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CHAPTER II
Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of Europe after
the Fall of the Roman Empire
WHEN the German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the
Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted
for several centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised
against the ancient inhabitants interrupted the commerce between the towns
and the country. The towns were deserted, and the country was left uncultivated,
and the western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed a considerable degree
of opulence under the Roman empire, sunk into the lowest state of poverty
and barbarism. During the continuance of those confusions, the chiefs and
principal leaders of those nations acquired or usurped to themselves the
greater part of the lands of those countries. A great part of them was
uncultivated; but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated,
was left without a proprietor. All of them were engrossed, and the greater
part by a few great proprietors. This original engrossing of uncultivated
lands, though a great, might have been but a transitory evil. They might
soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels either by succession
or by alienation. The law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided
by succession: the introduction of entails prevented their being broke
into small parcels by alienation. When land, like movables, is considered
as the means only of subsistence and enjoyment, the natural law of succession
divides it, like them, among all the children of the family; of an of whom
the subsistence and enjoyment may be supposed equally dear to the father.
This natural law of succession accordingly took place among the Romans,
who made no more distinction between elder and younger, between male and
female, in the inheritance of lands than we do in the distribution of movables.
But when land was considered as the means, not of subsistence merely, but
of power and protection, it was thought better that it should descend undivided
to one. In those disorderly times every great landlord was a sort of petty
prince. His tenants were his subjects. He was their judge, and in some
respects their legislator in peace, and their leader in war. He made war
according to his own discretion, frequently against his neighbours, and
sometimes against his sovereign. The security of a landed estate, therefore,
the protection which its owner could afford to those who dwelt on it, depended
upon its greatness. To divide it was to ruin it, and to expose every part
of it to be oppressed and swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours.
The law of primogeniture, therefore, came to take place, not immediately,
indeed, but in process of time, in the succession of landed estates, for
the same reason that it has generally taken place in that of monarchies,
though not always at their first institution. That the power, and consequently
the security of the monarchy, may not be weakened by division, it must
descend entire to one of the children. To which of them so important a
preference shall be given must be determined by some general rule, founded
not upon the doubtful distinctions of personal merit, but upon some plain
and evident difference which can admit of no dispute. Among the children
of the same family, there can be no indisputable difference but that of
sex, and that of age. The male sex is universally preferred to the female;
and when all other things are equal, the elder everywhere takes place of
the younger. Hence the origin of the right of primogeniture, and of what
is called lineal succession. Laws frequently continue in force long after
the circumstances which first gave occasion to them, and which could alone
render them reasonable, are no more. In the present state of Europe, the
proprietor of a single acre of land is as perfectly secure of his possession
as the proprietor of a hundred thousand. The right of primogeniture, however,
still continues to be respected, and as of all institutions it is the fittest
to support the pride of family distinctions, it is still likely to endure
for many centuries. In every other respect, nothing can be more contrary
to the real interest of a numerous family than a right which, in order
to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the children. Entails are the natural
consequences of the law of primogeniture. They were introduced to preserve
a certain lineal succession, of which the law of primogeniture first gave
the idea, and to hinder any part of the original estate from being carried
out of the proposed line either by gift, or devise, or alienation; either
by the folly, or by the misfortune of any of its successive owners. They
were altogether unknown to the Romans. Neither their substitutions nor
fideicommisses bear any resemblance to entails, though some French lawyers
have thought proper to dress the modern institution in the language and
garb of those ancient ones. When great landed estates were a sort of principalities,
entails might not be unreasonable. Like what are called the fundamental
laws of some monarchies, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands
from being endangered by the caprice or extravagance of one man. But in
the present state of Europe, when small as well as great estates derive
their security from the laws of their country, nothing can be more completely
absurd. They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the
supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right
to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the
present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the
fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago. Entails, however,
are still respected through the greater part of Europe, in those countries
particularly in which noble birth is a necessary qualification for the
enjoyment either of civil or military honours. Entails are thought necessary
for maintaining this exclusive privilege of the nobility to the great offices
and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust
advantage over the rest of their fellow citizens, lest their poverty should
render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another.
The common law of England, indeed, is said to abhor perpetuities, and they
are accordingly more restricted there than in any other European monarchy;
though even England is not altogether without them. In Scotland more than
one-fifth, perhaps more than one-third, part of the whole lands of the
country are at present supposed to be under strict entail. Great tracts
of uncultivated land were, in this manner, not only engrossed by particular
families, but the possibility of their being divided again was as much
as possible precluded for ever. It seldom happens, however, that a great
proprietor is a great improver. In the disorderly times which gave birth
to those barbarous institutions, the great proprietor was sufficiently
employed in defending his own territories, or in extending his jurisdiction
and authority over those of his neighbours. He had no leisure to attend
to the cultivation and improvement of land. When the establishment of law
and order afforded him this leisure, he often wanted the inclination, and
almost always the requisite abilities. If the expense of his house and
person either equalled or exceeded his revenue, as it did very frequently,
he had no stock to employ in this manner. If he was an economist, he generally
found it more profitable to employ his annual savings in new purchases
than in the improvement of his old estate. To improve land with profit,
like all other commercial projects, requires an exact attention to small
savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune, even though
naturally frugal, is very seldom capable. The situation of such a person
naturally disposes him to attend rather to ornament which pleases his fancy
than to profit for which he has so little occasion. The elegance of his
dress, of his equipage, of his house, and household furniture, are objects
which from his infancy he has been accustomed to have some anxiety about.
The turn of mind which this habit naturally forms follows him when he comes
to think of the improvement of land. He embellishes perhaps four or five
hundred acres in the neighbourhood of his house, at ten times the expense
which the land is worth after all his improvements; and finds that if he
was to improve his whole estate in the same manner, and he has little taste
for any other, he would be a bankrupt before he had finished the tenth
part of it. There still remain in both parts of the United Kingdom some
great estates which have continued without interruption in the hands of
the same family since the times of feudal anarchy. Compare the present
condition of those estates with the possessions of the small proprietors
in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince
you how unfavourable such extensive property is to improvement. If little
improvement was to be expected from such great proprietors, still less
was to be hoped for from those who occupied the land under them. In the
ancient state of Europe, the occupiers of land were all tenants at will.
They were all or almost all slaves; but their slavery was of a milder kind
than that known among the ancient Greeks and Romans, or even in our West
Indian colonies. They were supposed to belong more directly to the land
than to their master. They could, therefore, be sold with it, but not separately.
They could marry, provided it was with the consent of their master; and
he could not afterwards dissolve the marriage by selling the man and wife
to different persons. If he maimed or murdered any of them, he was liable
to some penalty, though generally but to a small one. They were not, however,
capable of acquiring property. Whatever they acquired was acquired to their
master, and he could take it from them at pleasure. Whatever cultivation
and improvement could be carried on by means of such slaves was properly
carried on by their master. It was at his expense. The seed, the cattle,
and the instruments of husbandry were all his. It was for his benefit.
Such slaves could acquire nothing but their daily maintenance. It was properly
the proprietor himself, therefore, that, in this case, occupied his own
lands, and cultivated them by his own bondmen. This species of slavery
still subsists in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other
parts of Germany. It is only in the western and southwestern provinces
of Europe that it has gradually been abolished altogether. But if great
improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are
least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen.
The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the
work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance,
is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property,
can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little
as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase
his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not
by any interest of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation
of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master when it fell
under the management of slaves, is remarked by both Pliny and Columella.
In the time of Aristotle it had not been much better in ancient Greece.
Speaking of the ideal republic described in the laws of Plato, to maintain
five thousand idle men (the number of warriors supposed necessary for its
defence) together with their women and servants, would require, he says,
a territory of boundless extent and fertility, like the plains of Babylon.
The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him
so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever
the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore,
he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen. The
planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave-cultivation.
The raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English
colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part
of the work is done by freemen. The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania
to set at liberty all their negro slaves may satisfy us that their number
cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property,
such a resolution could never have been agreed to. In our sugar colonies,
on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies
a very great part of it. The profits of a sugar-plantation in any of our
West Indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other
cultivation that is known either in Europe or America; and the profits
of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior
to those of corn, as has already been observed. Both can afford the expense
of slave-cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco.
The number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that
of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies. To the slave cultivators
of ancient times gradually succeeded a species of farmers known at present
in France by the name of metayers. They are called in Latin, Coloni partiarii.
They have been so long in disuse in England that at present I know no English
name for them. The proprietor furnished them with the seed, cattle, and
instruments of husbandry, the whole stock, in short, necessary for cultivating
the farm. The produce was divided equally between the proprietor and the
farmer, after setting aside what was judged necessary for keeping up the
stock, which was restored to the proprietor when the farmer either quitted,
or was turned out of the farm. Land occupied by such tenants is properly
cultivated at the expense of the proprietor as much as that occupied by
slaves. There is, however, one very essential difference between them.
Such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring property, and having
a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they have a plain interest
that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their
own proportion may be so. A slave, on the contrary, who can acquire nothing
but his maintenance, consults his own ease by making the land produce as
little as possible over and above that maintenance. It is probable that
it was partly upon account of this advantage, and partly upon account of
the encroachments which the sovereign, always jealous of the great lords,
gradually encouraged their villains to make upon their authority, and which
seem at last to have been such as rendered this species of servitude altogether
inconvenient, that tenure in villanage gradually wore out through the greater
part of Europe. The time and manner, however, in which so important a revolution
was brought about is one of the most obscure points in modern history.
The Church of Rome claims great merit in it; and it is certain that so
early as the twelfth century, Alexander III published a bull for the general
emancipation of slaves. It seems, however, to have been rather a pious
exhortation than a law to which exact obedience was required from the faithful.
Slavery continued to take place almost universally for several centuries
afterwards, till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation of the
two interests above mentioned, that of the proprietor on the one hand,
and that of the sovereign on the other. A villain enfranchised, and at
the same time allowed to continue in possession of the land, having no
stock of his own, could cultivate it only by means of what the landlord
advanced to him, and must, therefore, have been what the French called
a metayer. It could never, however, be the interest even of this last species
of cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any
part of the little stock which they might save from their own share of
the produce, because the lord, who laid out nothing, was to get one half
of whatever it produced. The tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce,
is found to be a very great hindrance to improvement. A tax, therefore,
which amounted to one half must have been an effectual bar to it. It might
be the interest of a metayer to make the land produce as much as could
be brought out of it by means of the stock furnished by the proprietor;
but it could never be his interest to mix any part of his own with it.
In France, where five parts out of six of the whole kingdom are said to
be still occupied by this species of cultivators, the proprietors complain
that their metayers take every opportunity of employing the master's cattle
rather in carriage than in cultivation; because in the one case they get
the whole profits to themselves, in the other they share them with their
landlord. This species of tenants still subsists in some parts of Scotland.
They are called steel-bow tenants. Those ancient English tenants, who are
said by Chief Baron Gilbert and Doctor Blackstone to have been rather bailiffs
of the landlord than farmers properly so called, were probably of the same
kind. To this species of tenancy succeeded, though by very slow degrees,
farmers properly so called, who cultivated the land with their own stock,
paying a rent certain to the landlord. When such farmers have a lease for
a term of years, they may sometimes find it for their interest to lay out
part of their capital in the further improvement of the farm; because they
may sometimes expect to recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration
of the lease. The possession even of such farmers, however, was long extremely
precarious, and still is so in many parts of Europe. They could before
the expiration of their term be legally outed of their lease by a new purchaser;
in England, even by the fictitious action of a common recovery. If they
were turned out illegally by the violence of their master, the action by
which they obtained redress was extremely imperfect. It did not always
reinstate them in the possession of the land, but gave them damages which
never amounted to the real loss. Even in England, the country perhaps of
Europe where the yeomanry has always been most respected, it was not till
about the 14th of Henry VII that the action of ejectment was invented,
by which the tenant recovers, not damages only but possession, and in which
his claim is not necessarily concluded by the uncertain decision of a single
assize. This action has been found so effectual a remedy that, in the modern
practice, when the landlord has occasion to sue for the possession of the
land, he seldom makes use of the actions which properly belong to him as
landlord, the Writ of Right or the Writ of Entry, but sues in the name
of his tenant by the Writ of Ejectment. In England, therefore, the security
of the tenant is equal to that of the proprietor. In England, besides,
a lease for life of forty shillings a year value is a freehold, and entitles
the lessee to vote for a Member of Parliament; and as a great part of the
yeomanry have freeholds of this kind, the whole order becomes respectable
to their landlords on account of the political consideration which this
gives them. There is, I believe, nowhere in Europe, except in England,
any instance of the tenant building upon the land of which he had no lease,
and trusting that the honour of his landlord would take no advantage of
so important an improvement. Those laws and customs so favourable to the
yeomanry have perhaps contributed more to the present grandeur of England
than all their boasted regulations of commerce taken together. The law
which secures the longest leases against successors of every kind is, so
far as I know, peculiar to Great Britain. It was introduced into Scotland
so early as 1449, a law of James II. Its beneficial influence, however,
has been much obstructed by entails; the heirs of entail being generally
restrained from letting leases for any long term of years, frequently for
more than one year. A late Act of Parliament has, in this respect, somewhat
slackened their fetters, though they are still by much too strait. In Scotland,
besides, as no leasehold gives a vote for a Member of Parliament, the yeomanry
are upon this account less respectable to their landlords than in England.
In other parts of Europe, after it was found convenient to secure tenants
both against heirs and purchasers, the term of their security was still
limited to a very short period; in France, for example, to nine years from
the commencement of the lease. It has in that country, indeed, been lately
extended to twenty-seven, a period still too short to encourage the tenant
to make the most important improvements. The proprietors of land were anciently
the legislators of every part of Europe. The laws relating to land, therefore,
were all calculated for what they supposed the interest of the proprietor.
It was for his interest, they had imagined, that no lease granted by any
of his predecessors should hinder him from enjoying, during a long term
of years, the full value of his land. Avarice and injustice are always
short-sighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct
improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the
landlord. The farmers too, besides paying the rent, were anciently, it
was supposed, bound to perform a great number of services to the landlord,
which were seldom either specified in the lease, or regulated by any precise
rule, but by the use and wont of the manor or barony. These services, therefore,
being almost entirely arbitrary, subjected the tenant to many vexations.
In Scotland the abolition of all services not precisely stipulated in the
lease has in the course of a few years very much altered for the better
the condition of the yeomanry of that country. The public services to which
the yeomanry were bound were not less arbitrary than the private ones.
To make and maintain the high roads, a servitude which still subsists,
I believe, everywhere, though with different degrees of oppression in different
countries, was not the only one. When the king's troops, when his household
or his officers of any kind passed through any part of the country, the
yeomanry were bound to provide them with horses, carriages, and provisions,
at a price regulated by the purveyor. Great Britain is, I believe, the
only monarchy in Europe where the oppression of purveyance has been entirely
abolished. It still subsists in France and Germany. The public taxes to
which they were subject were as irregular and oppressive as the services.
The ancient lords, though extremely unwilling to grant themselves any pecuniary
aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him to tallage, as they called it
their tenants, and had not knowledge enough to foresee how much this must
in the end affect their own revenue. The taille, as it still subsists in
France, may serve as an example of those ancient tallages. It is a tax
upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which they estimate by the stock
that he has upon the farm. It is his interest, therefore, to appear to
have as little as possible, and consequently to employ as little as possible
in its cultivation, and none in its improvement. Should any stock happen
to accumulate in the hands of a French farmer, the taille is almost equal
to a prohibition of its ever being employed upon the land. This tax, besides,
is supposed to dishonour whoever is subject to it, and to degrade him below,
not only the rank of a gentleman, but that of a burgher, and whoever rents
the lands of another becomes subject to it. No gentleman, nor even any
burgher who has stock, will submit to this degradation. This tax, therefore,
not only hinders the stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed
in its improvement, but drives away an other stock from it. The ancient
tenths and fifteenths, so usual in England in former times, seem, so far
as they affected the land, to have been taxes of the same nature with the
taille. Under all these discouragements, little improvement could be expected
from the occupiers of land. That order of people, with all the liberty
and security which law can give, must always improve under great disadvantages.
The farmer, compared with the proprietor, is as a merchant who trades with
borrowed money compared with one who trades with his own. The stock of
both may improve, but that of the one, with only equal good conduct, must
always improve more slowly than that of the other, on account of the large
share of the profits which is consumed by the interest of the loan. The
lands cultivated by the farmer must, in the same manner, with only equal
good conduct, be improved more slowly than those cultivated by the proprietor,
on account of the large share of the produce which is consumed in the rent,
and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he might have employed in the
further improvement of the land. The station of a farmer besides is, from
the nature of things, inferior to that of a proprietor. Through the greater
part of Europe the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people,
even to the better sort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all parts of
Europe to the great merchants and master manufacturers. It can seldom happen,
therefore, that a man of any considerable stock should quit the superior
in order to place himself in an inferior station. Even in the present state
of Europe, therefore, little stock is likely to go from any other profession
to the improvement of land in the way of farming. More does perhaps in
Great Britain than in any other country, though even there the great stocks
which are, in some places, employed in farming have generally been acquired
by farming, the trade, perhaps, in which of all others stock is commonly
acquired most slowly. After small proprietors, however, rich and great
farmers are, in every country, the principal improvers. There are more
such perhaps in England than in any other European monarchy. In the republican
governments of Holland and of Berne in Switzerland, the farmers are said
to be not inferior to those of England. The ancient policy of Europe was,
over and above all this, unfavourable to the improvement and cultivation
of land, whether carried on by the proprietor or by the farmer; first,
by the general prohibition of the exportation of corn without a special
licence, which seems to have been a very universal regulation; and secondly,
by the restraints which were laid upon the inland commerce, not only of
corn, but of almost every other part of the produce of the farm by the
absurd laws against engrossers, regrators, and forestallers, and by the
privileges of fairs and markets. It has already been observed in what manner
the prohibition of the exportation of corn, together with some encouragement
given to the importation of foreign corn, obstructed the cultivation of
ancient Italy, naturally the most fertile country in Europe, and at that
time the seat of the greatest empire in the world. To what degree such
restraints upon the inland commerce of this commodity, joined to the general
prohibition of exportation, must have discouraged the cultivation of countries
less fertile and less favourably circumstanced, it is not perhaps very
easy to imagine.
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