232 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



make to many different lords. Their tithes were oppressive ethi- 

 cally and socially rather than economically, but these were ex- 

 ploited without mercy, and attempts at increasing them were not 

 infrequent. To this must be added the usurpation of the common 

 pasture. The Twelve Articles call by no means for abolition of all 

 tithes, but, generally speaking, only for the reestablishment of the 

 old custom and the restitution of the right to the common land. 



In the North, and later in the Northeast, the agrarian system 

 was subjected to a seasonable transformation, adapted to the gen- 

 eral economic conditions, and inducive to economic progress. It 

 was, in consequence, so consistent and rational that reactions of 

 the peasantry affected and injured by the change were only of 

 exceptional occurrence. In the Northwest, as we have seen, the 

 supreme power of the state was soon exercised in behalf of the 

 peasant. Its aim was not to free him, but to protect him ; and 

 this object was attained. In the South, on the contrary, particu- 

 larly in the Southwest, the old system was not completely re- 

 placed, the peasants not personally emancipated ; and so they 

 did not have the least participation in the civilization of the out- 

 going Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, although the move- 

 ment had its inception in this very region. They were socially of 

 low standing and economically backward, since no radical refor- 

 mation of the economic policy forced them to greater exertion of 

 their powers and to spiritual emancipation, as was the case with 

 the Northwest. It was the obsolete, the irrational, under which 

 both parties chafed. The bondsman, fretting under the tithes and 

 particularly under the disdainful treatment of the hated clergy 

 and bureaucracy, who represented the small territorial government, 

 found in the Peasants' War a free outlet for his long-suppressed 

 passions. It is always needless oppression that embitters most 

 strongly. In these regions, which harbored the oldest civilization 

 and densest population and practiced the division of farms, there 

 was a contributory cause in the incipient formation of a rural 

 proletariat. 



Since the issues were, however, not comprehensive economic 

 principles, and a change in the system or a check of the growing 

 oppression did not threaten the economic existence of the lord or 



