makes his engagement directly with the landowner, and pays, not a fixed rent either in money or in time, but a certain proportion of the produce, after deducting what is considered necessary to keep up the stock. It is usually two-thirds. Its social effect is generally the repression of population, and it is not calculated to raise the comforts of the people, for over every exertion looms the dark and baneful figure of the landlord. Throughout Italy in general the laws tend to favour the dispersion of land, and equal division, without regard to sex, is the rule of inheritance on intestacy. A landowner may leave half his property by will, but the other half—legitima portio—he cannot burden with any conditions. With the political union of Italy will come about an assimilation of its various provincial land systems; and it is but a question of time when the healthy peasant tenure of Lombardy will replace the old territorial economy of Sicily.
In Portugal there are in the large farming district of Alemtego but 329,277 inhabitants on an area of 2,454,062 hectares, with an annual production, exclusive of cattle, worth 54,762,500 francs, or 2272 francs per hectare. On the other hand, in the province of Minho there are, on an area of 749,994 hectares, 914,400 inhabitants, producing, exclusive of cattle, 37,756,250 francs per annum, or 50·34 francs per hectare, being more than twice the production of Alemtego, which was once, before it got into the big farmers' hands, the granary of Portugal. In the south of Portugal misery followed in the wake of consolidation, and of it it may well be said, as Pliny of old wrote of Italy, 'Latefundia perdidere Lusitaniam.' In Spain, one has only to compare Estremadura, the Castilles, or even Andalusia, with the kingdom of Valencia and with Lower Catalonia. 'Where,' says Lavaleye, 'small farming prevails, the land is a garden, where the estates are large,
