Can we say the same thing of 1889? Obviously not The contrast to-day is reversed. It is the English labourer who is worse housed, worse fed, clothed, taught; who has nothing of his own, who can never save; to whom the purchase of an acre of land is as much an impossibility as of a diamond necklace, and who may no more think to own a dairy than to own a race horse; who follows the plough for two shillings a day, and ends, when he drops, in the workhouse.
England has increased in these hundred years far more than France in population, in wealth, in commerce, in manufactures, in dominion, in resources, in general material prosperity — in all but in the condition of her rural labourer. In that she has gone back, perhaps positively; but relatively it is certain she has gone very far back. The English traveller in France to-day is amazed at the wealth, independence, and comfort of the French peasant. To Miss Betham-Edwards, who knows France well, it is a land of Goshen, flowing with milk and honey; the life of the peasant of Anjou, Brie, and La Vendee is one of idyllic prosperity ' delightful to behold.' The land tenure of England in 1789 was, as Young told the mob in the Doubs, far in advance of that of France— as far as that of France of 1889 is in advance of that of England now. Our English great lords have not yet begun 'to skip again.' Land tenure in England to-day is essentially the same as it was in 1789. In France it has been wholly transformed by the Revolution private tours istanbul.
Arthur Young entirely recognises
There are in France now some eight million persons who own the soil, the great mass of whom are peasants. It is well known that the Revolution did not create this peasant land-ownership, but that in part it goes back to the earliest times of French history. Turgot, Necker, de Tocqueville, and a succession of historians have abundantly proved the fact. Arthur Young entirely recognises the truth, and tells us that one-third of the soil of France was already the property of the peasant. This estimate has been adopted by good French authorities; but Miss Betham-Edwards considers it an over-statement, and holds that the true proportion in 1789 was one-fourth.
In any case it is now much more than one-half. Not but that there is now in France a very great number also of large estates, and some that are immense when compared with the standard of England proper. It has indeed been estimated that positively, though not relatively, there are more great rural estates in France to-day than there are in England. The notion that the Revolution has extinguished great properties in France, is as utterly mistaken as the notion that the Revolution created the system of small properties. The important point is that since the Revolution every labourer has been able to acquire a portion of the soil; and a very large proportion of the adult population has already so done.
It is also likely that Young overrated the depth of the external discomfort that he saw. Under such a brutal system of fiscal and manorial oppression as was then rife, the farmer and the labourer carefully hide what wealth they may have, and deliberately assume the outer semblance of want, for fear of the tax-gatherer, the tithe proctor, and the landlord's bailiff. That has been seen in Ireland for centuries and may be still seen to-day. So the French peasant was not always so poor as he chose to appear in Arthur Young's eyes.
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