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METAYAGE SYSTEM

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Originally appearing in Volume V18, Page 257 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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METAYAGE See also:

SYSTEM , the cultivation of See also:land for a proprietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce. The system has never existed in See also:England and has no See also:English name, but in certain provinces of See also:Italy and See also:France it was once almost universal, and is still very See also:common. It is also not unusual in See also:Portugal, in See also:Greece, and in the countries bordering on the See also:Danube. In Italy and France, respectively, it is called mezzeria and metayage, or halving—the halving, that is, of the produce of the See also:soil between landowner and landholder. These expressions are not, however, to be understood in a more precise sense than that in which we sometimes talk of a larger and _a smaller See also:half. They merely signify that the produce is divisible in certain definite proportions, which must obviously vary with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances, and which do in practice vary so much that the landlord's See also:share is sometimes as much as two-thirds, sometimes as little as one-third. Sometimes the landlord supplies all the stock, sometimes only See also:part—the See also:cattle and See also:seed perhaps, while the See also:farmer provides the implements; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves—taxes too being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both. English writers were unanimous, until J. S. See also:Mill adopted a different See also:tone, in condemning the metayer system. They judged it by its See also:appearance in France, where it has never worn a very attractive aspect. Under the ancien regime not only were all See also:direct taxes paid by the metayer, the See also:noble landowner being exempt, but these taxes, being assessed according to the visible produce of the soil, operated as penalties upon all endeavours to See also:augment its productiveness.

No wonder, then, if the metayer fancied that his See also:

interest See also:lay less in exerting himself to augment the See also:total to be divided between himself and his landlord, than in studying how to defraud the latter part of his rightful share; nor if he has not yet got rid of habits so acquired, especially when it is considered that he still is destitute of the fixity of See also:tenure without which metayage cannot prosper, See also:French metayers, in See also:Arthur See also:Young's See also:time, were " removable at See also:pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of their landlords," and so in See also:general they are still. Yet even in France, although metayage and extreme rural poverty usually coincide, there are provinces where the contrary is the fact, as it is also in Italy. Indeed, to every tourist who has passed through the plains of XvIU. 9Lombardy with his eyes open, the knowledge that metayage has for ages been there the prevailing See also:form of tenure ought to suffice for the. triumphant vindication of metayage in the abstract. An explanation of the contrasts presented by metayage in different regions is not far to seek. Metayage, in See also:order to be in. any measure worthy of See also:commendation, must be a genuine See also:partnership, one in which there is no sleeping partner, but in the affairs of which the landlord, as well as the See also:tenant, takes an active part. Wherever this applies, the results of metayage appear to be as eminently satisfactory, as they are decidedly the See also:reverse wherever the landlord holds himself aloof. In France there is also a system termed metayage See also:par groupes, which consists in letting a considerable See also:farm, not to one metayer, but to an association of several, who See also:work together for the general See also:good, under the supervision either of the landlord him-self, or of his See also:bailiff. This arrangement gets over the difficulty of finding tenants possessed of See also:capital enough for any but very small farms. See further the See also:section See also:Agriculture in the articles FRANCE, GREECE, ITALY, &c.; and consult J. See also:Cruveilhier, Etude sur le metayage (See also:Paris, 1894).

End of Article: METAYAGE SYSTEM

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