the Rhine; the relics for the most part of a storm and inundation, which have passed over and away; but they are thinly scattered, and cease to give any peculiar form and complexion to the relations between the different orders of society. Of these fragments however, one of the most interesting to us, subsists, under a very primitive form, in a corner of our own island. In the northern Highlands, the chief seems never to have been able to introduce either produce or money rents, exclusively, that is, to trust his people with the task of producing subsistence for himself and his households. Each chief therefore kept in his hands a considerable domain; the remainder of his country was parcelled out among the tacksmen or inferior gentry of the clan, and these again divided it among a race of tenants, who paid a large proportion of the stipulated rent in labor, poultry, eggs, and articles of domestic produce, exactly similar to those which form a part of the dues of the Hungarian peasant. In their rent rolls, servitude is included as a prominent and important article. The interest of the proprietors has led them, since 1745, to substitute for this race of tenantry, extensive sheep farmers. The cultivation of the old tenantry appears to have been slothful, ignorant, and inefficient, and their situation extremely miserable but still these northern serfs, whose spirit had never been subdued by personal bondage, clung fondly to their homes, and have been removed, we know, only by a difficult and painful process. The agent of the Marquis of Stafford has Book I. Sect. 7. Chap. ii. Labor Rents in Germany. Chap. ii. Sect. 7. Labor BOOK I. published an account of the changes now taking place in Sutherland, which contains a very interesting picture of the habits, character, and circumstances this system had produced there'. Its last Germany. relics are however fast wearing away, and when a few leases to existing tacksmen have expired, labor rents will finally disappear from Great Britain. Rents in It has been common to speak of the services due from serfs throughout Europe as feudal services, and of the relation between them and the proprietors as part of the feudal system. This is by no means correct. The feudal ties originated in a plan of military defence, made necessary by the circumstances, and congenial to the habits, of the barbarians who had quartered themselves in Western Europe. The granter of a feud deliberately divested himself on certain specified conditions, of all right to the possession of the land which he abandoned to his vassal. The object in labor rents was produce alone: they arose in Europe as in the Society Islands, from a mode of cultivation which the rudeness of the people made necessary, if any rent at all was to be exacted from them: and the proprietor never deliberately divested himself of the right of resuming, 1 Those who wish thoroughly to understand the spirit and effects of the old Highland modes of dividing and cultivating the soil, and the consequences of the violent change effected since 1745, may consult the work of Lord Selkirk, published in 1805, entitled "Observations on the present state of the Highlands of Scotland, with a view of the causes and probable consequences of Emigration;" it will be found able, interesting, and instructive. Sect. 7. Rents in at his pleasure, the possession of the allotments Book I. occupied by his serfs; though usage and prescrip- Chap. ii. tion permitted, in the course of ages, a claim to hereditary occupation on their part to establish itself. Labor The feudal system, with its scheme of military ser- Germany. vice, and nicely graduated scale of fealty and limited obedience, never made much way to the east of Prussia. But it is precisely in those eastern parts of Europe, that labor rents have prevailed the most widely and the longest. It would not indeed be difficult to shew, were this the place for it, that the multiplication of the feudal vassals who were freemen by virtue of their tenure and their swords, prevented labor rents from ever prevailing so exclusively over the surface of western Europe, as they have always prevailed, and do now prevail, over its eastern division. SECTION VIII. Summary of Serf Rents. Chap. ii. We have observed serf rents, in the different Book I. countries in which they still prevail, and as they have been variously affected by time and circumstances. It will be convenient, perhaps to recall in Serf Rents. a short summary the most marked features common to the system in all its modifications, and to collect into one view the general principles suggested by the facts to which we have referred. This plan we shall pursue with the other divisions of peasant rents, as we successively arrive at them. Book I. Dependence of Wages on Rents. The most marked feature of a system of serf rents, is one which it has in common with all the forms of peasant rents; and that is, the strict conDependence nexion it creates between the wages of labor and of Wages on Rents. rents. The serfs constitute the great body of laborers in eastern Europe. The real wages of the serf, the wealth he annually consumes, depend on what he is able to extract from his allotment of land; and this again depends, partly on its extent and fertility, partly on the culture he is able to bestow upon it. But the labor he can exert for his own purposes is limited by that which he yields as a rent to his landlord. This varies of course in different countries, and occasionally from time to time in the same country, sometimes directly and avowedly, sometimes indirectly and almost insensibly. Thus in Hungary, the number of days labor nominally due from the peasants for each session of land, is doubled in practice by the commutation into labor of many other dues, all trifling, and some very indefinite. In most places too, the authority of the landlord enables him, at very inadequate prices, to command, in addition to the labor formally due to him, as much of the peasant's time and exertions as he pleases. Where claims upon his time are thus multiplied, the ground of the serf must be imperfectly tilled, and after a certain point, with each advance in the exactions of the landlord, the produce of the peasant's allotment, his real wages, must become less. To understand, then, the condition of the serf laborers and the causes which determine the actual amount of their wages, a detailed account is necessary of their contract with the proprietors, and of the manner in which that contract is practically interpreted and enforced. This active influence of the nature and amount of the rents they pay on the revenues and condition of the labouring class, is one of the most important effects of the existence of a system of labor rents. We shall find however the same effect, produced in a somewhat different manner, characterizing peasant rents in all their forms. Inefficiency of Agricultural Labor. The next prominent feature of a system of labor or serf rents, is peculiar to that form of tenancy: it is, its singular effect in degrading the industrious habits of the laborers, and making them inefficient instruments of cultivation. The peasant who depends for his food upon his labor in his own allotment of ground, and is yet liable to be called away at the discretion and convenience of another person to work upon other lands, in the produce of which he is not to share, is naturally a reluctant laborer. When long prescription has engendered a feeling, that he is a coproprietor, at least, in the spot of ground which he occupies, then this reluctance to be called from the care of it to perform his task of forced labor elsewhere, is heightened by a vague sense of oppression, and becomes more dogged and sullen. From such men Ꭰ . Book I. Chap. ii. Sect. 8. |