SERFDOM. 401 



unit is more and more coerced by the aggregate. Further, 

 we see that when peace has been followed by diminished 

 control of a society over its members, the control increases 

 again with the return of wars. Where the army had been 

 recruited by voluntary enlistment, it comes to be recruited 

 by conscription by compulsory service. At the same time 

 the heavier taxes and the forced loans imply that the citizen 

 has a decreased power over his property makes a step 

 towards servitude to the State. And in respect of the institu 

 tion of serfdom here treated of, this effect is well exempli 

 fied by what took place in Germany after the Thirty Years 

 War. 



&quot; A practical despotism was established, as well in the greater states 

 as in the minor principalities,&quot; and the peasant, though &quot;in general 

 not legally in the condition of serfdom . . . but only of a limited sub 

 jection,&quot; was &quot;liable to be treated with great brutality, and was in 

 practice at the mercy of the lord as regards the dues he had to pay 

 and the services he had to render.&quot; 



To which special facts add the more general facts that where 

 as in England, the least militant of European states, serfdom 

 had practically disappeared in the 13th century, it survived 

 in various Continental states till quite late periods; namely 

 in France till 1789, in Prussia till 1810, in other German 

 States till 1812 1820; Austria 1848; Eussia 1861. 



Along with the negative cause for the relaxation and 

 abolition of serfdom there is a positive cause the unfitness 

 of the serf for productive purposes. Most incentives which 

 make a citizen an efficient working unit, are not operative 

 upon him under a regime which represses all initiative and 

 furnishes no stimulus to energy. German observers in Kus- 

 sia, as quoted by Prof. Jones, say that a Middlesex mower 

 will mow in a clay as much as three Kussian serfs. The Prus 

 sian Councillor of State, Jacobi, is considered to have proved 

 that in Eussia, where everything is cheap, the labour of a serf 

 was double as expensive as that of a labourer in England. 

 In Austria the work of a serf is stated to have been equal to 



