Chapter 22 The suppression of agriculture in the old state of Europe after the collapse of the

Since the invasion of the western part of the Roman Empire by the Germanic and Scythian peoples, there has been a great change in Europe, and with this great change, Europe has been disturbed for several hundred years.The plunder and persecution of the original inhabitants by the barbarians interrupted the trade between urban and rural areas.The cities are in ruins, and the villages are left uncultivated.Western Europe, which was rich under the Roman Empire, became extremely poor and barbaric.In successive disturbances, the chiefs of those nations occupied or usurped most of the lands of these countries.Although there are not many fields that are cultivated, it is impossible to find a piece of land that does not have an owner.All lands were annexed; most of them by a few great landowners.

The initial harm of annexing the wasteland, great as it is, is likely to be only a temporary harm.These lands could have been broken down by inheritance or division.However, the law of patriarchal succession prevents large land from being dismantled for inheritance; the law of limited succession prevents large land from being dismantled for division. If we regard land as a mere means of livelihood and pleasure, like movable property, then, of course, according to the law of natural succession, land will be distributed to all the sons and daughters of the family like movable property.Because the livelihood of every child is equally concerned by the old father.The Romans adopted this law of natural succession.They do not distinguish between young and old, men and women, as long as they are raised by themselves, they can inherit their own land.They dispose of land in the same manner as we dispose of chattels at present.However, when land is seen as not just a means of earning a living, but a matter of power, it is considered more appropriate to assign it to one person without division.In those troubled times the great landowners were at the same time petty nobles.His tenants are his subordinates.He was their judge, their lawgiver in times of peace, and their leader in times of war.He waged wars at will, against neighbors, and sometimes against the king.In this state the security of an estate, and the security of its inhabitants, depends upon its size.To divide an estate is to destroy it, or, in other words, to dismantle it and make its parts vulnerable to the encroachment and annexation of a strong neighbour.Therefore, adapting to the situation at that time, in terms of estate inheritance, the eldest son inheritance method gradually (not immediately) became popular.For the same reason, the monarchy is usually inherited by the eldest son.Although not always at first.For the safety and power of the monarchy, the land would rather not be divided, and one of the sons and daughters should be chosen to inherit it alone.But whom to choose, such an important matter, must of course be solemnly laid down as a general rule, so that the choice will not be made according to the unreliable distinction of personal qualifications, but according to some clear and indisputable standard.Among the children of the same family there is no other indisputable difference than sex and age.As a general rule, males are better than females, and, all other things being equal, older than younger.The eldest son's right of inheritance was thus established.And the so-called direct lineal inheritance happened from then on.

When a law is first established, there are environmental needs, and it is only this environment that makes it reasonable.But in fact, often the circumstances that produced the law have changed and the law continues to be in force.In today's Europe, a small landowner with only one acre of land is as safe as a large landowner with tens of millions of acres.The circumstances that produced primogeniture have changed drastically, but primogeniture still exists.Since this law is the most suitable for maintaining the dignity of the nobility among various systems, it may not be enforced for hundreds of years in the future.But in fact, apart from this point, there is nothing in the right of eldest son's inheritance that does not violate the real interests of the big family.This right, for making one son rich makes the other sons poor.

The law of limited succession is the natural result of the law of primogeniture.Its adoption aims to maintain the direct lineal succession guided by the primogeniture law, and to prevent the danger of a part of the inheritance being left behind in the name of gift, bequest or cession due to unworthy or unlucky descendants.Such laws were completely unknown to the Romans.There are a few legalists in France, although they like to attach the ancient Roman system to the current system, but in fact, the so-called pre-appointment law of the Romans and the law of testamentary bequest are very different from the law of limited succession.

When the large land property is still the territory of the princes, it may not be unreasonable to limit the succession of heirs.This law, like the fundamental laws of some so-called monarchies, will save many, many from the misfortune of one man's indiscretion.But today in European countries, large and small landed estates are equally protected by national laws, so this kind of law cannot be more absurd.This kind of law is based on a fundamentally wrong assumption: that all generations of human descendants have no equal rights to all land and all other possessions, and the ownership of contemporary people is to be limited by the wishes of their ancestors five hundred years ago. .In today's Europe, there are still many places where the law of limited succession is implemented.Where noble blood was still a necessary qualification for civil or military honors, the law of limited succession was especially impregnable.The law of limited succession was considered by the nobility to be a necessary means to preserve the exclusive privilege of being a great official.This class, having acquired one improper advantage over its fellow-men, fears that its poverty will be ridiculed, and thinks it entitled to another improper advantage.It is said that the common law of England is disgusted with the system of worldly wealth, and therefore, compared with other European monarchies, the system of worldly wealth is more restricted there.Although in England, the system of Shiye Shilu has not been completely abolished.It is said that more than one-fifth (perhaps more than one-third) of the land in Scotland is still subject to strict heir law.

In this case, a large area of ​​wasteland was not only annexed by a few wealthy families, but also never dispersed again.In fact, great landowners are not always great reformers.In the chaotic season when this system was produced, the energy of the big landlords was almost entirely used to protect the existing territories and expand their own jurisdiction and control over neighboring countries.They really have no time to cultivate and improve the land.Later, peace came, the establishment of the legal system, and the stability of the order gave them leisure, but they generally did not have the mind to cultivate the land, and often did not have the necessary talents.If his expenses exceed, or are just equal to, his income (which is very often the case), he has no capital to employ for this purpose.If he is an economist, then he usually feels that it is better to spend a year's savings on buying a new estate than improving the old one.Land improvement, like every business plan, must pay attention to small savings and small profits in order to make a profit.But people born into rich and wealthy families, even if they are naturally frugal, are not likely to be able to do this.The condition of such a man naturally leads him to pay more attention to his own pleasing adornments than to profits for which he has little need.Since he was a child, he has developed the hobby of adorning clothes, arranging chariots and horses, adoring living rooms, and decorating beautifully.He has developed this habit.Even when he wants to improve the land, the psychology cultivated by this habit will still dominate him.He may furnish four or five hundred acres in the vicinity of his dwelling, at a cost ten times what the improved land is worth, and find at last that it would be worthwhile to improve all his estates in the same manner, even with nothing else. Hobbies, I am afraid, will consume all his property before improving one-tenth.Now, in England and Scotland, since feudal anarchy, some great landed estates continue to be in the hands of a few, unchanged.Compare these large estates with their neighboring small estates, and you need no other argument to believe how unfavorable large estates are to improvement.

If some improvement of the land could not be hoped from such great landowners, still less could it be hoped from those who possessed less land than they did.In the old state of Europe, all cultivators were tenant farmers who could withdraw their rent at will.They were all or almost all slaves, but their slavery was milder than that of ancient Greece and Rome, or even the slavery of the West Indian colonies.They are not so much subject to the master as to the land.Therefore, they can be sold together with the land, but not separately.With the consent of the master, they can also marry.Moreover, the owner has no right to sell the couple to different people, thereby breaking up their marriage.Masters who mutilated or killed slaves were punished, but generally minor punishments.However, slaves were not allowed to accumulate property.Everything they get belongs to the master, who can take it away at any time.Therefore, the reclamation and improvement that slaves can carry out are actually carried out by the master, and the cost is borne by the master.Seeds, livestock, and agricultural implements all belong to the owner.The improved sharp basin also belongs to the master.This kind of slave can get nothing but the daily maintenance of life.In this case, therefore, it is legitimate to say that the land is still held by the landlords and cultivated by the serfs.This slavery still exists in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germany.The only place where this system was gradually and completely abolished was in western and southwestern Europe.

If it is difficult to expect great improvements from the great landowners, it is still more hopeless when they employ slaves in tillage.I believe that the experience of all ages, and all nations, has proved one thing, that the labor of slaves, though apparently only the expense of their maintenance, is, when taken together, the highest cost of any labour.A person who can't get a little property wants the most for food and the least for work, and cares about nothing else.His job is enough for him to live on. If you want to squeeze more out of him, it is only out of compulsion, and he himself will never be willing.The writings of Pliny and Colamera both said that the grain farming industry in ancient Italy was very weak under the slave system, which was very unfavorable to the master.Farming did not advance much in ancient Greece in the time of Aristotle.Therefore, when talking about Plato's ideal country, he said: Only a land as large and fertile as the Babylonian Plain can support five thousand lazy people (soldiers who were considered necessary to defend the ideal country at the time) and their wives and servants.

Human beings have a competitive psychology, and most of them are proud of ruling the inferior, but ashamed of condescending to the inferior.Therefore, if the law permits and the nature of the work permits, he must be willing to choose slaves over slaves and free men.The cultivation of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of the cultivation of slaves; the cultivation of corn does not at present seem to be able to do so.In the English colonies, whose chief produce was corn, most of the work was done by free men.The Benchvenians recently resolved to free the black slaves.That kind of fact leads us to believe that all their niggers must not be many.If slaves were the majority of their property, they would never have voted for their release.However, in the British colonies whose main product was sugar, all jobs were performed by slaves; in the British colonies whose main product was tobacco, most of the jobs were also performed by slaves.The cultivation of sugar cane in the West Indian colonies was so profitable that there was hardly any farming enterprise in Europe and America.Tobacco, though less profitable than that of sugar-cane, is still greater than that of corn.Both cultivations afford the expense of slave cultivation, but the cultivation of sugar-cane does so more than the cultivation of tobacco.The number of slaves, therefore, compared with the number of whites, is much greater in the sugar-cane than in the tobacco-country.

After the slave-cultivators of antiquity came gradually a sort of peasant called the sharecropper in France today.This kind of peasants is called Coloni Partarii in Latin (Fenyi Lianong). In England, this system has long been abolished, so in English, I don't know what they are called now.Under this system, seeds, livestock, implements, in short, all the capital necessary for cultivation, are supplied by the landlord.When the peasant leaves or is driven out, this capital must be returned to the landlord.After setting aside that part of the produce which is deemed necessary for the maintenance of the original capital, the rest is divided equally between the landlord and the peasant.

Under the subtenancy system, the cost of cultivating the land, strictly speaking, also comes from the landlord, which is no different from that under the slave system.But there is one fundamental difference.The servants under the sharecropping system are free people, who can occupy property and enjoy a certain proportion of the land's products.The greater the total production, the greater is his share.Therefore, their interests obviously lie in producing as much as they can.On the other hand, a slave who has not acquired property and hopes to support himself will seek his own comfort, measure his own needs, and do not want the land to produce more than he needs.Perhaps partly because sharecropping was beneficial to the landlords, and partly because the monarchs hated the big landlords and encouraged peasants to rebel against their power, everyone felt that slave farming was not good, so the slave farming system in most of Europe gradually disappeared.When and how such a major change occurred is one of the most difficult events in modern history.The Roman Church often boasted of its abolition of slavery.Of course, we also know that as early as the time of Alexander III in the twelfth century, the Pope issued a general edict to free slaves.But this instruction seems to be nothing more than a earnest exhortation, and those who do not obey the instruction will not be punished.Slavery continued for hundreds of years.In the end, it was gradually abolished because the two interests mentioned above (the interest of the other master and the interest of the sovereign) worked together.A lowly slave who has been released and may continue to keep the land, but has no capital of his own, can only cultivate the land by borrowing capital from the landlord. Therefore, he must become what France calls a sharecropper today. However, under the sub-tenancy system, the land could not be greatly improved.Since the landlord can enjoy half of the land's products without paying a penny, there is not much left to the tenant farmers.In this small part, the savings that can be made are even more limited.The sharecroppers are by no means willing to use this limited surplus to improve the land.Church tithes, which take but a tenth of the produce, are a great hindrance to land improvement.Withdrawing half of the produce must certainly prevent the improvement of the land.It is certainly the desire of the tenant farmers to use the capital provided by the landlord to obtain the maximum amount of products from the land, but it is definitely not what the tenant farmers desire if they mix their own capital with the landlord's capital.In France, it is said, five-sixths of the land is still cultivated by sharecroppers.Landlords often accuse farmers of not using their master's livestock for plowing, but for hauling carts.Because all the profits from trailers belong to the farmers, but the profits from plowing the fields must be shared equally with the landlords.In some parts of Scotland there are also surviving tenants of this kind, called tenants lent seed implements by the landlord.Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Brexden, great nobles, have said that the tenant-peasants in ancient England were better called the servitors of the landowners than farmers.This tenant farmer probably belongs to the same kind as this one. The peasants who gradually succeeded the sharecroppers can be said to be real peasants.The capital they cultivate the land is their own, but they have to pay a certain amount of land rent to the landlord.There is a certain period of lease for farmers to rent land.Therefore, they sometimes feel that it is in their own interest to invest part of their capital in improving the land.They hoped that the capital invested would be recovered before the lease expired and would provide a substantial profit.However, even this kind of peasant's right to borrow land is extremely unreliable for a long time.The same is true in many parts of Europe today.If the land has changed to a new owner, even if the lease term has not expired, the farmers can be expelled, which is not illegal.In England there was even a fictitious common ancestral law to recover the leases.If the landlord used illegal and violent means to evict the peasants, the lawsuit regulations that the peasants could rely on to obtain compensation were extremely imperfect.Peasants may not be able to recover their original land, and usually they can only obtain compensation for the loss, and the compensation must not be equal to the loss.England is perhaps the most respectful country in Europe for the agrarian.But there, it was as late as the fourteenth year of Henry VII that the Procedural Law for Tenancy Change was established.When changing the tenancy, the tenant farmer may demand compensation for losses and restore the leasehold right.Such a request need not be concluded by an interrogation.This procedural law is extremely effective. Therefore, recently, if a landlord wants to sue for possession of land, he often does not sue in the name of the landlord by way of a writ of title, but often uses his name as a tenant by way of a deed of renunciation.For this reason the security of the tenant is equal to that of the landlord in England.In addition, England also stipulates that the life lease of land with an annual rent of more than 40 shillings is lifelong real estate, and has the right to elect members of Congress. Since most farmers have this kind of lifelong real estate, so political influence is not Small, so the landlord dare not despise them.I believe that in nowhere in Europe except England, tenant farmers contribute money to build barns without a lease, and they are not afraid of being seized by the landlord.This legal custom, so favorable to the peasantry, has done, perhaps, a far greater part in the promotion of the greatness and glory of modern England than all the exaggerated regulations for commerce. The law which secures the longest tenancy against all kinds of heirs is, so far as I know, peculiar to England.This law was introduced to Scotland by James II as early as 1449.But at that time, the heirs of property limited to heirs were often not allowed to lease out land for a period of more than one year, so the benefits of this law could not be spread as widely as possible.Congress has recently enacted a remedy, but these constraints are still too severe.Moreover, in Scotland, the tenants were not so highly regarded by the landowners as Canon in England, because they had no right to elect members. In other parts of Europe, although the rights of tenant farmers were also guaranteed against the heirs and purchasers of the land, the protection period of such rights was still very short.In France, for example, the original term of the lease was nine years, and it was only recently extended to twenty-seven years.But twenty-seven years was too short a period to encourage the tenant farmers to make the most important improvements.We know that the landowners throughout Europe were originally legislators in ancient times.The laws of the land were all designed for the interests of the landowners they supposed.They believe that for the benefit of the landlord, the ancestors should not lease out the land for a long time, so that they cannot fully enjoy the value of the land for a long time.Greed and injustice must be short-sighted.It does not occur to them that such regulations must hinder improvement, and, consequently, their own real interests. In ancient times, farmers had to provide landlords with various services in addition to paying rent.That kind of labor is not clearly defined in the ancestral agreement, nor is it governed by any regulations. As long as the owner and princes need it, they have to be there at their command.This kind of labor without regulations has caused the tenant farmers to suffer so much.The late abolition of all unregulated toil in Scotland has, in a few years, greatly improved the condition of the country's peasants. The peasants' private labor was like this, and the public labor was equally brutal.The construction and repair of roads (a labor which, I believe, has not been abolished everywhere, but with varying degrees of brutality), is but one example.When the king's army or king's officials crossed the border, the local peasants were also obliged to provide food for chariots and horses. Although there was a price, the price was set by the food requisition officer.England alone, I believe, of the principalities of Europe, has completely abolished the oppression of food confiscation.In France and Germany, that never went away. The labor obligations of peasants are as above.The tax obligations borne by the peasants were as irregular and atrocious as the obligations of servitude.The nobles of ancient times, though unwilling to give their sovereign any financial help, did not hesitate to allow him to impose tribute on his tenants.They fail to see that such exorbitant taxes must in the end seriously affect their own revenue.In France there is still a tribute to this day, which is an example of the exorbitant taxation of ancient kings.A tribute is a tax on the profits of the supposed peasant, assessed on the capital he has invested in the land.Therefore, the peasant pretends to be poor as much as possible for his own benefit, and as a result, the capital employed in his cultivation must be reduced to the minimum possible extent.As for the capital for improving the land, it is better to reduce it to zero.Even if the French peasants had accumulated a little capital, they would not be willing to invest it in the land because of the tribute.The tribute tax was practically the equivalent of prohibiting the peasants from investing their savings in the land.Moreover, such a tax was supposed to demean anyone who would pay it, not only on a par with the gentry, but also with the bourgeois.And whoever leases other people's land must pay this tax in full.Gentlemen, and even wealthy citizens, do not wish to suffer such disgrace.The effect of this taxation, therefore, is not only that the capital accumulated in the land is not employed in improving it, but all capital is also diverted from it.There have formerly been tithes and fifteenths in England, which, so far as their effect upon the land is concerned, seem to have been taxes of the same nature as tribute. Under all these agrarian policies, there is little possibility of asking the tiller to improve the land.This class of people, although protected by law, has liberty and security, but they are at a great disadvantage in improving the land.The comparison between farmers and landlords is like the comparison between those who borrow money to do business and those who have money to do business by themselves.Of course, whether they borrow money to do business or have money to do business by themselves, as long as their behavior is equally prudent, their wealth can increase. The wealth of a merchant must increase much more slowly.In the same way, the improvement of the land cultivated by the tenant farmer is much slower than that of the landlord, even if he behaves with the same prudence; to make further improvements.In addition, the status of peasants is of course lower than that of landlords.Nay, in most parts of Europe the peasantry is regarded as an inferior people, even inferior to small merchants and artificers of some rank.As for the peasants being regarded as inferior to the great merchants and manufacturers, this is the general situation throughout Europe.How many wealthy people in the world are willing to give up their high status to associate with the people of the lower classes, so even today, European capital is still rarely transferred from other industries to agriculture to improve the land.Perhaps more capital has been transferred to agriculture in England for the improvement of the land than in any other country in Europe.But, even in England, the great capital which is employed in some places in agriculture, is largely acquired in agriculture (which, compared with all other occupations, accumulates the slowest accumulation of stock).However, we should know that in all countries, apart from small landlords, those who can improve the land most are rich peasants and big peasants.This is perhaps especially the case in England among the European monarchies.It is said that in the republican governments of Holland and Berne in Switzerland, the status of peasants is no less than that of English peasants. Besides the foregoing, the ancient policy of Europe had other disadvantages to the improvement and cultivation of the land, whether by landowners or peasants. (1) It is stipulated everywhere that the export of grains without a license is prohibited; (2) The inland trade of grains and even various agricultural products is restricted, and various fallacious laws prohibiting monopoly, retailing, and hoarding are implemented, and the privilege of the market is established.As I said, the land of ancient Italy was very fertile, and it was the center of the largest empire in the world. However, the progress of its farming was inevitably hindered by the prohibition of the export of grain and the reward of the import of foreign grain.It is difficult to imagine how much the cultivation of countries less fertile and less favorable would have been hindered by the restriction of the inland trade in corn, and the prohibition of its exportation.CHAPTER III ON THE ROMAN EMPIRE