And Shorten The Terms Of Leases
What has been said of servants and masters is applicable, to a certain
extent, to landowners and farming tenants; but this subject deserves
to be considered by itself. In America there are, properly speaking, no
tenant farmers; every man owns the ground he tills. It must be admitted
that democratic laws tend greatly to increase the number of landowners,
and to diminish that of farming tenants. Yet what takes place in the
United States is much less attributable to the institutions of the
country than to the country itself. In America land is cheap, and anyone
may easily become a landowner; its returns are small, and its produce
cannot well be divided between a landowner and a farmer. America
therefore stands alone in this as well as in many other respects, and it
would be a mistake to take it as an example.
I believe that in democratic as well as in aristocratic countries there
will be landowners and tenants, but the connection existing between them
will be of a different kind. In aristocracies the hire of a farm is paid
to the landlord, not only in rent, but in respect, regard, and duty;
in democracies the whole is paid in cash. When estates are divided and
passed from hand to hand, and the permanent connection which existed
between families and the soil is dissolved, the landowner and the tenant
are only casually brought into contact. They meet for a moment to settle
the conditions of the agreement, and then lose sight of each other; they
are two strangers brought together by a common interest, and who keenly
talk over a matter of business, the sole object of which is to make
money.
In proportion as property is subdivided and wealth distributed over the
country, the community is filled with people whose former opulence is
declining, and with others whose fortunes are of recent growth and whose
wants increase more rapidly than their resources. For all such persons
the smallest pecuniary profit is a matter of importance, and none of
them feel disposed to waive any of their claims, or to lose any portion
of their income. As ranks are intermingled, and as very large as well
as very scanty fortunes become more rare, every day brings the social
condition of the landowner nearer to that of the farmer; the one has not
naturally any uncontested superiority over the other; between two men
who are equal, and not at ease in their circumstances, the contract of
hire is exclusively an affair of money. A man whose estate extends over
a whole district, and who owns a hundred farms, is well aware of the
importance of gaining at the same time the affections of some thousands
of men; this object appears to call for his exertions, and to attain it
he will readily make considerable sacrifices. But he who owns a hundred
acres is insensible to similar considerations, and he cares but little
to win the private regard of his tenant.
An aristocracy does not expire like a man in a single day; the
aristocratic principle is slowly undermined in men's opinion, before it
is attacked in their laws. Long before open war is declared against it,
the tie which had hitherto united the higher classes to the lower may be
seen to be gradually relaxed. Indifference and contempt are betrayed by
one class, jealousy and hatred by the others; the intercourse between
rich and poor becomes less frequent and less kind, and rents are raised.
This is not the consequence of a democratic revolution, but its certain
harbinger; for an aristocracy which has lost the affections of the
people, once and forever, is like a tree dead at the root, which is the
more easily torn up by the winds the higher its branches have spread.
In the course of the last fifty years the rents of farms have amazingly
increased, not only in France but throughout the greater part of Europe.
The remarkable improvements which have taken place in agriculture and
manufactures within the same period do not suffice in my opinion to
explain this fact; recourse must be had to another cause more powerful
and more concealed. I believe that cause is to be found in the
democratic institutions which several European nations have adopted, and
in the democratic passions which more or less agitate all the rest. I
have frequently heard great English landowners congratulate themselves
that, at the present day, they derive a much larger income from their
estates than their fathers did. They have perhaps good reasons to be
glad; but most assuredly they know not what they are glad of. They think
they are making a clear gain, when it is in reality only an exchange;
their influence is what they are parting with for cash; and what they
gain in money will ere long be lost in power.
There is yet another sign by which it is easy to know that a great
democratic revolution is going on or approaching. In the Middle Ages
almost all lands were leased for lives, or for very long terms; the
domestic economy of that period shows that leases for ninety-nine years
were more frequent then than leases for twelve years are now. Men then
believed that families were immortal; men's conditions seemed settled
forever, and the whole of society appeared to be so fixed, that it
was not supposed that anything would ever be stirred or shaken in its
structure. In ages of equality, the human mind takes a different bent;
the prevailing notion is that nothing abides, and man is haunted by
the thought of mutability. Under this impression the landowner and
the tenant himself are instinctively averse to protracted terms of
obligation; they are afraid of being tied up to-morrow by the contract
which benefits them today. They have vague anticipations of some sudden
and unforeseen change in their conditions; they mistrust themselves;
they fear lest their taste should change, and lest they should lament
that they cannot rid themselves of what they coveted; nor are such fears
unfounded, for in democratic ages that which is most fluctuating amidst
the fluctuation of all around is the heart of man.