tion.[1] Now the situation of French metayers under the old regime by no means represents the typical form of the contract. It is essential to that form, that the proprietor pays all the taxes. But in France the exemption of the noblesse from direct taxation had led the Government to throw the whole burthen of their ever-increasing fiscal exactions upon the occupiers: and it is to these exactions that Turgot ascribed the extreme wretchedness of the metayers: a wretchedness in some cases so excessive, that in Limousin and Angoumois (the provinces which he administered) they had seldom more, according to him, after deducting all burthens, than from twenty-five to thirty livres (20 to 24 shillings) per head for their whole annual consumption: "je ne dis pas en argent, mais en comptant tout ce qu'ils consomment en nature sur ce qu'ils ont récolté."[2] When we add that they had not the virtual fixity of tenure of the metayers of Italy, ("in Limousin," says Arthur Young,[3] "the metayers
- ↑ M. de Tracy is partially an exception, inasmuch as his experience reaches lower down than the revolutionary period; but he admits (as Mr. Jones has himself stated in another place) that he is acquainted only with a limited district, of great subdivision and unfertile soil.
M. Passy is of opinion, that a French peasantry must be in indigence and the country badly cultivated on a metayer system, because the proportion of the produce claimable by the landlord is too high; it being only in more favourable climates that any land, not of the most exuberant fertility, can pay half its gross produce in rent, and leave enough to peasant farmers to enable them to grow successfully the more expensive and valuable products of agriculture. (Systèmes de Culture, p. 35.) This is an objection only to a particular numerical proportion, which is indeed the common one, but is not essential to the system. - ↑ See the "Mémoire sur la Surcharge des Impositions qu'éprouvait la Généralité de Limoges, adressé au Conseil d'Etat en 1766," pp. 260—304 of the fourth volume of Turgot's Works. The occasional engagements of landlords (as mentioned by Arthur Young) to pay a part of the taxes, were, according to Turgot, of recent origin, under the compulsion of actual necessity. "Le propriétaire ne's'y prête qu'autant qu'il ne peut trouver de métayer autrement; ainsi, même dans ce cas-là, le métayer est toujours réduit à ce qu'il faut précisément pour ne pas mourir de faim." (p. 275.)
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 404.
