The tax evidently did not begin to move from the shoulders of the laborer to those of the employer, till the first had been gradually reduced to the minimum of subsistence, and then only moved to such an extent as was necessary to preserve to him that minimum. The revolution converted many of these metayers into small proprietors, but they still abound in France; and their condition seems to have altered for the better, less than might have been expected from the changes which have taken place in the system of taxation. Mr. Destutt de Tracy, a member of the Institute, and peer of France under the Emperor, who states himself to have been for 40 years proprietor of a domain farmed by metayers, gives a wretched account of their condition, and states that he is acquainted with metairies, which have never, in the memory of man, supplied the food of the metayers from their own half of the produce. As his description is the most authentic account of this tenancy as it exists at present in France, I subjoin it. "Ils forment ce que l'on appelle communément des domaines ou des metairies, et ils y attachent frequemment autant et plus de terres qu'il n'y en a dans les grandes fermes, surtout si l'on ne dedaigne pas de mettre en ligne de compte les terres vagues, qui ordinairement ne sont pas rares dans ces pays, et qui ne sont pas tout-à-fait sans utilité, puisqu' on s'en sert pour le pacage, ou meme pour y faire de 2 Destutt de Tracy Traitè D'Economie Politique, p. 116. Book I. Sect. 4. Chap. iii. French Metayers. BOOK I. temps en temps quelques emblavures afin de laisser reposer les champs plus habituellement cultivés. Chap. iii. Sect. 4. French Metayers. Le propriétaire est donc reduit a les garnir lui-même de bestiaux, d' utensiles, et de tout ce qui est necessaire a l'exploitation, et à y établir une famille de paysans, qui n'ont que leur bras, et avec lesquels il convient ordinairement, au lieu de leur donner des gages, de leur abandonner la moitié du produit, pour le salaire de leurs peines. C'est de là qu'ils sont appelès metayers, travailleurs à moitié. Si la terre est trop mauvaise, cette moitié des produits est manifestement insuffisante pour faire vivre, même miserablement, le nombre d'hommes necessaire pour la travailler; ils s'endettent bientôt, et on est obligé de les renvoyer. Cependant on en trouve toujours pour les remplacer, parce qu'il y a toujours des malheureux qui ne savent que devenir. Ceux-là même vont ailleurs, où ils ont souvent le même sort. Je connais de ces métairies, qui de memoire d'homme n'ont jamais nourri leurs laboreurs au moyen de leur moitiè de fruits." It appears by an article in the Foreign Quarterly, published while these pages were in the press, that in spite of the multiplication of small proprietors since the revolution, metayers are supposed still to cultivate one-half of France. Their actual condition is little improved, it appears, by the change which has taken place in the system of taxation, and their sufferings are aggravated by the spread of a class of middle-men (always existing to some extent) who without changing the terms on Book I. which the actual cultivator holds the soil, pays a money-rent to the proprietor, and grinds and Sect. 4. Chap. iii. oppresses the tenant to make his bargain profit- French able. The condition of the French metayers has Metayers. been treated of with some fulness. This will enable us to review more rapidly the same class of tenantry existing in other countries, and differing from the French only in local peculiarities. SECTION V. On Metayer Rents in Italy. Chap. iii. Sect. 5. Italian Metayers. THE decline of the power of the Roman and Book I. Byzantine Emperors in Italy was gradual and slow; the shade of her great name seemed to suspend a shield for a time before the precincts of the ancient capital. Both the language and the history of the Italians indicate, that the alterations in the habits and in the mechanism of society, produced in the original seats of the empire by the final change of masters and intermixture of races, were much less violent and general than those which took place in the distant provinces. From many districts of Italy it is probable that the coloni medietarii never disappeared, and that the peasants who now cultivate the soil have succeeded to them in an unbroken line. The large grazing farms of Lombardy, the tracts of the Campagna, the maremnæ which occur on the coast, are occupied by capitalists; G Chap. iii. Sect. 5. Italian BOOK I. for wherever large herds of cattle are to be maintained, neither the peasant nor the landlords are able to supply them. But in spite of these, and perMetayers. haps other exceptions, Italy, from the Alps to Calabria, is still covered with metayers'. The metairies of Italy are less than those of France. Their extent will every where be governed by what the landlord supposes to be his interest: if it is an object with him that his estates should not have fewer hands than are equal to its complete cultivation, so it is an object with him, that it should not have more. The number of acres which a metayer and his family can manage, must depend much on the course of crops and mode of tillage. In France the system of cropping, once universal in Northern Europe, still prevails extensively; that is, corn crops while the land can bear them, and then fallows, or leys of some years standing, with some waste ground for pasture. On such a plan a family require and can manage a considerable tract. In Italy the rotation of crops practised by the Romans is still carried on; the legumina recommended by Virgil are extensively cultivated, and the cattle are often fed from the produce of the arable ground. On such a system, a much smaller quantity of land will employ and maintain a family. Metayers are always found ready to accept a subdivision. For reasons we shall have to explain presently, those motives to a voluntary forbearance from early marriages which affect the higher classes in all countries, and all classes in 1 That is, where the lands are let: small proprietors are not uncommon. Book I. Sect. 5. Italian some countries have rarely much influence on a peasantry receiving the wages of their labor in the shape of raw produce raised by themselves. Such are metayers: their multiplication as, we have seen Metayers. in the case of France, usually goes on till they are stopped by the smallness of their maintenance, or, as more often happens, by the policy of the proprietors refusing to subdivide lands, already supplied with labor beyond the point they deem most advantageous to themselves. The metayer farms in different parts of Italy are of different sizes; those of Tuscany include about ten acres. But in Naples they do not exceed five, and the tenants there pay two-thirds of the produce as rents. Their climate and soil enable them to do this: the first permits them to dispense with many things which are strictly necessaries elsewhere, while the earth with bounteous fertility produces eight crops in five years, in fields shaded at the same time by a profitable forest of fruit trees and vines. Still, making ample allowance for these advantages, one-third of the produce of five acres must yield a miserable subsistence to a peasant, subject all the while to the exactions of a needy government, and of an aristocracy armed with all sorts of mischievous powers and privileges, and extremely inclined to abuse them. The Tuscan 2 There are, however, parts of Tuscany where it is the custom for the eldest son only to marry, but no restraints of this kind have prevented the Italian metayers, generally, from increasing till their numbers became fully equal to the demands of the proprietors, and in many cases really burthensome to agriculture. |