486 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



tribes shows that among them there existed bond-servants 

 doubtless captive enemies or their descendants. He says 

 that the lords the tribesmen themselves preferred fight 

 ing and hunting to agriculture, and left the management of 

 the latter to the women and weaker members of the family. 

 &quot;The lord (dominus) requires from the slave a certain quantity of 

 corn, cattle, or material for clothing, as in the case of coloni. To this 

 modified extent the German servus is a slave. The wife and children 

 of the free tribesmen do the household work of his house, not slaves 

 as in the Roman households.&quot; 



When the Germans over-ran Gaul, the pre-existing forms 

 of servitude were necessarily complicated ; and the perpetual 

 over-runnings of societies one by another during early stages, 

 repeatedly superposed additional social grades. Seebohm 

 infers that the mediaeval serf was 



&quot; The compound product of survivals from three separate ancient con 

 ditions, gradually, during Roman provincial rule and under the influ 

 ence of barbarian conquest, confused and blended into one, viz., those of 

 the slave on the Roman villa, of the colonus or other semi-servile and 

 mostly barbarian tenants on the Roman villa or public lands, and of the 

 slave of the German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was so very 

 much like a Roman colonus. 1 1 



But this mingling was incomplete. From the time of the 

 conquest of Gaul by the Germans, there co-existed three 

 kinds of subject life slavery proper, an intermediate servi 

 tude in which certain rights of the servus were recognized, 

 and serfdom proper. In the course of centuries the freer 

 forms replaced the more servile forms. Among other causes 

 to which the change is ascribed in the case of France, was the 

 establishment of a central royal power by which the powers 

 of feudal nobles were subordinated. It is said that this 

 change produced the decline of serfdom by placing the sub 

 ject classes in direct relation to the king instead of to their 

 local rulers ; and that it became his interest to favour them 

 in his struggles with the local rulers. But while this was a 

 part cause there was a deeper cause ; namely, the concomi 

 tant decline of inter-feudal wars. So long as dukes, counts, 



