The influence such a mode of life produces on the character of the people is a consideration of higher moment than its economical results. And on this point observation seems in general to confirm the opinion which we should naturally form beforehand. Compared with the employments of mechanics, that of the husbandman demands a much higher and more habitual exercise of the faculty of judgment. His mind is not tied down to the repetition of the same act, chipping a stone, straightening a wire, watching the whirling of a wheel, from the beginning of the year to the end, but almost each day brings a new set of thoughts with it. He cannot proceed a step without forming processes of induction from his observations, and exercising his reason as to the connection of the manifold phenomena he sees around him with their proper causes. The peasant proprietor has to task his inventive faculties too, in order to turn all his humble resources to the best advantage; and his success depends more upon his intelligent use of the limited means at his command, than upon the mere bodily energy of his labour. Of such a person it is, therefore, truly and pregnantly said by Mr Laing, that though he may not be able to read or write, he has an educated mind—a mind trained and disciplined in the school of nature. And his position favours the development of his moral powers still more than his intellectual faculties, by teaching him patience, self-restraint, thought for the future, and, above all, that humility which can scarcely fail to be felt by one who finds himself ever in contact with unseen powers and influences beyond his control.
The general diffusion of the means of comfort and of simple enjoyment, earned by unbought rural industry, is an idea that takes a strong hold of the imagination. The fancy wanders back to the days of the old yeomen of England, or further still to Horace's charming pictures of country life, or to Claudian's Old Man of Verona, thus rendered into glorious English by Sir John Beaumont:—
"Thrice happy he whose age is spent upon his owne,
The same house sees him old that him a child hath known;
He leans upon his staffe in sand where once he crept—
His memory long descentes of one poor cote hath kept.
Unskilful in affaires, he knows no city neare,
So freely he enjoys the light of heaven more cleare.
The yeeres by sev'rall corne—not consuls he computes;
He notes the spring by floures, and autumne by the fruits—
One space put down the sun, and bring again his rays;
Thus by a certaine orbe he measures out his dayes,
Rememb'ring some greate oke from small beginning spred,
He sees the woode grow old which with himself was bred," &c.
In every man's mind we believe there is a quiet corner, where the memories or the imaginations of country life take root and thrive spontaneously. Even the old, hardened, care-worn dweller among the sights and sins of cities will "babble o' green fields" when all other earthly things have faded from his mind. In England especially, the preference for country life amounts almost to a passion; and most of us are ready enough to admit, without demanding many reasons, that a people whose chief employment and dependence is the cultivation of their own lands, will be individually happier than if the scene of their labours were in the mine or the mill. But let us beware lest our rural partialities lead us too far.
We may acknowledge that the social condition of a country in which the land is distributed into small properties, affords, in many respects, a better chance of contentment to the people than is enjoyed by the labouring classes generally in Britain. But whether such a system be adapted to our circumstances, whether its introduction to any considerable extent be at all practicable here, is obviously quite another question. The subject has been treated hitherto by British authors with too little reference to the condition of their own country. Benevolent enthusiasts talk of peasant-proprietorship as if it were a harbour of refuge from all our difficulties, as if a return to that unsophisticated mode of life under which—ut prisca gens mortalium—each man of us should eat and be satisfied with the fruits reared by his own labour upon his own land, were at once the simplest and the most obvious remedy for our complicated social evils, and as easily accomplished as the passing of a railway suspension bill. Even Mr Laing, we think, in his former works, directed attention perhaps too exclusively to the benefits which he saw to be connected with the system in the northern parts of the Continent, without sufficiently adverting to the causes which render it unsuitable for countries situated like ours. But this omission has been remedied in the work before us, in which, after tracing the beneficial results of a minute subdivision of land property, he turns the picture, and impartially points out its unfavourable features; and to any one who has been indulging in the dream that the culture and territorial system of Belgium or Norway can be transplanted into the soil of England, we earnestly recommend the study of Mr Laing's sixth chapter. We cannot afford space to follow him through the adverse side of the argument, but may state briefly the chief points he brings forward.
In the first place, the condition of a society in which the population is principally employed in raising their food upon their own little properties, is necessarily a stationary condition. We speak, be it observed, of a people principally engaged in this occupation; for, in proportion as commerce and manufactures increase among them, labour will become expensive, capital will accumulate in masses, and the peculiar advantages of the small estate system will gradually disappear. The estates themselves will cease to be small; for, as a natural result, men who have made money will add farm to farm, and create large properties, unless there be some counteracting influence, such as the law of equal succession in France, to disperse these accumulations as fast as they arise. Two conditions, then, are necessary to the continuance of peasant-proprietorship among a people as a permanent institution. 1st, An imperfect development of trade and manufactures; and, 2d, a law of inheritance that shall discourage men from forming large properties and transmitting them to their heirs. The state of such a community then, we say, is a stationary one. Every man is like his neighbour, and each succeeding generation is only a copy of the one that preceded it—contented, it may be, industrious and peaceable, but incapable of making a single important step in civilisation. And here we see the nature and extent of that bewildering contrariety which we have noticed between man's social progress and his other interests of happiness and morality. We cannot resist the conviction that the proper destiny of man is, that in every community each generation should be wiser, as well as better and happier, than that which has gone before it. But here we have before us a condition eminently fitted to favour the latter objects, while it acts as a barrier to all material improvement in the arts, the economical applications of science, and all the refinements of social life. In his habits, tastes, and opinions, the bauer of this generation in the Rhenish provinces, the udaller of Norway, is just the same as his forefathers were five hundred years ago. His simple wants are supplied almost entirely by the industry of his own household, and the travelling pedlar furnishes him with the few articles of luxury in which he indulges. He is not only the owner, cultivator, and labourer of the land, but he is usually his own carpenter, builder, saddler, baker, brewer—often his own clothier, tailor, and shoemaker. Granting, then, that the gross produce of the soil is greater when cultivated by a race of petty landowners, than by capitalists employing hired labour, and that the land will thus maintain a greater number of agricultural labourers, it is obvious that the surplus produce that remains for the support of other branches of industry is diminished in exactly an inverse ratio. The production of commodities for exchange is therefore inconsiderable; and the growth and circulation of capital are necessarily slow.
"Petty cultivation, when pushed to its farthest extent, terminates in spade husbandry, and in it, therefore, the utmost consequences of a minute subdivision of land must be seen. There is no doubt that a country cultivated in this way could be made to produce much more than under any other system of agriculture; and were food the only necessary of man, it might therefore support a much larger population from the growth of its own soil. But then the wealth of this population would be reduced to a bare subsistence; the whole crop, or nearly all, would be consumed by those employed in raising it, and there would be little or nothing over to purchase home or foreign manufactures, the productions of art, or the works of genius, and no means of supporting a population engaged in such occupations. And even though persons might be found willing to addict themselves to the arts and sciences without expectation of pecuniary reward, yet none would be rich enough to have leisure to follow such pursuits. Thus, gradually, a universal barbarism would overspread the land."
Mr Ramsay, from whom we have copied these sentences, and whose judicious remarks on this subject well deserve the attention of the inquirer, here supposes the system of petty cultivation carried out to its utmost limits; but the same consequences, though in a less degree, will necessarily follow every step in that direction. And in point of fact, it is precisely the state of matters in those countries of Europe where agriculture is wholly carried on by peasant proprietors,—where, consequently, there is no independent and wealthy class to maintain a home trade; and the trifling commerce that exists is kept alive chiefly by the demands of that class who live on Government employment, and at the expense of the public.