The Birth of the Land Laws. 1 73 



the Inca, as the ibis to the Egyptian; though the motive for 

 the former's preservation was as mundane as that of the latter's 

 was divine. 



In the England of the period now about to be discussed, a 

 marked feature of her rural life was the non-residency of the 

 landowners. Most proprietors of real estates were crusading 

 in Palestine, and with them had gone the mighty men of 

 valour, the bellicose and the violent. This separation of the 

 goats from the sheep had left the peaceful, the timid, and the 

 industrious behind in England, where they experienced a free- 

 dom from interference so unusual and refreshing, as to cause 

 little wonder at 'their marked progress in the peaceful arts. 

 The refined and educated influence of the Church, hitherto 

 checked by the combined ignorance and violence of the mili- 

 tary party, saw its opportunity, and put forth all its strength 

 in the elevation of the socman and the enfranchisement of the 

 slave. Later on, when the absent landlords returned from 

 that country which, in the forcible language of Scripture, has 

 been described as flowing with milk and honey, they would 

 surely have brought back an increased respect for the husband- 

 man and a deeper knowledge of his industry, even though they 

 had acquired such feelings whilst trampling under foot the 

 crops and fertilising the soil with the blood of those famous 

 Saracenic farmers. 



With increased agricultural science grew up fresh legislation. 

 If there is generally an intimate connection between a nation's 

 politics and its agriculture, surely the intimacy between its 

 laws and its agriculture is quite as great ! In the first condi- 

 tion of society the idea of property to the savage was confined to 

 a few moveables. The wide tracts of country covered daily in 

 pursuit of food, would in no way inspire his mind with any 

 ideas of possession ; nor in the patriarchal or nomad stage could 

 such thoughts occur to the shepherd, as he glanced back on a 

 plain nibbled bare by his flocks before he drove them forward 

 to fresh pastures. But when meat and milk cease to satisfy 

 the human race, and the art of agriculture induces man to sink 

 labour and capital in the soil, he finds a connecting link between 

 himself and it, which seeks expression in the word " owner- 



