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Book I.
Chap. ii.

Sect. 6.

Rents in

SECTION VI.

Of Labor Rents in Germany.

WE shall understand better the present state of labor rents in Germany, if we previously recall to mind the downward progress of similar systems Labor in other countries, from which they have disappeared Germany. gradually; because we shall then see distinctly the successive steps of that slow demolition, the progress of which Germany now in its different parts exhibits in many various stages.

We may take England for such a previous instance. Thirteen hundred years have elapsed since the final establishment of the Saxons. Eight hundred of these had passed away and the Normans had been for two centuries settled here, and a very large proportion of the body of cultivators was still precisely in the situation of the Russian serf1. During the next three hundred, the unlimited labor rents paid by the villeins for the lands allotted to them were gradually commuted for definite services, still payable in kind; and they had a legal right to the hereditary occupation of their copyholds. Two hundred years have barely elapsed since the change to this extent became quite universal, or since the personal bondage of the villeins ceased to exist among us. The last claim of villenage

recorded in our courts was in the 15th of James I. 1618. Instances probably existed some time after

1 Eden, Vol. I. p. 7. Appendix V.

Chap. ii.
Sect. 6.

this. The ultimate cessation of the right to demand Book I. their stipulated services in kind has been since brought about, silently and imperceptibly, not by positive law; for, when other personal services were Rents in abolished at the restoration, those of copyholders Germany. were excepted and reserved2.

Throughout Germany similar changes are now taking place, on the land; they are perfected perhaps no where, and in some large districts they exhibit themselves in very backward stages. A short description of the condition of one state will make that of others intelligible; allowance must of course be made for an indefinite variety of modifications in the practice and phraseology of different districts.

The domain lands, those which in Hungary Poland and many German states are still cultivated by the nobles themselves, are generally in Hanover let for a money rent to persons who occupy the domain as a farm, and have the benefit of the services which the peasant tenants are bound to perform. Some of these larger tenants, under the name of Amtmen, exercise the important territorial jurisdiction, still invested in the nobles, and kept alive and distinct even on the demesnal possessions of the crown3. The amtmen are not usually practical farmers themselves, but lawyers or officers of government, the only classes which seem to possess capital for such undertakings. They reside sometimes in towns, and employ stewards or bailiffs to

2 See 12th Charles II. c. 24.

3 Hodgskin, Vol. II. p. 5. "The Amtman frequently unites," &c.

Labor

Chap. ii.

Sect. 6.

BOOK I. look after their very large farms'. These stewards are the best practical farmers in Germany, are usually well educated (often in the agricultural institutions); and are inferior in general and proGermany. fessional knowledge to no set of cultivators in the world.

Labor

Rents in

It would be well for the strength and prosperity of Germany, if its soil were universally under such management. But by far the larger proportion, it has been loosely said four fifths, is occupied by a class of men called collectively Bauers. These, under another name, are the serfs, who in Poland, Hungary, and Russia, form the laboring tenantry of the nobles. When the laws are recollected, (passed as before remarked for fiscal purposes) which in many German states forbade the cultivation by the proprietor of any land which had once been in the hands of a bauer, the spread of this order and the proportion of the land occupied by them will not appear extraordinary. In some parts of Hanover these men now present themselves in two distinct classes, with a variety of subdivisions. They are called Leibeigeners and Meyers. The leibeigeners are in the state of the English villein, when his labor rent had ceased to be arbitrary, but was still paid in kind, after his hereditary claim to his allotment had been recognized. The leibeigener pays a labor rent, in kind, and cultivates the lands of the landlord, for a certain number of days in the year; brings home the lord's wood, performs other

1 Hodgskin, Vol. II. p. 90.

Book I.
Chap. ii.

Sect. 6.

Rents in

services when called upon, and is subjected to some most burthensome and vexatious restrictions as to the mode of cropping his land, which must be so arranged as to leave one third always in fallow, for Labor the proprietor's flocks to range over. But still the Germany. conditions on which he holds the land are fixed; and it descends to his children. He is much in the position in which the Livonian proprietors have lately placed their serf tenants, except that he is not tied to the soil.

The meyer tenant is a bauer whose labor rents have been commuted for money or a corn rent, and in some cases for a definite portion of the crops: though he is still liable to some trifling services. The proprietor cannot raise the rent, nor can he refuse to renew the lease, unless the heir be an idiot, or the rent in arrear: but as this tenure in many instances is modern, the rent often amounts to nearly the full value of the land. This tenure is gradually displacing that of the leibeigeners, and the tenant under it is much in the position of the English copyholder, when he had ceased to perform services in kind, and before his quit rents had become a mere nominal payment. The meyer pays a fine on alienation.

In some cases the whole of an estate is occupied by meyers and leibeigeners, and the proprietor has no domain land at all.

The bauers throughout Germany are nearly all free chained by many ties to the soil, they are no longer the property of its proprietors, or legally confined to the spot they cultivate. But

Chap. ii.

Sect. 6.

Labor

Rents in

BOOK I. they have gained this freedom, not, as in England, by the gradual wearing out of their chains, but by the determined exertion of their sovereigns. A woman, Sophia Magdalena of Denmark, gave, in Germany. 1761, one of the earliest examples of this spirit. Between 1770 and 1790, it was followed by the Margrave of Baden and other minor princes. In 1781, Joseph II. abolished slavery in the German dominions of Austria. Since 1810 it has ceased in Prussia, and very lately in Mecklenburg1.

The higher classes have partaken largely for many generations of the general civilization of Europe. To their lothing at the degraded condition of their inferiors, the latter owe an emancipation from personal thraldom, of which in some cases they hardly yet feel the full value. At the moment in which they became free men they become in some instances small proprietors, subject to a perpetual rent charge. To their forcible investment with this character in Prussia, we shall hereafter have occasion to advert.

SECTION VII.

HAVING now traced the system of labor rents from Russia to the Rhine, we may quit it. Fragments of it indeed still subsist to the westward of

1 Schmalz, Vol. I. p. 104.

2 On the very poor soils in the German provinces west of the Rhine, labor rents still, I am told, prevail.

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