6. Chapter VI: That Democratic Institutions And Manners Tend To
Raise Rents 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.