The system of cultivation by metayers, or cultivation at half produce, is perhaps one of the best inventions of the middle ages. It contributes, more than any thing else, to diffuse happiness among the lower classes, to raise land to a high state of culture, and accumulate a great quantity of wealth upon it. It is the most natural, the easiest, and most advantageous step for exalting the slave to the condition of a freeman, for opening his understanding, teaching him economy and temperance, and placing in his hands a property which he will not abuse. According to this system, the peasant is supposed to have no capital, or scarcely any, but he receives the land sown and fully stocked; he takes the charge of continuing every operation, of keeping his farm in the same state of culture, of delivering to his master the half of each crop; and, when the lease expires, of returning the land under seed, the folds furnished, the vines propped, and every thing, in short, in the same state of completeness as it was when he received it.
A metayer finds himself delivered from all those cares which, in other counties, weigh heavily on the lower class of the people. He pays no direct tax, his master alone is charged with it; he pays no money-rent, and therefore he is not called to sell or to buy, except for his own domestic purposes. The term, at which the farmer has to pay his taxes or his rent, does not press the metayer; or constrain him to sell before the season, at a low price, the crop which rewards his industry. He needs but little capital, because he is not a dealer in produce; the fundamental advances have been made once for all by his master; and as to the daily labour, he performs it himself with his family; for cultivation upon this principle brings constantly along with it a great division of the land, or what is called cultivation on the small scale.
Under this system, the peasant has an interest in the property, as if it were his own; without the anxieties of wealth, he finds in his farm every enjoyment, with which nature's liberality rewards the labour of man. His industry, his economy, the development of his understanding, regularly increase his little stock. In good years, he enjoys a kind of opulence; he is not entirely excluded from the feast of nature which he prepares; his labour is directed according to the dictates of his own prudence, and the plants that his children may gather the fruit.
The high state of culture to be found in the finest parts of Italy, above all of Tuscany, where the lands are generally managed in this way. the accumulation of an immense capital upon the soil: the invention of many judicious rotations, and industrious processes, which an intelligent, observing spirit alone could have deduced from the operations of nature; the collection of a numerous population, upon a space very limited and naturally barren, shows plainly enough that this mode of cultivation is as profitable to the land itself as to the peasant, and that, if it imparts most happiness to the lower class who live by the labour of their hands, it also draws from the ground the most abundant produce, and scatters it with most profusion among men.
But whenever a country arrives at complete civilization, whenever the property and safety of individuals are sufficiently protected, the usual population increases beyond what husbandry can employ; the extent of land is limited, the population is not so. A great number of families are brought up on one farm, and sent away by some accidental cause; penury compels them to offer their services to some proprietor, for a recompence smaller than what is given to such as are actually employed. Labourers outbid each other, and at length go so far as to content themselves with the most niggardly subsistence, with a portion barely sufficient in good years, and which in bad years leaves them a prey to famine. This foolish species of competition has reduced the peasantry on the coast of Genoa, in the republic of Lucca, in several provinces of the kingdom of Naples, to content themselves with a third of the crop, in place of a half. In a magnificent country, which nature has enriched with all her gifts; which art has adorned with all its luxury; which annually gives forth a most abundant harvest - the numerous class that produce the fruits of the ground never taste the corn which is reaped or the wine which is pressed, by their labour, and struggle continually with famine. The same misfortune would probably have happened to the people of Tuscany, if public opinion had not guarded the farmer; but there no proprietor dares to impose terms unusual in the country, and when he changes one metayer for another, he changes no article of the primitive contact. So soon, however, as public opinion becomes necessary for the maintenance of public prosperity, it ought, in strict propriety, to be sanctioned by law. Whenever vacant lands are no longer to be found, proprietors of the soil come to exercise a kind of monopoly against the rest of the nation; and wherever monopoly exists, the legislature ought to interpose, lest they who enjoy may also abuse it.
