268 LAND REFORM 



hinders the absorption of peasant land in manorial 

 farms. This will be the more necessary, because the free 

 trade in land allowed by Section i (of the Edict) will 

 multiply alterations with the change of ownership, and 

 the rise in the value of the land will more and more 

 tempt the new proprietor to seek his advantage." 



Provisions were therefore made to protect the 

 peasantry from this serious danger of being driven off 

 the land by the unequal competition to which they 

 would be otherwise exposed. Professor Seeley's re- 

 marks on this point are well worth quoting (Vol. I, 

 p. 433) : " Now it might very plausibly be main- 

 tained that free trade in land would not create a 

 happy peasant class, but would simply substitute for 

 a peasantry, labouring under certain evils, that class 

 of famished drudges which we know in England, and 

 who, if they cannot be called serfs, can still less be 

 called peasants ; for a peasant properly so called must 

 have a personal interest in the land. . . . The intro- 

 duction of free trade in land created so manifest a 

 danger of the absorption of peasant-holdings by the 

 rich, that it was found in the end necessary to protect 

 these holdings by a special limitation." Accordingly, 

 he adds: "Sections 6 and 7" (of the Edict) "are intro- 

 duced to prevent the system of free trade in land 

 from bearing too hard on the peasant, and making 

 the proprietorship of land a monopoly of the richer 

 classes." 



It may be noticed here for the benefit of our legis- 

 lators that the initiation of these reforms did not lie 

 with the rural population themselves. The German 

 peasantry at the time held their lands for the most 

 part under a servile tenure. After the defeat of their 

 armed revolts in the sixteenth century they were com- 



