236 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



of the estate. But no more were restored than were necessary 

 for working the estate with the utmost utihzation of their labor. 

 The others were at first kept idle, and then gradually absorbed. 

 The peasants thus rehabilitated are, therefore, no longer inde- 

 pendent entities, but merely working forces for the estate, and 

 they now receive a different and inferior title to the land : in 

 general, only leasehold, either hereditary or simply for life, or 

 revocable at will ; at all events, no longer a real title, no longer 

 a hereditary right to ground rent. Where this existed before, he- 

 reditary leasehold becomes the prevailing form ; where the lease- 

 hold existed, the nonhereditary leasehold follows. The state of 

 subjection is further accentuated, and heavy penalties are laid 

 on the escape of the subjects. 



In the following eighteenth century this process of the decline 

 of the peasantry in the Northeast continues. The Northern and 

 Seven Years' wars had results similar to those of the Thirty 

 Years' War ; and after the middle of the century the progress in 

 the technique of agriculture, which could not be introduced by the 

 exploited, degenerated, and subjected peasants, imparted to the 

 lords a mighty impulse to the enlargement of their estates by 

 the absorption of entire peasant villages. This inaugurates a new 

 and the worst period of the exploitation of peasants on a large 

 scale for financial gain. In the aristocratic republics of Mecklen- 

 burg and Swedish Pomerania the so-called bondage, the heredi- 

 tary subjection, becomes a reality ; the subject is sold without 

 estate, like merchandise. 



This last development, however, could take place only in the 

 smaller part of the regions east of the Elbe. In the old provinces 

 of Prussia it was opportunely blocked by Frederick the Great, in 

 the Act of 1749, which was designed to protect the peasants by 

 prohibiting their eviction. Here the government had finally be- 

 come strong enough to take an interest in the preservation of the 

 peasantry, although for military rather than for financial reasons. 

 This first successful agrarian measure is of the very greatest 

 importance for the subsequent emancipation of the peasants : 

 without it there would hardly have been peasants to emancipate. 

 But this brings us to the threshold of the third epoch. 



