3Q 



nobles directly, whilst they depended for their support on small allot- 

 ments, to which they geneniUy acquired an hereditary title. 



It is unnecessary to say tliat this arrangement is far from securing 

 even a moderate degree of happiness among the great mass of the 

 people. It places a power in the hands of the nobility too apt to be 

 abused, and it tends to reduce the serf more and more to the level of a 

 slave. 



Into western Europe this system, was only partially introduced by the 

 Genuan invadei*s. Here a system of tenure has prevailed for ages, and 

 still prevails, differing essentially from the ryot tenure of Asia, and the 

 serf tenure of eastern Europe — it is the metayer system of France, 

 Italy, and Spain. The cultivator has a more precarious tenure, being a 

 tenant at will ; but his personal liberty is not exposed to encroachments 

 on the part of his landlord, and his rent is fixed. It is a produce rent, 

 generally consisting of one-half, the landlord contributing a greater or 

 less proportion of the necessary stock, according to the variations of 

 local custom or private arrangement. The majority of the metayers, 

 however, are in anything but a thriving condition ; they are constantly 

 in debt to their landlords for advances in times of distress. The margin 

 of profit left to them after deducting the rent is so very small, that the 

 commonest misfortune — a short crop, an illness, a public calamity — 

 reduces it to nothing, and throws them upon their landlords for support. 

 This constant indebtedness thus seems quite an essential feature in all 

 peasant tenures among the ryots, the serfs, and the metayers, so much 

 so, that where it is mentioned as a notorious fact (as of the Gaulish 

 peasants by Caesar,-) we may safely conclude that those peasants are in a 

 state of subjection similar to that of ryots, serfs, or metayers. 



After this short survey of the chief forms of tenure of land, let us 

 now turn our attention to classical antiquity, and inquire into the 

 laws or customs that regulate these matters among the Greeks and 

 Romans. The first proposition, which will hardly need any proof, is 

 this, that both in Italy and Greece the soil was looked upon as the pro- 

 perty of the state. The Spartan constitution emphatically declared the 

 state the owner of all the soil in Laconia, and the freedom with which 

 the Greek republics generally were able to re-arrange the conditions of 

 landed property, shows that the same law prevailed everywhere. Among 

 the Romans it was a maxim of law, that the newly conquered land fell 

 to the state ; and in the provinces the only proprietor of the soil was 

 the Roman people, and afterwards the Emperor.j The next question 



• CsBS bell. gall. I. 4. Orgetorix ad indicium omnera suam faniiliam undique coegit et 

 omtie* clientes obaeratosque suos eodem comluxit- 



+ Gaiu8 II, § 7 and 28. 



