AGRICULTURE IN PROTECTED FRANCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 279, 7 July 1888, Page 6

AGRICULTURE IN PROTECTED FRANCE.

Some time ago we quoted from a report of Mr Warburton, British Vice-consul at, La Rochclle in France, in which he described the utter failure of the French protectionist policy to save the rural population horn the effects of the depression in the agricultural industry the whole world over. With all their protected manufactories the unfortunate tiller of the soil is in France worse off even than in free trade Britain, notwithstanding that the French faimer has direct protection to his own industry in the shape of import duties on corn and cattle. Mr Warburton has recently sent home further dismal accounts of the condition and prospects of agriculture in Western France. Though the agricultural interest is protected by heavy duties on corn and cattle— amounting on the former to no less than 8& 9d a quarter — Mr Warburton declares that all that he has heard of agricultural distiess in England presents nothing to compare with the depth of depression which exists at present alike among the French peasant proprietors and occupiers of farms. In many instances the landed proprietors who do not farm themselves have received no rents for a year and a half, and those tenants who have paid have been made larger reductions, the average tor last year having been as much as 33 per cent. Yet the powers of landlords for the lecoveiy of rent under the French law appear to be exceptionally severe. Every tenant, we are told, is bound to pay his half-year's rent the day it becomes due ; if he does not do so where the tendency is a lease or other agreement in writing made before a notary public, his landlord sends him by a " Huissier " what is called a " comraanderaent," which is a notice ordering him to pay at once under pain of a seizure. The law then gives him twenty-four hours to obey this order, and then if he has not paid, the Huissier, without any decree or process from a legal court, takes possession of everything in the place — farming stock, implements, crops, furniture, money, or anything el?e he may find — all going to satisfy the landlord's claim, to the exclusion of any other debts.