Agriculture.
M. Eugène Nau, in his pamphlet on the influence of agriculture on civilisation, endeavoured to bring his countrymen to look with favour on the principal source of prosperity in all tropical countries; but the seed he sowed fell on revolutionary soil, and agriculture is more neglected than ever.
And yet in all the wide world there is not a country more suited to agriculture than Hayti; not one where the returns for labour are more magnificent; a rich, well-watered soil, with a sun which actually appears to draw vegetation towards itself with such energetic force that the growth of plants, though not actually visible to the eye, may be almost daily measured.
The system of cultivation varies greatly. In the north an effort was made by King Christophe to keep up large estates, whilst in the west and south President Pétion encouraged the division of the land among peasant proprietors. Large estates still remain, however, in these provinces, which are cultivated under different arrangements, to which I will hereafter refer. The general rule is that large estates obtain mostly in the plains, whilst in the mountains the land is practically in the hands of the peasantry, though many large estates exist nominally.
In 1877 a law was passed for regulating the management of the State domains, for selling them or leasing them for nine years. A longer lease would require a special authorisation of the Legislature. This last clause is principally aimed at foreigners, whom the Haytians desire to keep away from all interest in land.
The national estates lie in different parts of the country, and the extent of them in the aggregate is but imperfectly known, owing to careless administration. According to an official return published in 1877, there were under lease 2105 farms of national land, containing about 230,000 acres, let on an average at the rate of two shillings per acre.
The laws on the tenure of real estate are, with some modifications, the same as the agrarian laws that were framed by the French during their possession of the country, and are remarkable for that minute accuracy and definition of right which characterise French laws in general.
For the better elucidation of the subject a few retrospective notices are necessary.
Going back to 1804, the year of independence, one of the first acts of Dessalines was to create a national domain out of the following elements:—
All the real estate which constituted the State domains during the French period.