welfare of the rural population, or the interests of landlords; but in each and all of these senses the critical questioner seems to have overlooked, that a most material datum is the ratio of land to population. The rural economy best suited to England is not that which would be best for America. Minute and elaborate tillage, with copious manure, would not be economical farming in a continent of boundless extent; it would not pay for the labour, not to speak of profit and rent. It is otherwise in old Europe; and a comparison alike of the farming and of what is far more important the peasantry of England and Flanders, demonstrates that it would have been well, not only for the peasantry, but for the landlords of the former, had the rural population never been converted wholesale, as it has been, into labourers for hire. Nevertheless, to Mr. Harrison's question-Are small farms or large farms best?'-we answer, Both are best. Not only because there are in all countries, even in Flanders, places specially adapted for each, but also because the existence of both creates various experiments and improvements, which may be transferred from the one to the other, or which require different areas; and because it opens a career of promotion from the small to the large farm.

Next-Does the peasant proprietor thrive?' We might ask in like manner, 'Does the sun shine?' Not everywhere not where human obstacles intervene. By his own exceeding art the peasant proprietor thrives moderately even in the sands of La Campine; but he thrives better with less labour in the Bas Luxem

bourg, where M. de Laveleye portrays him in a picture such that we must follow the example set by M. de Lavergne, in his report to the Institute of France, of reproducing it in part:

'Afin de compléter l'étude des différentes régions de la Belgique, il nous reste à mentionner celle qui occupe le sud de la province du Luxembourg. La douceur de la température, la vigueur de la végétation, tout annonce qu'on approche de la zone plus favorisée de l'Europe centrale. Tous les fruits sont abondants. Avec son doux climat, ses gracieuses collines et ses beaux rochers, la zone du Bas-Luxembourg est sans contredit l'une de celles qu'on visitera en Belgique avec le plus de plaisir. Le sol, sans être trop morcelé, est divisé entre un nombre considérable de parts, presque toutes exploitées directement par les propriétaires. Chacun, pour ainsi dire, cultive son propre champ et peut s'asseoir à l'ombre de son noyer. Il en résulte pour tous une sorte d'aisance rustique qui dérive non de la possession de grands capitaux, mais de l'abondance de toutes les denrées. Une réelle égalité règne dans les conditions sociales; nul n'est assez riche pour atteindre à l'opulence et à l'oisiveté, nul non plus n'est assez pauvre pour connaître les extrémités de la misère.'

Even where the farming is good, the peasant proprietor's lot must depend something on the size of his little farm, the natural qualities of the climate and soil, and its situation. But the mere fact of proprietorship will not of necessity originate good farming on the part of a few isolated peasants, in a country shut out through all ages from every ray of light, improvement,

and hope. The advocate of great estates and large farms in Ireland points to a squatter here and there who has cleared a piece of crown land, and become the fee-simple proprietor, yet farms no better and lives perhaps in more squalor than the neighbouring tenantsat-will. La petite culture is a difficult art, which will not grow spontaneously up from the ground as soon as a peasant is planted upon it as owner-the child of immemorial oppression and darkness, and surrounded by such, with the additional hardship in their case of being tenants-at-will. Such a peasant proprietor will probably not thrive; he will do as his fathers did, and as his neighbours do, with only the privilege of doing it more lazily. Improvement-civilisation in everyone of its forms-must be the work of many, and cannot be created by one hand in a desert. The eminent historian Heeren has observed that, but for the Mediterranean, which served as the medium between the inhabitants of three continents, their inhabitants would, beyond question, have continued as uncivilised as those of Central Africa, had the basin of the Mediterranean been a steppe like Mongolia. Flanders was originally such a steppe, but its inhabitants were not cut off from the light which Egypt, Tyre, Athens, Carthage, and Rome combined to shed upon the more favoured parts of modern Europe. Pieces of money of ancient workmanship, bearing the Phoenician palm, have been discovered near Gand, and idols of Isis and other gods found on the banks of Flemish rivers, show that, under names of old renown,' the arts of the

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.'

A crew, who under names of old renown,
With monstrous shape and sorceries abused
Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek

Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms.—Paradise Lost.

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,