The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-10 00:00:00

grains, earn, end ibider; and the rile err, that only carry
artificial grams, eltem renewed, ars by se mum unsuitable
foe meek darer If they are heavy, sold. sal raked with
wet during the had swan, they require roes phis& ; sad
the inners& miller of hones that then rooms seesseary
dose net provost berg extended over large =liege
those labors whisk their draplisity renders easy ta Omit.
Thus it is, that, as Asa as me 0111000011 Werner is derange
the nailed errs of things, the guilder et the
h•nd to betieshiew of the eine of posisedoes. Lim
sequin Ohtani where grain mops and a few vegetable* of
tray Won Mae best to maturity ; end small farms
diramd these
p■sies of the territory where all sorts of crops
may hi grown. hio In England even, whey. 00 many causes
enngenste in brew of large farms, there are still a consider-
able gisiaber of Ina ones ; and it is upon wile of • silicious
ramp mature that they have maintained their ground.
lor 611 Mr. Porter (" Progress of the Nation," vol. I.
p. 180) *Ma are in England 94,883 farmers, who labour
their pennsiene without any other maistaace than that of
*drawling. By adding to these an unknown number
sub esq*sy may one or two servants it will be found that
there cant in England a much number of middle or
assalliiired farms than is gene ly supposed. In France, it
is where the vegetable mould is of a clayey nature, as in
Brie, Beaune, and Vexin, that large firms abound ; while in
French Flanders the light and open soils have there given
rise to small and middle-sired farms. No country surprise
Belgium in an agricultural point of view, and none arm
better than it how far the influence of the distinctive quali-
ties of the soil extends. Each sort of soil there gives rise to
a different species of management. In the Walloon country,
in the environs of teethe, .Todoigne, and Nivelles, the heavy
and strong lands are let out in very large farms ; in Brabant,
the lighter and more friable soils have given rise to farms of
a middle order; and on the light sandy plains of St. Nicolas
and Termonde, only very small farms are to be seen. Be-
sides, such facts are everywhere else apparent; for it is
rarely observed that the striking contrasts which the lama
cantons or even parishes present, are traceable to any other
cause than the varieties of the soil in the different portions
of the territory."
The author oontradices the idea that the state of the law
has so much influence as is generally supposed
" It is not needful to go out of France for a proof of there
being no necessary connexion betwixt the dimensions of
estates and those of farms. What in our country distin-
guishes the greatest domains from others, is their being
composed of a greeter number of contiguous farms; but of
farms which, let out to different tenants, have each only
the quantity of land usually let to one person in tbe dis-
tricts where they lie. That is true of the departments
of the centre and the west, where the metairies and
farms on great estates are not different, in any respect,
from thews fiend in their vicinity. The like is also true of
the rich departments of the north, where the proprietor
know their own interest better than to unite, in a tripe
farm, posiessions whose high rents attest their perfect aihresi.
Son to the exigencies of the load consumption. In .a ward.
the same thing holds good throughout; because, in every
locality, the extent of farms depeuds on *muses entirely dies
tinet from the amount of the fortunes of those who are the
proprietors of them.
" Neither the equality of rights in heritable successions, nee
the free access given to all to the advantages of property,
conduct, as so many persons have imegined, to the levelling
of conditions and fortunes. If this regime communicates
more mobility to fortunes, it still 1 room for the forms.
tion of all the diversities of condition, without which society
would cease to be progressive. It is now upwards of half a
century since the destinies of France were confided to it;
and the working classes Dave not ceased to increase in num-
ben, while the higher classes, far from being impoverished,
have gained in opulence, and contain among them a greater
number of large fortunes than at any forme( period. What
is more, in spite of the subdivisions which the soil has under-
gone, the number of proprietors has not even augmented
with the same rapidity as the total population ; fur, whilst
the latter has advanced at the rate of 14 per cent. in twenty
years, it is only at the rate of 8 per cent. that, within the
same period, the increase in the number of proprietors has
taken place. These facts„:easy to verify (and all other coun-
tries where the privileges of real property have been abo-
lished present the like), prove how powerful are the laws
which, in all ages and under the most different institutions,
have implanted the principle of inequality in the bosom of
societies, and how mistaken are these who apprehend that
France will one day resemble a draught-bred, where each
family, reduced to its small square or patch of land, will be
compelled, in order to subsist, to labour it with their own
hands. The effect of the laws which in France have freed
property from the shackles of primogeniture and
entails, has been, not the gradual breaking down et
private fortunes, but the disrersal of the estates of whirl
they were made up. Two causes have more especially cow
curred to break down more rare, than to recompose othen
—the one is the divisions effected amongst heirs of domains
formerly belonging to one person ; the other, and the most
powerful, consists in the advantage which has hitherto at-1
tattled to the sales of estates in separate portions. Small
capitals being the most numerous, are attracted towards all
the investments that snit them ; and the smaller the lots
are which are offered for sale, the greater is the number of
competitors who come forward to raise the price. Hence, it
is usual to break down, for sale, into al lots, properties,
each of which formed one whole ; and this accounts fur those
subdivisions which, in several departments, have been going
on with so much rapidity. But whatever advantage may
accrue to sellers by the breaking down of their properties, it
would be a mistake to imagine that these sales in detail ne-
cessarily change or modify the established systems of farm-
ing. The soil and the management of it are but rarely
united in the same heads; both have their distinctive causes
et oresaimtion, sad, far from following property in its mu-
rations, it is, on the contrary, the exigencies of farming that
give to these mutations their rules and limits. In fact, every
proprietor, who disposes of his property, has one object In
view, namely, to obtain for it the largest stun possible. Thus
as soon as a piece of land or an estate cannot be divided
without losing a part of its tearable value, he refrains from
dismembering it.
Mr. Pass, admits the great evils arising from a too great
subdivision of property amongst a labouring, and in their
peculiar circumstances, a pauper class, but he maintains that
this evil naturally corrects itself, and that land being found
worth nothing in such small portions and few hands, will
in the nature of things be weld and agglomerated, and
brought back to productive dimensions and productive hands.