Peasant proprietor

“ The proprietors never, so far as we know, laid down formally such a principle, but in practice they did all in their power to retain the peasants actually settled on their estates. For this purpose some simply employed force, whilst others acted under cover of legal formalities. The peasant who accepted land from a proprietor rarely brought with him the necessary implements, cattle, and capital to begin at once his occupations, and to feed himself and his family till the ensuing harvest. ”

“ The labourers, though owning the land, might let it to a tenant, and work under him as hired servants. But this arrangement, even in the very rare cases which could give rise to it, would not require any particular discussion, since it would not differ in any material respect from the threefold system of labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The other case is the not uncommon one, in which a peasant proprietor owns and cultivates the land, but raises the little capital required, by a mortgage upon it. ”

“ The government, however, to a certain extent, has encouraged peasant proprietorship, but only with very small parcels of land; and it would be an unusual thing in Germany, especially in Prussia, to find a peasant owning more than twenty or thirty acres of land, most of the land being held by the peasants in such small quantities that after working their own lands they have time left to work the lands of the adjoining landed proprietor at a very small wage. ”

“ Much, however, of the land is owned in portions too small to require any other labour than that of the peasant and his family, or fully to occupy even that. The capital employed is not always that of the peasant proprietor, many of these small properties being mortgaged to obtain the means of cultivating ”

“ If the peasant proprietor class existed here to such an extent as to effectually compete with them, they would have to give a price that would not yield 11⁄2 per cent. for agricultural land. They do, then, get their land very cheap, which is a result, perhaps one that was not originally foreseen, of the action during three centuries of our poor law. ”

“ The proprietor is sometimes, indeed, paid in kind by the peasant, and then sells the grain himself; but the peasant could easily attend to that business, and would manage it quite as well as his landlord. ”

“ When a peasant has worked the land well, the proprietor himself sows in this plot the next year, and allots another piece of ground to the peasant. After these poor wretches have lived for a few years on the land of a proprietor, they still remain his debtors; the government takes their last possessions for taxes - their horse, cow, wagon, plough, clothes, bed, utensils, - and sells them all at a low price. ”

“ The peasant who inherits his rights of tenure may be in a certain sense considered as a proprietor; if the rights of the lord were removed, the land he cultivates would belong to him without restriction. ”

“ It was true that the class of peasant proprietors formerly to be found in the rural districts was tending to disappear—for the very good reason that such proprietors could, as a general rule, obtain from 40 to 50 years' purchase for their holdings, and thereby vastly increase their incomes. In the place of that class, however, there was rapidly growing up a new class of small owners, who, dwelling in or near towns or railway stations, were able to buy small freeholds. ”

“ The advocates of peasant-proprietorship, at least the better informed ones, do not now suppose that a peasant receiving a few acres out of a large English average farm (and capital to make a start) could make a subsistence out of it. They believe that peasant-proprietors could maintain themselves on small plots of rich land in and close to towns, working as market-gardeners or cowkeepers rather than as farmers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These facts and considerations are not a demonstration of the preferableness of peasant proprietorship, but they are, I think, a demonstration of one advantage, and that not an inconsiderable one, that is secured by making the land accessible to all, which it never can be while each generation is permitted so to settle and charge [Pg 7] it as practically to take it out of the market of the generation that will follow. ”

“ Thus foreign speculators in land were excluded, while a class of peasant proprietors was created; its numbers being increased by the custom that, if any man reclaimed a piece of waste land, it became his own property after ten years. ”

“ This system of peasant proprietorship has worked remarkably well in the country, nine-tenths of the farmers being now freeholders; they have consequently a {13} more substantial interest in the development of their farms and in the improvement of their land. ”

“ The existence of a peasant proprietary is not incompatible with differential advantages in the cultivation of land, although the peasant may pay a rent to himself and not to another man. The chief difficulty of applying the theory to the case of peasant proprietors seem rather to arise from another source. They do not always cultivate with a single eye to the sale of the produce in the market. ”

“ The government advances the purchase-money to the peasant in the form of a five per cent bond, and this the proprietor receives for his land, and the government takes the payment of the peasant by instalments, through a series of years. ”

“ It has sometimes been argued that it is difficult to bring the case of peasant proprietors within the comprehension of the theory, because they combine in their own person the functions of landlords, tenants, and labourers. ”

“ I have shown the blind evolution that is taking place in the holdings of the peasantry, a change unconscious and hidden, by which, if I may say so, the spirit of ownership is being renewed. There is a period of almost a month and a half during the year, a particularly active period too, when the peasant proprietors associate themselves in groups over quite an extended area and work with one another and for one another. ”

“ We conversed a little about peasant proprietorship. He instanced the case of two persons who had become owners of church land, one of eight acres, another of sixteen. He spoke of the prosperity that had crowned their labors ever since hope came to them and they had something to struggle for. He said they came now decently clad to church and market. He had been in their houses and noticed as much as two flitches of bacon hanging in the chimney. One of them owned a team of horses. A man with a team of horses on his farm is in a different position from a man with only an ass and creels. ”

“ Ouvry’s we have stated the absolute necessity of restoring the peasantry to the land, the violence that of old drove them from the soil, the necessity of many peasant proprietors to give strength and stability to the institutions of the country; that peasant proprietorship improves the character as well as the condition of the people ”

“ In many instances the peasant preferred to take the proprietor into partnership, the latter in such case providing all the expenses of cultivation, on the understanding that he should receive two-thirds of the gross product. ”

“ A still further and much more important development in the same direction is the effort to introduce "peasant proprietorship," or the ownership of small amounts of farming land by persons who would otherwise necessarily be mere laborers on other men's land. ”

“ Instead of speaking out loud and strong for peasant proprietorship, I should be thinking all the time of the three peasant proprietors in our neighbourhood—George Corey, Charles Narroway, and Billy Hoare, who are the meanest, the stingiest, the most underhand and generally despicable rascals I have ever met. ”

“ Really there is a system of peasant proprietorship, with the substantial difference that the peasant may not part with his land for money. If he works it well, it remains undisturbed in his possession and usually it goes to the son after the father. ”

“ Absolute peasant ownership is primâ facie incompatible with the very existence of a landed aristocracy; and it may be some perception of this that induces certain of the land agitators to propose fixity of tenure at a quit-rent rather than absolute peasant proprietorship. But it is clear that this is a mere evasion of the difficulty. A landlord, who is merely a rent-charger, has no more motive to reside on his estate than if he sold it and lived on the interest of the purchase-money. ”

“ The peasantry of France were occupiers of land before they were owners, and their peasant proprietorship is in the main the result rather of the abolition or redemption of seignorial dues and rights to which their old holdings were subject than of the purchase of holdings de novo by the peasantry. No doubt there were times in French history when owing to political causes demesne lands of the noblesse were confiscated and put up for sale, and some of these were purchased by the peasantry and added to their holdings. ”

“ One point, however, may, I think, be held to be certain: we shall never, in this country, see anything approximating to peasant proprietorship. That is simply inconceivable in the era of capital. Both the land and the man can be turned, now, to better account. Its advocates are either ignorant demagogues, or members of that harmless class who, having their eyes in the back of 95their heads, can only see, and wish for, what has passed away. If we ever come to have share-estates, such as I have endeavoured to describe, they will, probably, average, as I said, about 1,000 acres each. ”

“ The extinction of the class of peasant proprietors has thus very effectively aided the practice of settling and charging estates in bringing about the large agglomerations of landed property, together with all the resultant peculiarities, which distinguish our agrarian system from that of any other country. ”

“ Far other would be the effect of making them peasant proprietors. A people who in industry and providence have everything to learn—who are confessedly among the most backward of European populations in the industrial virtues—require for their regeneration the most powerful incitements by which those virtues can be stimulated: and there is no stimulus as yet comparable to property in land. ”

“ We have consistently opposed that policy which tends to give capital an undue and factitious influence, and, in its precipitate zeal to stimulate production, overlooks all other interests. But we cannot deceive ourselves with the imagination, that peasant proprietorship is the specific antidote to these evils. ”

“ If a little bit of land is the only means of supporting [Pg 355] 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. ”

“ The people were what are now called peasant proprietors, but in Cumberland and Westmoreland they have always been named ‘statesmen.’ A few of these ancient land-owners still exist, and their tenure of the land which they possess is not feudal but allodial, in so far as that they acquired their estates at a very remote period, either by establishing themselves on unoccupied lands like the ‘settlers’ in Australia or America, or by conquering previous possessors. ”

“ In 1878 Parnell urged the establishment of peasant proprietorship, and under the Act of 1881 three-quarters of the purchase-money was to be advanced on such terms as to be repayable by instalments of five per cent, per annum for thirty-five years, but only 1,000 tenants took advantage of the facilities thereby offered. ”

“ If peasant properties have any effect in promoting subdivision beyond the degree which corresponds to the cultural practices of the country, and which is customary on its large estates, the cause must lie in one of the salutary influences of the system; the eminent degree in which it promotes providence on the part of those who, not being yet peasant proprietors, hope to become so. ”

“ We in this country, after reaching the extreme on the opposite side, are now trying to get back in the direction of this ancient system. All parties seem now agreed that something of the nature of peasant proprietorship is necessary to solve the agrarian problem in Ireland and in Great Britain too. ”

“ For what is no one’s property is no one’s pride. The landlord gives the land, and the capital, or cheptel—which comprises the stock and barns, etc.; an inventory of these is taken when a tenant enters into possession, and he is compelled to keep them in repair. On his side, the peasant gives his work. And the harvest is divided, either in kind—grain, wine, olives, cattle, at the time of their maturity—or more often in money, when the peasant brings to his landlord half of the profits after the fair or market at which he has sold the produce. ”

“ Two millions pay from ten to fifty francs, and possess, on an average, six hectares, or fifteen acres. These last, says M. de Lavergne, "enjoy sometimes a real affluence. Their properties are divided by inheritance; but many of them are continually making new acquisitions by purchase, and on the whole their tendency is more to rise than to descend in the scale of wealth." Respecting the amount of debts with which the peasant proprietors are encumbered, the facts are highly and unexpectedly favourable. ”