Chap. ii. Sect. 8. BOOK I. abject dependence of the serfs on the proprietors, make any real influence of a third estate in the constitution of countries in which labor rents prevail utterly nugatory. The government of such countries must be shared by the sovereign and the aristocracy: it may be shared very unequally; they may control each other in different degrees; but on their joint authority alone the public power must rest. Tracing back the history of our own country we observe, that while a similar system prevailed in England, the absence of any efficient third estate, made our government a rude mixture of monarchy and a landed aristocracy, struggling fiercely, and each threatening to extinguish the other in its turn.. It is the very same want of a third estate, which makes it so difficult to establish in many continental nations, those imitations of the actual English Constitution, which we have seen of late frequently attempted. Before the people of eastern Europe can have governments, of which the springs and weights really resemble those of the English, a space of time must elapse sufficient to introduce very different ingredients into their social elements. Till then, we may expect to see yet more wellmeant attempts of sovereigns and nobles end in disappointment. And when society has undergone the necessary change, serf rents, we may venture to predict, will have been superseded, and will have ceased to exist: except perhaps in some obsolete shapes and names, from which, as in the case of the copyholds of England, all life and power have departed. What determines the Amount of Labor Rents. The value of serf or labor rents, the advantages which the proprietor derives from the lands allotted to the serfs, depend partly upon the quantity of labor exacted, and partly upon the skill used in applying it. The proprietor, therefore, may increase the rent of the land held by his serfs, either by exacting more labor from them, or by using their labor more efficiently. If more labor is exacted from the serf, he is in fact thrust farther downwards in the scale of comfort and respectability; his exertions become more reluctant, more languid, and inefficient; the proprietor gains little by his increased services; the community gains nothing by the rise of rents; for if the lands held by the proprietors be better tilled by the additional culture bestowed upon them, those held by the serfs must be worse tilled when labor is withdrawn from them. The second mode of increasing the rents of the lands held by the serfs, the using the labor of the tenantry more skilfully and efficiently, is attended by no disadvantages. It leads to an unquestionable augmentation of the revenues of the nation. The lands held by the proprietors produce more, those held by the serfs do not produce less. But the unfitness of the proprietors, as a body, to advance the science of agriculture, or improve the conduct of its details, makes this mode of increasing the rents derived from the lands which the serfs hold, rare. It would be visionary to count upon it as the source of any Book I. Chap. ii. Sect. 8. Book 1. general improvement in the revenues of the landed Chap. ii. Sect. 8. class. A change from Labor Rents to Produce Rents always desirable. The illusory nature of all attempts to increase labor rents by exacting more and more labor from the serfs, and the repugnance of the proprietors, as a body, to the task of increasing their revenue by the better application of the labor due to them, make us conclude that the substitution of produce or money rents is the only step by which the interests of the landlords of serfs can be substantially and permanently promoted. It is impossible to cast an eye on what is passing in the east of Europe without seeing how deeply this is felt by the proprietors themselves. The irksomeness of the task of superintending the operations of agriculture, the uncertainty of their returns, and the burthensome nature of their connexion with their tenantry, make them every where anxious for a change. To these motives we must add first, the gradual increase in some districts of the prescriptive rights of the serfs to the hereditary possession of their allotments; which makes them more unmanageable and less profitable tenants; and then the example of western Europe, with which the proprietors of its eastern division are familiarly acquainted; and which presents to them a race of landlords freed from almost all the vexations and embarrassments with which the management of their own estates is encumbered. In Book 1. go the desire of the proprietors for a change, the vernments have joined heartily. A wish to extend the authority and protection of the general government over the mass of cultivators, and to increase their efficiency, and through that the wealth and financial resources of the state, has led the different sovereigns always to co-operate, and often to take the lead, in putting an end to the personal dependence of the serf, and modifying the terms of his tenure. To these reasons of the sovereigns and landlords, dictated by obvious self-interest, we must add other motives which do honor to their characters and to the age, the existence of which it would be a mere affectation of hard-hearted wisdom to doubt; namely, a paternal desire on the part of sovereigns to elevate the condition, and increase the comforts, of the most numerous class of the human beings committed to their charge; and a philanthropic dislike on the part of the proprietors to be surrounded by a race of wretched dependents, whose degradation and misery reflect discredit on themselves. These feelings have produced the fermentation on the subject of labor rents, which is at this moment working throughout the large division of Europe in which they prevail. From the crown lands in Russia, through Poland', Hungary, In the work (several times before quoted) of Mr. Burnett, of Baliol College, Oxford, entitled "A View of the present State of Poland," the reader will find some curious details of the state of loathsome moral degradation to which the Polish peasants are reduced. The author was for some time private tutor in a Polish family. Chap. ii. BOOK I. Chap. ii. Sect. 8. and Germany, there have been within the last century, or are now, plans and schemes on foot, either at once or gradually to get rid of the tenure, or greatly to modify its effects, and improve its character; and if the wishes, or the authority, of the state, or of the proprietors, could abolish the system and substitute a better in its place, it would vanish from the face of Europe. The actual poverty of the serfs, however, and the degradation of their habits of industry, present an insurmountable obstacle to any general change which is to be complete and sudden. In their imperfect civilization and half savage carelessness, the necessity originated which forced proprietors themselves to raise, the produce on which their families were to subsist. That necessity has not ceased; the tenantry are not yet ripe-in some instances, not riper than they were 1000 years ago-to be entrusted with the responsibility of raising and paying produce rents. But as the past progress and actual circumstances of different districts are found unlike, so their capacity for present change differs in kind and degree. Hence the great variety observable in plans for altering the relations between the serf tenantry and their landlords. Such a variety is exhibited in the Urbarium of Maria Theresa, in the edict by which the views of the Livonian nobility were made law; in the constitution of Poland, and in the decrees of the sovereigns of smaller districts. The ameliorations produced by these steps are valuable, if, after having worked successfully for some time, they prepare the |