Political Economy [23]
joined with incapacity; the great mass of the population, composed almost wholly of peasant-proprietors living in easy circumstances, have been rendered happy; and this mass of subjects, feeling their own happiness, and dreading every change, have mocked all the projects of revolution or of conquest directed against their country, the government of which is so little able to defend itself. The system of cultivating land by capitation, could be adopted only among a people scarcely emerged from barbarism. It is, in fact, nearly a modern farm-lease, the parties to which, in fixing the rent, pay no regard to the greater or smaller extent of the ground, to its comparative fertility or barrenness, to the improvements which labour has already made it undergo. Be the nature of those circumstances what it may, each proprietor of a whole Russian province pays thirty roubles yearly to the lord of it. Doubtless when the capitation was imposed, all those circumstances were equal; there was more fertile land for each than each could cultivate, and no part of it had yet been improved by labour. In free counties, capitation is looked upon as a degrading tax, because it recalls the idea of servitude. It was, indeed, originally always accompanied with servitude of the soil. The peasant always depended on the good pleasure of his master; in executing their mutual contact, no law afforded him protection; he was always liable to be ejected, carried off, sold, stript of all the property amassed by his industry; and thus the kind of authority to which he was subject incessantly reminded him, that, whatever he saved, he took from himself to give it to his master; that every effort on his part was useless, every invention dangerous, every improvement contrary to his interest, and finally, that every sort of study but aggravated his wretchedness by more clearly informing him of his condition. Even in Russia, however, the disinterestedness of some noble families, who for several generations have not changed the capitation, has inspired the peasantry with confidence sufficient to reanimate their industry, to infuse a taste for labour and economy, and sometimes even to permit their realizing very large fortunes which, however, always depend on the master's good pleasure. But in countries where servitude of the soil has been gradually abolished, the capitation has become a fixed rent; united most frequently to personal services, and sometimes reduced to mere feudal rights, as the system, by degrees, varied from its primitive uniformity. Such was the tenure by villanage in France, by copy-hold in England, the origin of nearly all the property possessed by peasants cultivating their own heritages. On the other hand, such contracts helped to produce the notion of farm-leases, which, in the wealthiest countries of Europe, have succeeded every other kind of convention between proprietor and cultivator. By a farm-lease, the proprietor yields his land, and nothing more, to the cultivator; and demands an invariable rent for it; whilst the farmer undertakes to direct and to execute all the labour by himself; to furnish the cattle, the implements, and the funds of agriculture; to sell his produce, and to pay his taxes. The farmer takes upon him all the cares and all the gains of his agriculture; he teats it as a commercial speculation, from which he expects a profit proportionate to the capital employed in it. At the time when slavery was abolished, the system of farms could not be immediately established: freedmen could not yet undertake such important engagements, nor were they able to advance the labour of a year, much less that of several years, for putting the farm in a proper condition. The master, on giving them their liberty, would have been obliged to give them also an establishment; to furnish them with cattle, instruments of tillage, seed and food for a year; and after all these advances, the farm would still have been a burdensome concern for the owner, because by his contract he had renounced the profit of good years on condition