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Chap. iii.

Sect. 6.

Metayer rents may increase, it is clear, from two Book I. causes, from an increase of the whole produce effected by the greater skill or industry of the tenant, or from an increase of the landlord's proportion of the Metayers. produce, the amount of the produce itself remaining the same. When rent increases, and the produce remains stationary, the country at large gains nothing by the increase; its means of paying taxes, of supporting fleets and armies, are just what they were before there has been a transfer of wealth, but no increase of it; but when metayer rents increase, because the produce has become larger, then the country itself is richer to that extent; its power of paying taxes, of supporting fleets and armies has been increased; there has been an increase of wealth, not a mere transfer from one hand to another of what before existed. Such an increase of rents indicates also another increase of wealth as extensive, and more beneficial, which is found in the augmentation of the revenues of the metayers themselves, whose half the produce is augmented to precisely the same extent as the landlord's.

The existence of rents upon the metayer system, is in no degree dependent upon the existence of different qualities of soil or of different returns to the stock and labor employed. The landlords of any country who, with small quantities of stock, have quantities of land, sufficient to enable a body of peasant laborers to maintain themselves, would continue to derive a revenue as landowners from sharing in the produce of the industry of those laborers, though all the lands in the country were perfectly equal in quality.

Book I.

In metayer countries the wages of the main Sect. 6. body of the people depend upon the rent they

Chap. iii.

pay. The quantity of produce being determined Metayers. by the fertility of the soil, the extent of the me

tairie, and the skill, industry, and efficiency of the metayer, then the division of that produce, on which division his wages depend, is determined by his contract with the landlord. In like manner the amount of rent in such countries is determined by the amount of wages. The whole amount of produce being decided as before, the landlord's share, or the rent, depends upon the contract he makes with the laborer, that is, upon the amount deducted as wages.

Of the three large classes of peasant rents, metayer rents prevail the least extensively. They spread over a portion of the cultivated surface of the earth considerably less than those in which labor rents or ryot rents predominate. But they occupy countries which have long been the seats of nations eminent in the foremost ranks of civilized people, and which are likely for many ages to be among the most distinguished depositaries of the knowledge and the arts of mankind.

These too are agricultural nations: that is, by far the greater part of their productive population is employed in agriculture. The extent of their wealth must be mainly dependent, therefore, on the success of their agriculture, and the success of their agriculture will be determined in a great degree by the nature of the conditions under which the land is occupied, and by the character of their tenantry.

Not only the wealth of a nation, but the composition of society, the extent and the respective influence of the different classes of which it consists,

Sect. 6.

Chap. iii.

are powerfully affected by the efficiency of agriculture. Book I. The extent of the classes maintained in non-agricultural employments throughout the world, must be determined by the quantity of food which the culti- Metayers.. vators produce beyond what is necessary for their own maintenance. The agriculturists of England for instance produce food sufficient to maintain themselves, and double their own numbers. Now the existence of this large non-agricultural population, the wealth and influence of its employers, and of those persons who traffic in the produce of its industry, affect in a very striking manner the actual elements of political power among the English, their practical constitution, and their national character and habits. To the absence of such a body of non-agriculturists and of the wealth and influence which accompany their existence, we may trace many of the political phenomena to be observed among our continental neighbours. If the agriculture of those neighbours should ever become so efficient, as to enable them to maintain a non-agricultural population, at all proportionable to our own, they may perhaps approximate to a social and political organization similar to that seen here. At all events they will have the means of doing so.

I am giving, it will be remembered, no opinion on the desirableness of such an approximation, but there can be no question as to the striking effects the change must produce on their habits and institutions, and on the amount of their national strength and external influence.

That no very marked change in the efficiency of agriculture, and in the relative numbers of

Chap. iii.

Sect. 6.

Metayers.

BOOK I. agricultural and non-agricultural population will take place in any nation, while the metayer system remains in full force, is what we are entitled to assume, from the view we have already taken of the inherent faults and of the past effects of that system. The actual prevalence of metayer rents therefore, their modifications, their gradual progress in some cases towards different forms of holding, in others, the sturdy resistance the system offers to the assaults of time and even to the wishes and the efforts of those, who would willingly rid themselves of it; these are all circumstances to be studied carefully by those who would discern the causes of the actual state of some of the most interesting countries in Europe, or speculate upon the progress of future changes either in their political and social institutions, or in their relative strength and power as nations.

To these claims to an attentive examination we add another of not less importance, which has been already incidentally mentioned, namely, the strict connection which metayer rents have (in common with the other systems of peasant rents) with the wages of by far the larger portion of the industrious population of countries in which they prevail. This connection brings their effects into close contact with the comforts, the character and condition of an important division of the great family of mankind, and is alone sufficient to secure to them, in all their details and variations, the anxious attention of the statesman and practical philanthropist.

109

CHAP. IV. SECT. I.

On Ryot Rents.

Book I.

Chap. iv.

Sect. 1.

Rents.

RYOT Rents are, with a few exceptions, peculiar to Asia1. They are produce rents paid by á laborer, raising his own wages from the soil, to the sovereign as its proprietor. They are usually Ryot accompanied by a precarious right on the part of the tenant, to remain the occupant of his allotment of land, while he pays the rent demanded from him. These rents originate in the rights of the sovereign, as sole proprietor of the soil of his dominions. Such rights, we have seen, have been acknowledged at some period by most nations. In Europe they have disappeared or become nominal; but the Asiatic sovereigns continue to be, as they have been for a long series of ages, the direct landlords of the peasant tenants, who maintain themselves on the soil of their dominions. Indications present themselves occasionally, which would lead us to conclude that in portions of that quarter of the globe, a state of things once existed, under which the rights to the land must have been in a different state from that in which we see them: but it was in an antiquity so remote, as to baffle all attempts at investigation. Within the period of historical memory,

They have been introduced by Asiatics into Turkey in Europe. They exist in Egypt; and may perhaps hereafter be traced in Africa.

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