small agricultural population, which under existing circumstances is our chief nursery for recruits for all purposes, we are beginning to be pressed hard for men. We are now suffering from a want of men, and would be glad if there were some element in our agrarian system which made that ingredient of our population far more considerable than it now is. Another evil consequence, then, of a mistake made three hundred years ago has begun to manifest itself.