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measure our own advance. The history of land tenure is the 
history of progressive emancipation ; to represent the changes neces- 
sary to adapt it to our advance in economic science and social de- 
velopment as a process of reverting to the spirit of ancient practice 
is to subvert the teaching of history; it is to the progress, not the 
retrogression of ideas on this as on other topics that we have to 
ascribe the advance we have made and are making ; it is what is most 
fit for our modern life that survives, not what may he most interest- 
ing or picturesque. 
hTo section of the inquiry into the relation of man to the soil is 
so difficult of solution as that which relates to the poor, and none 
to us of the present day is more interesting. If, as seems to he 
thought hy many, there were days in this land in which the poor 
were not always with us, no wonder longing glances are thrown 
backward to catch even amidst the darkness of barbarism glimpses 
of so happy a condition. But a closer study of the facts dispels the 
illusion ; besides the abnormal growth of population to which the 
Duke of Argyll referred in a recent essay (which is, in my humble 
opinion, the ablest contribution yet made to the economical treatment 
of this subject)* there are other elements — two especially — which 
do not appear to me to have received adequate consideration ; if the 
days to which we have been referring were ignorant of poverty, it was 
greatly due to these facts, that slavery held its place in their economy, 
and that the habits of all classes of the people rendered them to a 
large extent independent of external supply — they were largely self- 
sufficing. 
The nature of the slavery of these remote times it is very difficult 
accurately to distinguish ; it was certainly of at least two distinct 
forms. There were the serfs, the nedivi, probably the descendants 
of an ancient race, often the members of tribes which had been 
subjugated by stronger neighbours, always attached to the land, and 
not apparently removable from it even with their assent, and 
almost certainly not without it. These serfs were slaves in this 
respect that they had neither in the Celtic nor in the Saxon economy 
any rights; but if the land held so tight a grip on them, they in turn 
held a tight grip on the land, and had certainly claims on their 
lord or owner, though whether these claims were those of an 
* See Contemporary Review, January 1883. 
