214 
WI8C0JSSIN STATE AGPJCULTURAL SOCIETY. 
registers and rent rolls of the English manors of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, without being convinced that their proprie¬ 
tors were not altogether the harsh tyrants, nor the serfs the ab¬ 
ject 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 feu¬ 
dalism. 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 en¬ 
force in the courts. 
In truth, the peasantry of Europe, at least of France 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 gro ss- 
ness and violence of the feudal times were past; society was becom" 
ing settled and orderly; the bonds of serfdom were relaxed, and 
free institutions were rapidly springing up; England was gov¬ 
erned by an able, vigorous, constitutional king (Edward 1); com¬ 
merce 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 relent¬ 
less civil wars which accompanied them, the overthrow of free insti¬ 
tutions in the fifteenth century, the religious wars and persecutions 
of the sixteenth century, the wholesale depreciations of the cur¬ 
rency, 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 Germany 
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, both in intelligence and prosperity, until very nearly 
our own day. 
We are in fact inclined to boast overmuch of the enlightenment 
of the nineteenth century. I am far from being disposed to ques¬ 
tion 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 re¬ 
ceive 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 think, o 
