The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

The land of Germany is much divided. A part of this division was the work of governments which interfered between the owners and the peasants, and gave to the latter absolute rights over a part of the land they cultivated, instead of previous claims to rights of so uncertain a kind as rendered the peasant a mere slave to the land-owner. Those rights, however, could not have been maintained had not the policy of the government tended to promote the growth of population and wealth. Centralization would have tended to the reconsolidation of the land, as it has done in India, Ireland, Scotland, and England; but decentralization here gives value to land, and aids in carrying out the system commenced by government. Professor Reichensperger [174] says—

"That the price of land which is divided into small properties, in the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. He and Professor Rau both say that this rise in the price of the small estates would have ruined the more recent, purchasers, unless the productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually becoming more and more prosperous, notwithstanding the increasing prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent justness, that this would seem to show that not only the gross profits of the small estates, but the net profits also, have been gradually increasing, and that the net profits per acre of land, when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed by great proprietors."—Kay, vol. i. 116.

The admirable effect of the division of land, which follows necessarily in the wake of the growth of population and wealth, is thus described by Sismondi:—[175]

"Wherever are found peasant proprietors, are also found that ease, that security, that independence, and that confidence in the future, which insure at the same time happiness and virtue. The peasant who, with his family, does all the work on his little inheritance, who neither pays rent to any one above him, nor wages to any one below him, who regulates his production by his consumption, who eats his own corn, drinks his own wine, and is clothed with his own flax and wool, cares little about knowing the price of the market; for he has little to sell and little to buy, and is never ruined by the revolutions of commerce. Far from fearing for the future, it is embellished by his hopes; for he puts out to profit, for his children or for ages to come, every instant which is not required by the labour of the year. Only a few moments, stolen from otherwise lost time, are required to put into the ground the nut which in a hundred years will become a large tree; to hollow out the aqueduct which will drain his field for ever; to form the conduit which will bring him a spring of water; to improve, by many little labours and attentions bestowed in spare moments, all the kinds of animals and vegetables by which he is surrounded. This little patrimony is a true savings-bank, always ready to receive his little profits, and usefully to employ his leisure moments. The ever-acting powers of nature make his labours fruitful, and return to him a hundredfold. The peasant has a strong sense of the happiness attached to the condition of proprietor. Thus he is always eager to purchase land at any price. He pays for it more than it is worth; but what reason he has to esteem at a high price the advantage of thenceforward always employing his labour advantageously, without being obliged to offer it cheap, and of always finding his bread when he wants it, without being obliged to buy it dear!"—Kay; vol. i. 153.

The German people borrow from the earth, and they pay their debts; and this they are enabled to do because the market is everywhere near, and becoming nearer every day, as, with the increase of population and wealth, men are enabled to obtain better machinery of conversion and transportation. They are, therefore, says Mr. Kay—

"Gradually acquiring capital, and their great ambition is to have land of their own. They eagerly seize every opportunity of purchasing a small farm; and the price is so raised by the competition, that land pays little more than two per cent. interest for the purchase-money. Large properties gradually disappear, and are divided into small portions, which sell at a high rate. But the wealth and industry of the population is continually increasing, being rather through the masses, than accumulated in individuals."—Vol. i. 183.

The disappearance of large properties in Germany proceeds, pari passu, with the disappearance of small ones in England. If the reader desire to know the views of Adam Smith as to the relative advantages of the two systems, he may turn to the description, from his pen, of the feelings of the small proprietor, given in a former chapter;[176] after which he may profit by reading the following remarks of Mr. Kay, prompted by his observation of the course of things in Germany:—

"But there can be no doubt that five acres, the property of an intelligent peasant, who farms it himself, in a country where the peasants have learned to farm, will always produce much more per acre than an equal number of acres will do when farmed by a mere leasehold tenant. In the case of the peasant proprietor, the increased activity and energy of the farmer, and the deep interest he feels in the improvement of his land, which are always caused by the fact of ownership, more than compensate the advantage arising from the fact that the capital required to work the large farms is less in proportion to the quantity of land cultivated than the capital required to work the small farm. In the cases of a large farm and of a small farm, the occupiers of which are both tenants of another person, and not owners themselves, it may be true that the produce of the large farm will be greater in proportion to the capital employed in cultivation than that of the small farm; and that, therefore, the farming of the larger farm will be the most economical, and will render the largest rent to the landlord."—Vol. i. 113.

Land is constantly changing hands, and "people of all classes," says
Mr. Kay—

"Are able to become proprietors. Shopkeepers and labourers of the towns purchase gardens outside the towns, where they and their families work in the fine evenings, in raising vegetables and fruit for the use of their households; shopkeepers, who have laid by a little competence, purchase farms, to which they and their families retire from the toil and disquiet of a town life; farmers purchase the farms they used formerly to rent of great land-owners; while most of the peasants of these countries have purchased and live upon farms of their own, or are now economizing and laying by all that they can possibly spare from their earnings, in order therewith as soon as possible to purchase a farm or a garden."—Vol. i. 58.