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moins de peine et plus de profit dans une autre profession. Il meurt jeune,* et ne pouvant vivre, lui et ses enfans de sa propriété, il ravage celle de ses voisins." +-M. de Bonald.

This is a most deplorable picture, which would undoubtedly be correct, if men were wholly indifferent to existence, and the comforts of existence, and likely to submit to hard labour, starvation, and early death, when, by a change of system, they could support themselves happily alive to a good old age.

Property will not cease being divided, just at the moment most advantageous to the pecuniary interest of the proprietor-because he is proud of the possession of property; neither will it go on dividing to an infinite extent-because he is sensible to the necessities of life.

Where the law favours the division of landed

His life is increased by at least seven years since the last half century.

"The division of land increases in geometrical progression. Among the small proprietors, the evil is felt at the first generation; every one, however, remains attached to his little fraction of land, and torments himself in order to derive from it a scanty subsistence, which he would have gained with less pain and more profit in another profession. He dies young, and not being able to live on his own property, despoils that of his neighbours."

property, it will be divided perhaps more than it ought to be; but where the law favors the agglomeration of land, it will also be agglomerated more than it ought to be. No system is perfect.

There is, however, this difference between the two systems:-in one case the small proprietor is at once obliged to abandon his estate when it ceases to provide for his subsistence; in the other, the great proprietor is only warned to decrease his estate, when his profits diminish.

But let us see what the French law, affecting the disposal of property, really is.

After a parent's death, the property of that parent is to be equally divided among the children, with this exception-that the parent has a right to leave a "part d'enfant," (i.e. a child's share,) to any child over and above the portion which would come to that child from equal partition. For instance, if a man has five children he may leave a fifth to the one he prefers; if three children, a third, if two a double portion. The effects of this law, are:

1st. To make the child independent of his father's aversion, but expectant from his father's love.

2ndly. To make the parent depend, for the extent of his power, on the extent of his family;

VOL. I.

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and as the greatness of the one is measured by the smallness of the other, a powerful check is created to an overabundant population.

Thus, the same law which provides for the support of the child, provides also for the authority of the father; and, while it tends to the division of property, contains a principle intended for its limitation. Nor is this all ; exactly as the authority of the father requires strengthening, the limit to the division of property becomes more strong.

We see then that the law of France possesses, even in its letter, a notable provision against the mischiefs which it is conceived likely to produce. But it is not only in the letter of a law that we are to look for its effects-the spirit of a law, which diffuses property, is to give a desire to increase, and to retain property.

The pauper and the beggar have no restraint put upon their passions, and they propagate their species with the recklessness of men who have no hope in the future, and only one present pleasure to enjoy. The peasant, who has a small piece of land, lives under the increasing desire to preserve, to increase, and to transmit that land. He receives four acres from his father, he toils unceasingly till he can acquire eight, and it is not often that he increases his fa

mily beyond the ratio at which his property has increased.

The increase of population in France has not only been less than the increase of population in the other great countries of Europe; it has been less, as I have once before had occasion to observe, than the increase of every other species of power and wealth in France itself.

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Besides, in the law of division resides, to a certain extent, the law of union. If the father gives a portion to his daughter, the son receives a portion with his wife, and as marriages in France are regulated, in some degree, by interest, what goes away on one side returns, in a great measure, on the other.

Among the old nobility who rescued any property from the revolution of 1789, you will usually find that property rather to have augmented than diminished, during the last twenty years.

Among the peasantry who have once obtained any fair portion of property by their toil, you will usually find, not perhaps the identical property which the father possessed, but a property equal to it in the hands of the

son.

The cases where property multiplies its divi

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