ancient world had early wandered there.* The seeds of knowledge planted thus were fostered in the modern world by civic liberty and commerce; and the whole history of Flemish husbandry is, to borrow the language of a Flemish historian, 'bound up with resistance of the mercantile and industrial element to that armed territorial proprietorship which continued the barbarian conquest under the name of seignory.'

341

THE FARMS AND PEASANTRY OF BELGIUM, 1870.

AMONG the forms in which democracy,-not in the sense only of popular power, but also of a spirit in unison with popular requirements and feelings, and of respect for mankind-displays itself now throughout Europe, none is likely to affect more profoundly both English institutions and English philosophy than the growing interest in the condition and arrangements of other nations of which there is evidence. And it is remarkable in how many of the most prominent questions the experience of the youngest and almost the smallest state in Europe is appealed to. We turn to Belgium, not to Italy, to gauge the relative strength of ecclesiastical power and intellectual liberty; the sharp division of its people into two races or families, one speaking a German, the other a French tongue, marks it out as a field for the study of the race problem in its social and economic aspects; it was the first country in Europe to set the example of placing railways under the immediate control of the State; and in the agrarian controversies thickening around us, it is oftener referred to than any other part of the continent.

It is however its Flemish provinces only to which the last-mentioned controversies usually point, when Belgium is cited as an authority on rural economy; its other provinces, though eminent in mining and manufacturing enterprise, having but recently begun to attain distinction in agriculture. The former celebrity of the peasant farms of Flanders is on the other hand never disputed; the main question is, whether its ancient minuteness of both property and cultivation are found compatible with modern progress? To this inquiry a recent writer has returned an answer which has had wide circulation, and it is by no means the truth about Flanders alone which is at stake in the matter: The small proprietors may be found struggling with an ungrateful climate and hungry soil in the haunted valleys of the Ardennes, or the dreary swamps of Limbourg. In other countries, remote alike from commercial activity and the crowded markets of the world, not yet under the tyranny of competition, he still fulfils his humble mission; and by his very industry, rendering each day his little homestead more and more attractive, paves the way to his own extermination: in highly civilized countries he is daily becoming rarer. In the fertile plains of Flanders and Brabant he is almost extinct.'* Advancing another step the same writer affirms that 'in Flanders the peasant proprietor cultivating his own land has disappeared.' The plains of Flanders are assuredly not fertile, unless so far as they owe fertility to the peasant cultivator, and above all to the peasant cultivating his own land. But as to the extinction of such cultivators, let us consult the report of M. de Ségur-Dupeyrac to the French Enquête Agricole, respecting East Flanders, the region most perfectly farmed. In East Flanders, of 88,300 cultivators of less than three hectares (less than seven acres and a half) 32,201 are proprietors, 37,283 are tenants under lease. Of cultivators of above three hectares, 12,346 are proprietors, against 11,481 tenants.'* On the 545,245 cultivated acres of East Flanders there are thus, according to this report, and exclusive of a great number of other small proprietors, more proprietors cultivating their own land than there were landowners on all the acres of England at the last census. And with respect to the conditions of perfect success on the part of the peasant proprietor's farming, M. de Ségur-Dupeyrac adds: 'Assuredly, these figures tend scarcely to prove that large property and large farms only can make the soil yield its utmost produce, since it is beyond dispute that in beauty of cultivation Flanders is one of the first countries in Europe. At the same time, if small property can reach the pitch of perfection beheld here, it is on the condition of finding itself surrounded by a considerable population, which adds a vast quantity of sewage to the manure the cattle-stalls yield; not to speak of tanneries, manufactures of animal black, refineries, distilleries, and breweries, which likewise by their refuse contribute largely to the amelioration of the soil, and to that uninterrupted succession of crops which here affords to the cultivator a comfortable * Enquête Agricole. Documents recueillis à l'étranger,' i. 197.

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subsistence.' In place then of expelling the peasant proprietor from his farm, it thus appears that 'commercial activity and crowded markets'-bring powerful auxiliaries to his aid. They do so too, not only in the manner M. de Ségur-Dupeyrac points out, by the fertilising agents they add, but also, and more so, by the new demand they create for his produce. The nearer the town comes and the larger it grows, not only the cheaper and the more plentiful is the small cultivator's supply of manures, but the higher are the prices of his milk, butter, and flax. The foreign trade which has brought him guano (the fertiliser most in esteem in East Flanders) is an excellent customer even for rabbits fed at no cost from the roadside ditch. railway station which brings a new home market to his doors, is itself a new demand for his most profitable productions. The distilleries and breweries which enrich his sterile sands with their refuse afford him additional buyers. The large farmer himself who has a beet-sugar factory, becomes in the same manner one of his allies, both in the field and in the market.

The

Again, the change in comparative prices, consequent on commercial progress, which is one of the economic revolutions of our age, is a revolution in favour of small farming everywhere, but nowhere more so than in Flanders. Describing early in this century the farming of the Pays de Waes, the garden of Flanders, Sir John Sinclair remarked, Indeed in the Pays de Waes, the sale or price of grain is considered only a secondary object; and it is not possible for a mere