READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



large farms to be cultivated, the services are so oppressive that it 

 may be said they constitute the real end of the existence of the 

 leasehold peasant. In consequence of this the entire rural popu- 

 lation is unfree, in hereditary subjection, bound to the clod, that 

 is, to the estate. Where we meet this hereditary subjection in 

 connection with the bad nonhereditary leasehold, we have the 

 newer form of personal bondage of the eighteenth century. 



In the South, finally, that is, in Southwestern and Central 

 Germany, including the kingdom of Saxony, which, having been 

 won back before the great period of colonization, must be con- 

 sidered as belonging to this region, the older manorial system is 

 fixed, petrified, the personal relationship between lord and peasant 

 has disappeared, and the ground rents have become realty charges 

 on the peasant farm. In consequence the farm becomes here 

 regularly good property, even better than in the Northeast, that is, 

 property subject to rent or settlement subject to hereditary ground 

 rent. The duties performed for the court baron, who is a different 

 person from the lord, are also slight, because baronial estates are 

 here even rarer and smaller than in the Northwest ; and these 

 duties are compulsory assistance' in hunting and in building opera- 

 tions rather than in cultivating the land. But bondage has existed 

 from the Middle Ages, personal dependence on another lord, 

 which in the eighteenth century took the form of tithes or rents. 

 The rural policy of these parts of Germany, the Southwestern 

 German agrarian policy, rests, therefore, on the three distinct insti- 

 tutions of the manorial system, judicature, and personal bondage. 



However, this condition does not prevail uniformly in the en- 

 tire southern half of the older Western Germany, west of the 

 Elbe. A region in the Southeast, extending from the southern 

 Black Forest through Algau and Old Bavaria does not belong 

 to it. Here we find, as a rule, conditions of settlement inferior to 

 ownership or hereditary leasehold ; the manorial system has even 

 greater significance, and the compulsory services are more severe ; 

 for there are more and larger baronial estates than in the South 

 generally. It is possible that here also, as in the Northwest, a 

 breaking up of the villications took place ; but of this we have 

 as yet too little knowledge : the subject is still to be investigated. 



