264 Transactions of the 



and the best soldiers, states that Italy, at the end of the sixth (Roman) 

 century, was far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, and 

 no longer able to furnish its former war levies. 



The half savage herdsman who confronts the traveler in the Roman 

 Campagna, is an unconscious witness of the estimation which noble and 

 aristocratic Rome placed upon her citizen farmers while the nation was 

 shaping itself. "She did not exactly desire their destruction, but al- 

 lowed it to run its course, and so desolation advanced with gigantic 

 steps over the flourishing land of Italy, where countless numbers of free 

 men had lately rejoiced in well-earned prosperity." 



GERMANY. 



The development of agriculture among the Germans was retarded by 

 the military spirit which distinguished them, and by a policy exactly 

 the reverse of that pursued by the Romans. The Germans returned the 

 lands to the people they conquered on condition of receiving military 

 assistance, and required of their tributaries that one half the population 

 should alternately fight and till the soil. The feudal system arose in 

 their dislike of agricultural pursuits, and was entirely subversive of the 

 freehold or allodial rights essential to their successful prosecution, and 

 although these rights were preserved in some parts of Germany and 

 France, the tendency to vassalage was almost irresistible. Indeed, there 

 was no other security in those distracted times either for life or prop- 

 erty, and the oath of fealty exacted from the peasant by the lord, was 

 required of the lord himself to the next higher in authority, and so on 

 until it rested at the throne, thus diminishing in all classes the sense of 

 degradation. 



Below the monarch in the long procession of nobility came, first, the 

 Earls Palatine, then simple Earls, then companions in Germany corre- 

 sponding to the Thanes of England, then the ceorls or tenants, and lastly 

 the slaves or villains who tilled the soil. These aristocratic distinctions 

 were engrafted upon Great Britain, with other Teutonic customs, during 

 the Saxon ascendency. 



GREAT BRITAIN. 



Agriculture was introduced into Britain by the Gauls, one hundred 

 years before the Roman invasion. The division of land followed the 

 Roman custom, i. e., it was divided into ''hides," a hide being about as 

 much as could be cultivated with a single plow, or from sixty to one 

 hundred and twenty acres. No man was allowed to guide a ptow'who 

 could not construct one. To reclaim land gave the use of it for five 

 years. Just at this period the Saxon distinction between folks land, or 

 the property belonging to the State and the people at large, and bocland, 

 or private property, begins distinctly to appear; also, the system of 

 rentals. According to the law of Ina, king of the West Saxons in the 

 eighth century, a hide of plow laud paid the following rent, viz: ten 

 casks of honey; three hundred loaves of bread; tw-elve casks of strong 

 ale; thirty casks of small ale; two oxen; ten wedders; ten geese; 

 twenty hens; ten cheeses; one cask of butter; five salmon; twenty 

 loads of forage; and one hundred eels. 



In the time of Alfred the Great we hear complaints that arable lands 

 were exhausted of their natural fertility, and three fourths of that which 

 was susceptible of cultivation was devoted to pasturage. 



Known in law as a churl or hind, the English farmer earned his black 



