160 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



proprietors were not altogether the harsh tyrants nor the serfs the 

 abject wretches which we are wont to imagine. Different countries 

 differed much from one another, and nowhere were the poor safe 

 from violence and insolence ; for some countries and some periods 

 the blackest colors are none too dark to describe the abuses of 

 feudalism. But England with the rarest exceptions was at 

 all times a land of law ; the serf was a freeman towards all but 

 his lord, and even towards his lord he had legal rights which he 

 could enforce in the courts. 



In truth, the peasantry of Europe at least, of Erance and Eng- 

 land appears to have been on the whole better off at the close 

 of the thirteenth century than for many generations after. The 

 grossness and violence of the feudal times were past ; society was 

 becoming settled and orderly ; the bonds of serfdom were relaxed, 

 and free institutions were rapidly springing up ; England was 

 governed by an able, vigorous, constitutional king (Edward I) ; 

 commerce and manufactures were just entering upon that career 

 which has given such marvelous results in our day. The unjust 

 and bloody international wars of the fourteenth century ; the re- 

 lentless civil wars which accompanied them ; the overthrow of free 

 institutions in the fifteenth century ; the religious wars and perse- 

 cutions of the sixteenth century ; the wholesale depreciations of 

 the currency, by which the kings plundered their subjects ; the 

 building up of enormous estates in England, with the unwise poor 

 laws, which gave the finishing stroke to the ruin of the peasantry ; 

 in France the crushing of all freedom and individuality ; in Ger- 

 many the surrendering of all power into the hands of a multitude 

 of petty princes all these things resulted in an almost steady 

 depression of the peasantry in both intelligence and prosperity, 

 until very nearly our own day. 



We are in fact inclined to boast over much of the enlighten- 

 ment of the nineteenth century. I am far from being disposed to 

 question this enlightenment or the progress not only in material 

 arts and physical science but in thought and civilization. But we 

 should not forget that the European peasantry were the last to 

 receive their share of the gains ; and on the other hand it is well 

 for us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to 



