230 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and the mismanagement and dishonesty of the agents, brought 

 about, first, the leasing of the villications to the agents for sev- 

 eral years against a fixed sum of money or quantity of grain ; 

 and then, when this system proved inefficient, the villications 

 were disbanded. 



The lord liberated the serfs' persons, but the serfs lost 

 thereby their hereditary right in their hides of land. The lord took 

 the land back, and, in keeping with the improved methods of 

 agriculture which were now in vogue, he merged into one farm 

 what had hitherto been four peasant farms of thirty acres each, 

 and leased the whole to a freed serf, but now only on the 

 terms on which the steward had previously held the entire villi- 

 cation, namely, with a stipulated large contribution of grain, the 

 amount of which might, on the expiration of the lease, be in- 

 creased. Thus originated the peasant stewards of Lower Saxony, 

 and the large Lower-Saxon peasant farm of four hides ; and with 

 the stewards a new, purely manorial system without authority 

 over the person of the peasant, the newer manorial system. 



But what became, then, of the remaining three fourths of the 

 peasants ? Some of them were apparently forced down to a 

 lower class of the rural population, the cotters, with but little 

 land and that not in the arable area. Others moved to the 

 towns, then just formed ; and still others, spurred on by need 

 rather than by the desire of adventure, moved into the land of 

 the Slavs, east of the Elbe, whither they were drawn by two con- 

 siderations : personal freedom, so dearly bought, and the heredi- 

 tary right of property, which they had lost in their native land. 



This transformation of the manorial system, but recently estab- 

 lished by Wittich, took place, in the manner described, only in 

 a part of Northwestern Germany, in Lower Saxony ; but in West- 

 phalia too the agrarian system gradually changed in the same way, 

 save a remnant of personal bondage, which constituted, however, 

 nothing more than a source of income. 



Soon after the beginning of this process Lower Saxony first wit- 

 nessed the conflict between state and manor for the peasant. The 

 state, interested because of the taxes it levied on the leased farm, 

 came off victorious. In the first place, the lord was prohibited from 



