64. The default of capitalists, undertakers, limits the
cultivation of lands to a small extent.
When, on the contrary, there are no rich men that possess
capitals large enough to embark in enterprizes of agriculture;
when, through the low rate of the productions of the earth, or
any other cause, the crops are not sufficient to ensure to the
undertakers, besides the reimbursement of their capital,
emoluments adequate at least to those they would derive from
their money, by employing it in some other channel; there are no
farmers that offer to lease lands, the proprietors are
constrained to hire mercenaries or metayers, which are equally
unable to make any advances, or duly to cultivate it. The
proprietor himself makes moderate advances, which only produce
him an indifferent revenue: If the land happens to belong to an
owner, poor, negligent, and in debt, to a widow, or a minor, it
remains unmanured; such is the principle of the difference I have
observed between provinces, where the lands are cultivated by
opulent farmers, as in Normandy and the Isle de France, and those
where they are cultivated only by indigent mercenaries, as in
Limousin, Angoumois, Bourbonnois, and several others.
