Book I. Sect. 1. Labor or These labor rents may, with some little extension of the ordinary use of the term serf, be all called serf rents. As labor or serf rents have gradually receded from the West, so it is on the western extremity of the countries in which they still prevail, that their decomposition is the most advanced. To observe them, therefore, in their complete state, we must go at once to the east of Europe, and begin with Russia, and may trace them thence, gradually decaying in form and spirit through Hungary, Livonia, Poland, Prussia, and Germany, to the Rhine, on the borders of which they melt away into different systems, and are no longer to be recognized. Book 1. Chap. ii. Sect. 2. Labor SECTION II. On Labor or Serf Rents in Russia. IN Russia the peasants, who are settled on the soil, receive from the proprietor a quantity of land, great or small, as his discretion or convenience dictate, from which they extract their wages. They are bound to work on the demesnes of the landowner three days in the week. The obligation would be light, were it not for the results it has led to. In Russia this mode of occupying the soil has established the complete personal bondage of the peasant he has become, with all his family and descendants, the slave of the lord. Such too has been the result of similar relations between the Book I Chap. ii. proprietor and his tenants, wherever they have pre- Labor vailed among semi-barbarous people and feeble ge- Rents in neral governments'. From the countries westward Russia. of Russia the same state of bondage, once common, is disappearing by degrees. In Russia, as in its last strong hold, it still subsists entire. It is not difficult to trace the steps by which labor rents prepared so generally the servile condition of the peasants, and covered Europe during the middle ages with a race of predial bonds-men. A rude people dependent upon their own labor on on their allotment for their support, were often exposed, from the failure of the crops or the ravages of war, to utter destitution. The lord was usually able, out of his store-houses, to afford them some relief, which they had no means of repaying but by additional labor. From this and other causes, the serf did, and does, perpetually owe to his lord. nearly the whole of his time. Besides this, they No information, 1 Sweden and Norway must be excepted. written or verbal, which I have been able to collect, has made me feel satisfied that I understand the real history of the changes in the tenure, or in the mode of occupying the soil, which have taken place in those countries. I can only suspect that the progress of Sweden in these respects has resembled, in some measure, that of the German nations: while that of Norway has been distinct and very peculiar. Labor rents, however, under various modifications have been, and are now, known in both countries. 2 See Bright's description of what takes place in Hungary even now, although the Austrian government has interposed to Book I. Chap. ii. Labor Russia. were mainly dependent on him for protection from Sect. 2. strangers and from each other. From his domestic tribunal, he settled their differences and Rents in punished their faults with an authority which the general government was in no condition to supersede, and which became at last sanctioned by usage and equivalent to law. The patriarchal authority of the Highland chiefs had no other source. In them it was at once dignified and moderated by supposed ties of blood. Elsewhere it received no such mitigation. Their time and their persons being thus abandoned to the will of their superiors, the tenantry had no means of resisting further encroachments. One of the most general seems to have been, the establishment of a right by which the landlord, providing the serf with subsistence, might withdraw him altogether from the soil on which he had placed him, to employ him elsewhere at pleasure. Then followed an understanding that the flight of a serf from the estate of his landlord, employer, and judge, was an offence and an injury. This once sanctioned by law and usage, the chains of the serf were rivetted, and he became a slave, the property of a master. In Russia he is so still: but successive modifications have every where else re-endowed him with at least some of the privileges of a freeman. The descent of the peasants towards actual servitude did not perhaps, in every case, follow the to protect, to a certain extent, the right of the peasantry.Bright's Hungary, p. 114. Appendix IV. Book I. Chap. ii. Sect. 2. Labor precise track here marked out. The nations with whom labor rents originated in Europe were familiar with domestic slavery before they resorted to agriculture for subsistence, and some of their first tenants Rents in were doubtless already slaves. But when we observe, Russia. not a portion of the people in a state of slavery, but the whole body of peasantry in a wholly agricultural nation, as in Russia and formerly in Hungary, it is then impossible not to believe that such extensive servitude has closed gradually round their race. The Russians themselves contend, that the bondage of their peasantry was not complete, till so late as the reign of Czar Boris Godounoff, who mounted the throne in 16031. In the Georgian provinces of Russia, the owner receives from the peasants a mixture of produce rents and labor: they work for him only one day in the week instead of three, and pay one seventh of the crops raised on their allotments". With this and perhaps other local exceptions, the body of Russian serfs who are actual cultivators, pay labor rents, nominally at the rate of three days labor in the week, for their allotments, but in fact their condition has degenerated into a state of complete 1 General Boltin was encouraged by Catharine II. to publish (in Russia) some researches on the origin of slavery in Russia, and as such was his conclusion, it rests certainly on no mean authority. Before the time of Boris Godounoff, General Boltin asserts, that the only real slaves in Russia were prisoners taken from an enemy, and that the peasants were reduced to slavery (asservis) after that epoch. Storch, Vol. VI. p. 310. ? See Gamba, Voy. dans la Russ. Tom. II. p. 84. Chap. ii. Sect. 2 Labor BOOK I. personal bondage, and the demands of the proprietor, though influenced by custom, are really limited only by his own forbearance. The money commutation of these labor rents, when they are permitted to make one, which they very generally are, is called like the payments from the personal slaves, obroc or abroc, and is completely arbitrary, and settled by the master according to his suspicions of their ability'. But even in Russia, the bondage of the serfs, although more entire than elsewhere, is yet, as respects a large body, perhaps half of the peasantry, in a state of rapid change. That change has originated with the government. The existence of very extensive crown domains may perhaps be considered as an indication of a backward state of civilization. In other parts of Europe, they will usually be found 1 Heber (late Bishop of Calcutta) quoted by Clarke, Tra-: vels, Vol. I. p. 165. The peasants belonging to the nobles, have their abrock regulated by their means of getting money; at an average throughout the empire of eight or ten roubles. It then becomes not a rent for land, but a downright tax on their industry. Each male peasant is obliged by law to labor three days in each week for his proprietor. This law takes effect on his arriving at the age of fifteen. If the proprietor chooses to employ him on the other days he may; as, for example, in a manufactory; but he then finds him in food and clothing. Mutual advantage however generally relaxes this law; and excepting such as are selected for domestic servants, or, as above, are employed in manufactories, the slave pays a certain abrock or rent, to be allowed to work all the week on his own account. The master is bound to furnish him with a house and a certain portion of land. |