THE PEASANTRY AND FARMS OF BELGIUM, 1867.*

BELGIUM, the old cock-pit of Europe,' as it was called, has lately become the chief battle-ground of a controversy in which, though never likely to be fought in blood, and assuming the peaceful guise of an economic discussion, some think they see the beginning of a revolution that will leave behind it few traces of the order of things the quarter of a century of battles that closed at Waterloo was inaugurated to maintain. Pregnant or not with so great a future, the controversy, in connection with which the rural economy of Belgium is constantly appealed to, concerning the respective effects of large estates and large farms on the one hand, and peasant properties and la petite culture upon the other, is one on many accounts deserving the attention of both the politician and the theoretical economist. As to the latter, the very existence of political economy, as an accepted branch of philosophy, is at stake, if we are to believe a writer justly commanding no little attention in the world of political letters, who affirms that the professors of what claims to be a distinct branch of science are in irreconcilable conflict

* Reprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' December 1867.

about its first principles and most general laws, citing among other examples the questions- Are small farms or large farms best?' Does the peasant proprietor thrive ?'*

That some fundamental economic doctrines are collaterally involved in the questions thus somewhat ambiguously expressed will not, we imagine, be disputed; but we venture to add, that an economist can no more be expected to decide the questions themselves from the first principles of political economy, or the general laws of production, than a mathematician to say, from the first principles of mechanics and the general laws of motion, whether large or small ships of war are best for naval engagements-or whether rifles or cannons will decide the fate of battles in future. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Mill, with which his economic readers are familiar, what the writer referred to calls first principles are in truth last principles. And political economy, like all other branches of science,

* Economists, it is believed, have worked out a system of general truths, which any shrewd man of business can readily apply. We are very proud of our great writers who have created this science. . . But when we come to study the science, we certainly do not find this agreement among its professors. There are hardly ten generalisations on which the writers are at one, and that not on the details but on the first principles, not on intricate points of practice but on the general laws of production. Who is right about currency? What are the laws of population? Are small farms or large farms best? Does the peasant proprietor thrive? Let us suppose these questions asked from a body of economists, and we should have them at cross purposes in a moment. Indeed we find ourselves not in science properly so called at all, but a collection of warm controversies on social questions. What would be the state of medicine, if physiologists were hotly disputing on the circulation of the blood ?'-'The Limits of Political Economy.' By F. Harrison. Fortnightly Review.

especially those which are of recent birth, is a progressive investigation, not a completed one. It might take for its motto Bacon's 'Prudens interrogatio dimidium scientiæ;' and its weakness, where it is weak, is the weakness, not of decrepitude, but of youth, and proves only that it has a wide field and future before it. To answer inquiries such as their critic proposes, economists, in addition to carrying the first pages of their text-books in mind, ought to question the plains of Flanders, and the mountain-sides and valleys of Switzerland and Lombardy; indeed, the rural economy of every country they can visit besides their own. They ought, moreover, to regard such inquiries as most useful, because they add the book of nature to their studies; for every branch of human science, to whatever the stature it has grown, gathers, Antæus-like, fresh vigour from falling back on earth, from which Newton himself learned the movements of the heavens. In immediate connection with the very controversy just mentioned, a late distinguished astronomer not long ago illustrated the importance of terrestrial observation by replying to persons who argue that a system of husbandry which prospers in Flanders might prosper in Ireland: 'There is no analogy between small farming in Belgium and in Ireland. A visit to Belgium would at once have dispelled the illusion. In Belgium there is a fine climate for the growth of cereals; the soil is usually a sandy loam, producing the finest wheat crops. The country is rich in minerals. Iron is raised in immense quantities, and applied to every useful purpose; there is a great manufacture of artillery and

small-arms. More coal is raised than in all France, manufactures abound, there is industry in every shape. What a contrast to Ireland, where wheat may be said to grow almost by sufferance in average, and to fail altogether in bad seasons.

We join in the noble astronomer's recommendation of a visit to Belgium, if only for the purpose of dispelling an illusion betrayed in this very passage: one shared by not a few persons remarkably well informed on other subjects; and arising apparently from thinking of Belgium at a distance in the lump, mixing up the agriculture of the Flemings with the manufactures of the Walloons, the soil of Hainaut and of the south of Brabant with the farms of Flanders, and the sandy regions traversed by the Scheldt and Lys with the iron and coal in the valleys of the Meuse, the Sambre, and the Trouille. The truth is, that. Belgium is far indeed from being one uniform whole; least of all is it such a whole as described in the passage just quoted.. It is, on the contrary, a country remarkable for broad contrasts. The visitor finds two races, speaking different tongues, intermingling but little, jealous of each other, and, as a general rule, inhabiting different halves of the kingdom: of these races, one, occupying the northern half, famous now for its husbandry alone, though once as famous for pre-eminence in manufactures; the other, backward for the most part, by comparison in agriculture, but holding a foremost position in manufactures which is of modern date. He sees

The Relation of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom.' By the Earl of Rosse. Murray, 1867.

regions adapted to different products, and agriculture in every stage of its progress, from the first to the latest; and what strikes him more, he sees the most perfect and the most productive cultivation where the soil is most sterile by nature, and where there is no mineral wealth whatever to create for the farmer great industrial markets; while, on the contrary, agriculture is found backward, not in rude regions alone, still haunted by wolf, wild boar, and deer, but within easy reach of rich and busy mines and a flourishing manufacturing industry.

We say agriculture is seen in all its stages in Belgium. M. de Laveleye describes them as four: in the first of which half of the arable land always lies fallow; in the second the fallow comes only every third year; in the third fallow is superseded altogether by a constant .rotation of crops; finally comes the practice followed in Flanders, according to which the ground not only is never let rest, but gives two crops in the year. Of these four methods the first is still commonly practised in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. Not many weeks ago we saw the smoke ascend from burning patches here and there upon the Ardenne hills, of the wild mountain vegetation of ten or fifteen years, preparatory to two or three successive cereal crops, after which the ground is left again to nature for a decennial interval or more. This is the ancient practice which, in M. de Laveleye's picture of the rural economy of Ardenne, gets the name of essartage,* and which in France is called écobuage.

'Économie rurale de la Belgique,' 2me éd. pp. 206-8. The region called Ardenne in M. de Laveleye's pages occupies about three-fourths