of Eclinhurgh, Session 1882 - 83 . 
121 
the value of such labour as the Highlands supplied. Lassalle and 
Karl Marx in their crusade against modern plutocracy have depicted 
with great force and skill the vast difference which there is between 
a system of society which is content to supply only its own 
necessities from day to day and that high pressure of modern life, 
which, stimulated by capital ever eager and hungry for gain, manu- 
factures on speculation, and anticipates demand by an ever-ready 
and often over-abundant supply. Lassalle, speaking of the feudal 
lord of Germany, says : — “ Look upon the landed proprietor 
during the middle ages, the noble lord surrounded by his castles, 
his manors, his vassals, serfs, and dependants, his allodial 
villages and tributary towns. Was this man a capitalist*? Let 
no one suppose that people lived on the produce of the land 
only, which is the crude notion of some people. Production 
was sufficiently developed, luxury considerable, and the articles 
of consumption manifold and refined.” He then proceeds to give 
from mediseval writings a description of prevailing fashions in 
wearing apparel, furniture, and the like, showing the advanced 
state of fashionable society then and its varied requirements. He 
shows how all these are provided by the combined contribution of 
vassalage, by what he calls a “ mosaic work of services.” Under 
this system man is no longer a slave, but his will is the private 
property of another. There is an exchange of services and natural 
products without the intervention of money as a general measure of 
value. “ The acres of the feudal lord” he points out “are cultivated 
not only by serfs but with the help of man and beast, by means of 
villenage more or less reasonable in extent, varying from three days 
in the week to five or six weeks in the year, according to the 
position of the feudal dependant.” Then again, he says, “ put your- 
self in imagination back to one of the days for collecting the yearly 
revenue, when the -feudal lord receives his dues. Then you will see 
heaps of corn and barley, chicken and bacon, oxen and swine, eggs 
and butter, oil, fruits, wax, candles, honey, yea even cakes, bouquets, 
and cliajpeaux de rose^ all contributed by his faithful lieges. The 
tailors and shoemakers of the small town under his protectorate, re- 
membering the principle nuUe terre sans seigneur ^ bring their clothes 
and shoes which have been made during the week’s service they owe 
him.” Similarly he enumerates the various tradesmen and artisans 
