ABSTRACT
In the wealthiest countries, the farm lease has replaced every other kind of contract resulting from former servitude; it has more than any other attracted the attention of the Economists, and it is generally considered as being everywhere the consequence of the advance of civilization. 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 than that of several years, for putting the farm in a proper condition. When the system of small farms is compared, as is often done, with that of great farms, it has not been sufficiently considered that the latter, by taking the direction of his labour out of the peasant’s hands, reduces him to a condition greatly more unhappy than almost any other system of cultivation.
