petual warfare, the insatiate tyranny of despotic power, and the extortionate rapacity of its minions, that have dried up the naturally abundant sources of production throughout Asia, repressed industry, and prevented the acquisition of skill or capital by its miserable and degraded cultivators. Had there existed in India any defined legal rightsany power beyond the mere arbitrary caprice of an individual, by which the demands of the state upon the cultivators could have been so far restrained as to leave the latter the power of bettering their condition by their industry, the vast quantity of waste but exuberantly fertile land in that country, and the luxuriance of its climate, would have admitted of an increase of production which must have raised the prosperity of the natives and the resources of the government to an almost incalculable extent. The regulations which, with the most humane intentions, have been lately enforced for securing to the ryots the legal ownership of their land, and permanently fixing the proportion of their contribution to the state, are likely in no long time to change the entire face of the country, and benefit all parties in an extraordinary degree.* The remarks we have been led to make at some length on the systems of land occupation in the East will enable us to understand the more easily the origin and real character of those which prevail in Europe and the western states of the civi * Mr. Jones's work On the Distribution of Wealth' contains in its Appendix some valuable information from Col. Tod's Rajasthan and other sources, upon the interesting topic of the land-tenure of our Indian possessions. TENURE OF LAND IN EUROPE. 109 lized globe. Through all their vicissitudes of peace and warfare, the institutions of the Orientals have experienced little change; remaining, like their manners and customs, almost identically the same in the present day as we know them to have been, from authentic records, twenty centuries at least before Christ. Not so those of the nations of Europe. The latter, whether from an inherent difference in their organization, or from fortuitous circumstances, have passed through a process of more or less gradual change in their habits, social arrangements, and national character;—a change which, though fluctuating occasionally from good to ill, may, we hope, be characterized generally as a progressive amelioration, and may be looked upon as opening to the speculative philanthropist the cheering prospect of a further indefinite, but continual, improvement in the general condition of mankind at large, over whose history Europe, the heart of civilization, seems destined to exercise so mighty an influence. In Europe, as in Asia, when a military chief had, by usurpation, conquest, or consent, acquired absolute power, the entire soil of the country, as well as the lives of its inhabitants, would, we might suppose, be considered his property, to be dealt with at his will and pleasure. This, however, does not appear to have been the case; and we have, therefore, to account for the circumstance, that while in Asia absolute despotism has flourished everywhere down to the present day, and the sovereign can still command the entire produce of the land and labour of the community, in Europe, on the contrary, the power of a conqueror or chieftain has always been more or less limited, and his claim to the exclusive property of the soil restricted to a mere nominal title. The solution of the problem is to be sought in the same circumstance which has tempered the power of the sovereign in other respects as well as in his claim to the ownership of the land,—namely, the continual existence of an hereditary aristocracy, or intermediate class of powerful individuals between the throne and the mass of the people. Such a class has never shown itself in Asia. There the officers of state, nobles, and inferior authorities, derived their power, wealth, and importance, from the sovereign alone, who made and unmade them at his pleasure, and never permitted them to acquire sufficient strength and consistency to claim any privileges from a source independent of his will. It is an interesting question, what occasioned the existence of such a class in Europe and their absence in Asia? There must have been some general predisposing cause, or so broad and universal a distinction could scarcely have grown up and permanently rooted itself throughout two extensive continents. It appears to us that the origin of this important distinction is to be looked for in the peculiar occupations of the primitive settlers who were the ancestors of the people of the north of Europe. The Scythian hordes, whose overflowing increase seems to have been continually drafted off in a westerly direction, were originally pastoral tribes, led to adopt that mode of life by the peculiar TENURE OF LAND IN EUROPE. 111 character of the elevated, open, and wide-spreading grass-plains they occupied in Tartary, Persia, Arabia, and the Russias, European and Asiatic. The inhabitants of southern and eastern Asia were, from the same cause, viz. the superficial nature of their territory, which consisted of deep and rich alluvial soils, devoted to agriculture. Now in an agricultural territory, as we have already observed, a successful invader or usurper has no difficulty in establishing and securing the power of a despotic sovereign, and enforcing a claim of absolute right over the land, persons, and property of all his subjects. Such a ruler, as has also been noticed, would naturally find his advantage in permitting the agricultural population to continue their cultivation of the soil in any way they chose, and to extend it to any hitherto untilled spot they pleased, on condition of their paying him whatever portion of their crops he might choose to demand; which portion would, of course, usually be all that could be wrung from them without absolutely forcing them to discontinue their labours. Hence the ryot system of the Asiatics. But pastoral and nomad tribes, on the contrary, are with difficulty reduced to such prostrate subjection. Their wandering habits naturally imbue them with a love of freedom, and a spirit and vigour with which to assert their independence. And they possess, moreover, an easy resource, in the power of escape by migration from any attempt to enslave them. Whether such attempts occasioned the migrations of the successive swarms which, first passing from Asia into the north of Europe, afterwards deluged the entire surface of the latter continent, or that they were owing, as is more probable, to the multiplication of numbers and the want of room, to which pastoral nations are so soon exposed,-it is certain, from all the accounts remaining to us of these tribes, that they enjoyed a degree of freedom scarcely compatible with the subordination necessary for the maintenance of the social union in a settled agricultural state. What difference of rank or property subsisted among them was of that nature only which still prevails among nomad tribes, each of which recognizes a chief, with perhaps a few subordinate officers; and in which an inferior class of slaves are sometimes found, consisting of captives taken in war;—the remaining freemen being their own masters, and on a perfect footing of equality, after arriving at a mature age. Such were the German tribes in the time of Tacitus; the chase and pasturage their chief sources of subsistence; without cities, or even contiguous dwellings; occupying the land in common; obeying chiefs elected out of particular families; and having some few subordinate distinctions of military rank. Such too were the barbarians who, three centuries after the Christian era, overran the entire Roman empire, and settled themselves as conquerors in every corner of western Europe. They are described by cotemporary writers as great bodies of armed men, with their wives, children, slaves, and flocks, migrating in quest of new settlements, which they wrested by their barbarian vigour from the effeminate and degenerate Romans. The lands they had conquered were probably divided equally among the free |