44
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
tending the transformation of so much circulating into
fixed capital. The former test was too fresh in the me-
mory of the peasants, and was too vividly pictured by the
reformers of the time, to allow of much consideration for
the latter. Experience proved the best solver of this
difficulty. Where trade had created circulating capital
and credit, the rents and dues were eagerly redeemed by
the landowners ; where those resources could not be
commanded, things remained as they were. In the county
of Mark, and in the adjacent manufacturing districts, not
only were the services early redeemed by money-payments,
and the landholders placed in the situation of English
copyholders, but the estates offered by the crown for
sale, having fallen to the royal demesne as indemnification
for ceded territories elsewhere, found purchasers at
moderate prices. Whatever sacrifices were made under
these circumstances were justified by the prudent use
made by the Prussian government of the money. There
was but one idea to follow in our financial age : public
credit had to be supported. This has been achieved
during the reign of King Frederick William III. of
Prussia. His success is recorded in the present price of
the public funds, and still more intelligibly in the impos-
sibility which M. Thiers found of executing his me-
naced attack on the left bank of the Rhine. We return
to the present condition of the German peasant.
Wherever holdings were large enough to maintain a
family, and the population thin enough to feel no pres-
sure from its increase, the old forms of dress and mode of
living have been preserved as strictly as if sumptuary law’s
and feudal control still prevailed. The peasant’s position
was, however, even more materially affected by an inno-
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
45
vation effected in the middle of the last century. Formerly
the taxes of the state fell upon the lord ; the heaviest of all,
that of personal service in the field, being regarded as a
mark of honour. The custom of standing armies with
arbitrarily chosen officers deprived the lord of this badge
of distinction, and he was ill prepared to substitute a money-
payment for his personal sacrifice. A standing army
demands a regular revenue, and the introduction of a
land-tax was found necessary. The imposition of this
tax was what occasioned the first formal recognition by
the crown of a right enjoyed by the peasant in his hold-
ing. The Empress Maria Theresa, in her celebrated
“ Urbarium,” asserts the right of the crown to interfere
between the landlord and the peasant, on the ground that
if the latter is oppressed by too severe service, he
cannot contribute to the exigences of the state. The
transfer of the land to the occupier from the feudal lord
thus received the sanction of the crown. The Emperor
Joseph II. sought, to extend this innovation to all the
other provinces of his. empire. In Hungary he met with
determined opposition, but the principle was everywhere
eventually triumphant. Whether the mode adopted of
effecting the change was, in all circumstances, a desirable
one or not may be questioned, as we have seen.
We may assume that the pressure felt in any rank of
society as the result of increasing population is a wise
ordinance intended to spur men to exertion. In Germany
(as in Ireland at present) the want of easy internal com-
munication and of credit, owing to the repeated agita-
tions of warlike neighbours or ambitious leaders, confined
the peasant population exclusively to agriculture. The
pressure which these felt as their numbers increased