OO AGKICULTURE OX THE RHINE. 



which the cultivators of the soil were long held in all 

 the countries of Europe. The transition has been dif- 

 ferently effected in different countries. In England the 

 race of small cultivators was so much diminished in the 

 Wars of the Roses, that the possessions returning into the 

 hands of the feudal lords were of necessity farmed out 

 by them in larger parcels. In France the small cultiva- 

 tors eventually triumphed over the nobility, and in the 

 French revolution the estates were, by the agency of 

 confiscations, transferred to new owners, mostly in small 

 parcels. The German peasant was originally a subfief- 

 holder, who held his land of a feudal lord on the terms 

 of suit and service. In the most ancient times the pea- 

 sant followed his chief into the field. Since the esta- 

 blishment of standing armies his duties have been con- 

 fined to agricultural services. He had to work a number 

 of days in the week for his lord, either with or without 

 his team, as the terms of the holding ran. In Austria, 

 where the labour-rents* (as they have been termed by a 

 leading political economist) still prevail, the most com- 

 mon condition is 108 days, with a waggon and team, for 

 about 36 acres of land. Smaller holdings are saddled 

 proportionately with horse or manual service. The 

 period of the Reformation, or rather, the close of the long 

 struggle in Germany which ended in the erection of a 

 Protestant kingdom in Prussia, marks the epoch of a 

 change in the position of the most numerous class of the 

 inhabitants. It had been usual to leave the holdings in 

 the same family, and about the close of the seventeenth and 

 beginning of the eighteenth centuries the claim to inherit 

 began to be looked upon as unquestionable. The emphy- 



* Rev. R. Jones, ' On the Distribution of Wealth.' 



