ALLODIAL AND FEUDAL TENURES.

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warriors, the chief retaining the largest share, and were cultivated principally by their slaves. But, as they in turn adopted some of the habits of the people they had dispossessed, fixed themselves in. particular spots, began to occupy themselves in agriculture, and to build permanent habitations, they became more exposed to the domination of their military chieftains. During the turbulent middle ages these several clans were incessantly engaged in mutual warfare under their respective leaders; and the authority which, in a state so circumstanced, the chief necessarily exercised over his body of military companions, was recompensed by a division among them of the lands he,, with their aid, wrested from their neighbours. There existed at that time little wealth of a portable nature, and the reward, therefore, of military service could only be a share of the land which the chieftain's conquests enabled him to command.. These lands, cultivated by the slaves taken in war, could easily be made a source of wealth. And, such grants, when they escaped the grasp of a still stronger tyrant or invader, were allowed to become hereditary, on condition of the continuance of the same military services in consideration of which they were originally bestowed. In this manner. grew up a distinction between allodial lands, or those which belonged to freemen, (the descendants, probably, of the original free invaders among whom the land was partitioned upon their first. migratory settlement on it,) and the lands held by feudal tenure of a military chief, on condition of military service.

The several chiefs in their turn recognized a

I

supreme lord or suzerain, under whom they marshalled themselves in expeditions of importance, and from whom they likewise held feudal fiefs granted as a reward for their past, and a gage for their future services, on the same terms as those they divided among their own particular supporters, or vassals.

The power of the sovereign, through this graduated chain of dependence, never became absolute in Europe as in Asia. His principal vassals were always more or less independent of him. Each had his own clan, or body of vassals, who looked up to him as their only head, and were ready to obey his orders at any time, whether to act for, or against, his suzerain. And a league of these chieftains could often overawe, and occasionally succeeded in dethroning their sovereign. The entire history of Europe, in fact, is but the narrative of continued struggles between sovereigns and some of their vassal nobles; in which now one, now another party obtained the mastery. Under the immediate successors of Clovis, the Frank conqueror of Gaul, the royal authority was uppermost. But the nobles soon contrived to regain the power which their negligence alone had allowed the sovereign to usurp, and which that of the contemptible kings of the line of Clovis enabled them easily to resume. The chief vassals of the crown succeeded in obtaining a full recognition of their hereditary right to their patrimonial possessions, to which the royal investiture gave more of ornament than sanction. • From the death of Charlemagne the kingdom of France was a bundle of fiefs, and the king little more than one

PREDIAL SLAVERY.

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of a number of feudal nobles, differing rather in dignity than in power from the rest.'*

The independence of the German aristocracy reached its height towards the middle of the thirteenth century. Since that period the sovereigns found it necessary to strengthen themselves against their nobles by calling in the aid of their people, and particularly of the commercial and manufacturing towns, which, with this view, they fostered by immunities, privileges, and protection from the extortions of the neighbouring counts and barons. From these elements sprung the political condition of the European states; which, unquestionably, owe what freedom they enjoy to the necessity which drove the sovereign to conciliate the mass of the people, as a counterpoise to a powerful aristocracy.

The land, meantime, was cultivated almost wholly by slaves, who were bred and treated in all respects like cattle. Their numbers were also recruited by the prisoners taken in war, and to a certain extent, in the most turbulent times, by freemen, who were actually driven to enrol themselves among the slaves of powerful chieftains in order to preserve their lives; a petty freeman being a common prey to all parties, whereas the slaves of one chief were of course protected by him from all others. There were some distinctions among slaves-not, however, of much importance. Some were certainly saleable like cattle, and might be severed from the land; others were, by custom, or perhaps in virtue of the original bargain under

*Hallam, i. p. 244.

which they or their ancestors had submitted themselves as slaves to the chief, attached to the soil, (adscripti gleba,) and could only be alienated with it. They derived their subsistence by cultivating for their own use small tracts of land allotted to them by the lord for this purpose, (a cheap contrivance for making them maintain themselves;) and for the remainder of their time they laboured on the demesne land, or portion reserved for the lord's own use, the produce of which formed his revenue. Even the kings of France and Lombardy supplied the expenses of their rude courts from their demesne lands. Charlemagne himself was a farmer, and regulated the economy of his farms with the minuteness of a steward.*

Nearly the whole of Europe was at one time cultivated in this manner by slaves, or, as they are generally called, serfs. But the labouring classes of the western states have by slow degrees contrived to emancipate themselves from personal bondage, and obtain the invaluable natural right of either working on their own account, or disposing of their services to the highest bidder. Among the northern and eastern nations serfship still prevails; in some, as Russia for example, in its unmitigated form; the owner having almost unlimited power over the persons of his serfs; beating, mutilating, and even putting them to death at his will.

The mode in which the lord in these countries obtains a revenue from his estate is still by employing his serfs to cultivate and manage his

*Hallam, chap. ii. part ii.

GRADUAL MITIGATION OF SERFSHIP.

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demesne lands under a superintendent; each serf having permission, in return for his labour, to maintain himself and his family, by tilling certain portions of land allotted to him for the purpose. Usage has by degrees established for the serfs something like rights, which the humane genius of modern law has learnt to respect. Their holdings are considered hereditary; and in many districts the amount of labour which the serf is required to perform for the lord is fixed. Attempts have likewise been made of late years to substitute a better form of land-occupation than serfship under any modifications can ever be; and, by affording the peasant a hope of improving his condition by his own exertions, to stimulate his torpid industry.

The progress of this change from serfship to free tenancy, as it has taken place by slow degrees in the west of Europe, may be illustrated from the example of England. During the Saxon era, predial slavery was universal. Even at the end of the thirteenth century, two hundred years after the occupation of the country by the Normans, a very large proportion of the body of cultivators was still precisely in the condition of the Russian serf. During the next three hundred years, the unlimited amount of labour exacted from the villeins (as they were then called) in return for the lands allotted to them, was gradually commuted for definite services, and they acquired a legal right to the hereditary occupation of what were termed their copyholds. Two hundred years have scarcely elapsed since the change to this extent became quite universal, or since the per