The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-07 00:00:00

M. de Ville', said in 1826—" Fortunes perhaps may be
reeonstructeel, but not properties. It is easy to divide the
soil, but it is impossible to reunite it. The greatest 'seri-
fices which one might be disposed to make to reconstruct a
divided property. would often fail of success. Man attaches
himself naturally to the spot of ground he has bought or
inherited. The smaller it is, the more obstinately he gene-
rally clings to it. You might cover it with gold without
persuading him to accept your price. And, accordingly,
there is no instance of a great property formed again from
the fractions of one which has been divided. Small properties
are no doubt necessary, but i should wish to preserve the
middling class, and prevent the higher from being alto-
gether dismembered."—Vol. i., p. 77.
There is another proof of the progress of this ssorcelk-
men!. The landed property of France iv, as we have stated,
valued at 1,580 millions sterling. Now on all changes of
property there is a registration and an ad valorem duty, and
Irom the offieial accounts it appears that in the same ten
years, from 1826 to 1835, the value of 938 millions ster-
ling, or 59 per cent. of the territorial property of France,
actually changed hands (p. I 11). The whole extent of these
prodigious mutations' is, it is obvious, not directly attribu-
table to the law. By the course of nature, great changes
on so large a surface in such a number of years are inevita-
ble ; but the law had been lung before cutting up the ter-
ritory into those small fractions which facilitated or neces-
sitated such extensive mutations. About 40 per cent. on
the whole were changes by inheritance-50 per cent. were
sales, exchanges, forfeitures, &c.—about 10 per cent. were
gifts. This latter head was only another form for executing
or evading the laws of inheritance, which Mly, therefore, be
fairly calculated to have directly influenced nearly half of
the entire change—besides, as we have just said, creating
indirecUy the multiplication of other transfers. The 50 per
cent. of sales, tic., our authors consider as the most alarming
feature of the whole case, as being evidence of the distress of
the agricultural interest, which found itself driven, most
reluctantly, to such extensive sacrifices (p. 118). What, in-
deed, should we think of the state of England if one-half of
the landed property had changed hands within ten years,
and that one-half of that change had been by sheriff's ales?
There is yet another element of computation to be drawn
from an analogous sourer. In France all these changes of
property, of whatever kind, are executed before notaries.
Now it appears from • report of the Minister of Justice to
Louis Philippe, 10th April, 1842, that in the year 1840 there
had passed in France the enormous number of 3,500,000
notarial seta, being in the proportion of about one transac-
tion for every ten souls—on an average two families—of the
whole population—evidence, our authors allege, and we
believe truly, of not merely a great change and subdivision
of property, but an extravagant burden of law expenses—an
important point, to which we shall recur by and bye.
The general result of these verious computations is this
That there are in France 33,000,000 souls, composing
7,000,000 families—that of these '27,000,000 souls belong to
5,600,000 families, each possessing landed property.