Peasant proprietorship

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is even doubtful whether small peasant proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources. But the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is still greater than their economical value. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One might reply that in peasant ownership of land, at least, private property has good effects. [549] "But the golden age is over for the small farmer. To-day he hardly knows how to make both ends meet. He gets into debt, becomes a victim of the cattle-dealer, the real-estate jobber, the usurer; notes and mortgages ruin whole villages, even more than the frightful taxes imposed by State and commune. Small proprietorship is in a desperate condition; and even if the small farmer is still owner in name, he is in fact nothing more than a tenant paying rent to money-dealers and usurers." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thornton and others, concerning peasant-proprietors— The aggregation of land in England is promoted partly by artificial and partly by natural causes— The effects of the laws of primogeniture and entail considered, also the influence exerted by the costly system of conveyancing — The effect of the law of entail has been moaified bv the Settled Land Act of 1882 — The social effects of peasant-proprietorship considered — The condition of our own agricultural labourers and that of the peasant-proprietors of the Continent contrasted — Mr. ”

“ The revival of small freeholds, the re-institution of peasant proprietorships, are the ways out of the block at the end of the way where there is at present a deadlock in regard to the peasants' individual advancement. It is well known how admirably this system has worked in France, where millions of peasants have profited by the law in favour of small freeholds, and its regulation that such land shall always be divided equally among the children of the landholder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the real impediment to the existence of peasant properties is not so much in their creation as in their continuance. What is the value of a peasant property to a man, if he cannot mortgage it to raise capital without ruinous expense ”

“ The modern peasant proprietor is one in whose status all these privileges and servitudes have met, coalesced, and disappeared, so that they are all summed up in the question whether his land is worth holding and tilling, subject to the taxes which must be paid on it. ”

“ With a view to ensuring, on the one hand, greater economic freedom to the land-owners, and, on the other, security for the peasants from the enslaving domination of the upper class, the rural law of 1864 proclaimed the peasant-tenants full proprietors of their holdings, and the land-owners full proprietors of the remainder of the estate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why do we hear of one charter—that of the barons—and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths, shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to have lost one. ”

“ He undertook to show how advantageous a peasant proprietary would be, changing, as it would, numbers of persons from the catalogue of those who have little to gain by maintaining the rights of property, to that of those who have everything to lose by their violation. ”

“ Among the forms which society assumes under the influence of the institution of property, there are, as I have already remarked, two, otherwise of a widely dissimilar character, but resembling in this, that the ownership of the land, the labour, and the capital, is in the same hands. One of these cases is that of slavery, the other is that of peasant proprietors. In the one, the landowner owns the labour, in the other the labourer owns the land. ”

“ He can, if he chooses, and has the money, build a house upon his land, to accommodate a grown-up son—there is no squire to say that no new houses shall be built. The French peasant saves money—did he not pay the indemnity demanded by the Prussians?—but first of all, he lives on his land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Few things had more helped the mass of English peasants than the freedom they had enjoyed to use the common lands. But from about the middle of the last century commenced that wholesale private appropriation of common property which has so largely helped to complete the ruin of the English peasant. ”

“ The nobility has proved able to farm only on the largest estates. Where the nobleman would merely distribute his estate in small lots among peasant tenants, the capitalist landholder carries on agriculture on a large scale:
The average holding on which peasant tenure pays the capitalist better than farming, is less than one-half the corresponding size of a noble’s estate. ”

“ A seignior could sell his land, and still draw rent from the very peasant who had bought it of him in the shape of seignioral dues. They, too, had their 'corvées,' and the peasant was forced to labor for them a certain number of days in each year. On everything that he owned must he pay dues to them. Yes, he must pay them for the right of selling his own produce in the market. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The districts, or towns, being made responsible for this repayment to the government, a wholesome restraint is put upon the inhabitants, by which they are kept within bounds until this debt is paid. Thus the entire population is made interested in the accomplishment of the great work. The nobles who were the proprietors of the soil, receive government bonds bearing interest, and thus derive a fixed income, while each peasant becomes an independent landed proprietor. ”