142 LANDLOEDS A NATUEAL GEOWTH 



the practical problem of making bread and meat for the 

 million, concentrated her energies on the wholesale pro- 

 duction of corn and cattle ; the other, opposed by no such 

 difficulty, developed a different system of land tenure and 

 of farming. The effect of the French movement was to 

 tighten the peasant's grasp upon the land, of the English 

 to tear it from his clutch. 



In Belgium, as in France, the relations of landlord and 

 tenant exist side by side with a peasant proprietary. In 

 both countries the peasant owners are the growth of natu- 

 ral laws. In Belgium the largest portion of the land and 

 the most productive and fertile districts are held by tenant 

 farmers. The ' Pays de Waes ' is not cultivated by small 

 owners, but by tenants, who have for their landlords 

 the little tradesmen of the towns. The poorest soils, such 

 as the Campine or Luxembourg, are tilled by peasant pro- 

 prietors. But even in the Campine the farmer ekes out 

 his agricultural earnings by travelling over Europe as a 

 pedlar in human Lair. 



Both the objects and results of agrarian legislation in 

 Germany have been misinterpreted by English land agita- 

 tors. Stein and his successors did not expropriate the land- 

 lords, or deprive them of their land to create a peasant 

 propiietary. Before 1807 land in Prussia was divided, 

 like society, into three castes ; peasant land could not be 

 exchanged for burgher land, or burgher land for noble. 

 The old Teutonic communities occupied the greater part 

 of the land, but the ownership was vested in the feudal 

 barons. Peasants could not acquire more than the do- 

 ntninium, utile ; the dominium directum belonged to the 

 landlord. They were really serfs, fixed to the soil, irre- 

 movable from the manor, holding their land by money 

 rents and personal services. They enjoyed common rights 



