Why did Colonate lead to serfdom? 359 



Provinces as in Italy; but it converted small owners into small tenants, 

 and did not merge the holdings into large slave-gang plantations or 

 throw them into pasture. The plan of leasing a large estate as a 

 whole to a big head-tenant, or establishing him in the central 'manor 

 farm,' was quite consistent with the general design, and this theory 

 accounts for the presence of a population of free coloni, whom later 

 legislation might and did bind fast to the soil. 



This argument has both ingenuity and force, but we can only 

 assent to it with considerable reservations. Letting to free coloni was 

 a practice long used in Italy, and in the first century AD was evidently 

 becoming more common. It was but natural that it should appear in 

 the Provinces. Still, taken by itself, there is no obvious reason why it 

 should develope into serfdom. With the admitted scarcity and rising 

 value of labour, why was it that the freeman did not improve his posi- 

 tion in relation to his lord, indeed to capitalists in general ? I think 

 the presence of the big lessee, the conductor, an employer of slave 

 labour, had not a little to do with it. Labour as such was despised. 

 The requirement of task-work to supplement that of slaves on the 

 ' manor farm ' was not likely to make labour more esteemed. Yet to 

 get his little holding the colonus had to put up with this condition. It 

 may be significant that we hear nothing of coloni working for wages in 

 spare time. Was it likely that they would do so? Then, when the 

 conductor came to be employed as collector of rents and other dues on 

 the estate, his opportunities of illicit exaction gave him more and 

 more power over them ; and, combined with their reluctance to migrate 

 and sacrifice the fruits of past labour, reduced them 1 more and more 

 to a state of de facto dependence. At the worst they would be semi- 

 servile in fact, though free in law; at the best they would have this 

 outlook, without any apparent alternative to escape their fate. This, I ima- 

 gine, was the unhappy situation that was afterwards recognized by law. 



I must not omit to point out that I have said practically nothing 

 on the subject 2 of municipal lands and their administration by the 

 authorities of the several res publicae or civitates. Of the importance 

 of this matter I am well aware, more particularly in connexion with 

 the development of emphyteusis under the perpetual leases granted by 

 the municipalities. In a general history of the imperial economics this 

 topic would surely claim a significant place. But it seems to have 

 little or no bearing on the labour conditions with which I am primarily 

 concerned, while it would add greatly to the bulk of a treatise already 

 too long. So too the incidence of taxation, and the effects of degrada- 



1 This is very nearly the view of Wallon in 264 le Colonat a 1'origine ne fut pas un droit 

 mais un fait.' Ib 266. 



2 I have made some reference to it below in the chapter on the Digest. 



