Chapter 20 Chapter 2 European Agriculture Was Suppressed After the Collapse of the Roman Empire

After the invasion of the western part of the Roman Empire by the Germanic and Scythian peoples, Europe underwent a major change, and Europe was in turmoil for hundreds of years.The trade between the city and the countryside was interrupted as the barbarians plundered and persecuted the original residents. The cities were turned into ruins and the villages were also deserted, making the rich Western Europe under the rule of the Roman Empire into an extremely poor and barbaric place. Parts of the land were occupied or usurped by the chieftains of the barbarous peoples.Almost every piece of the few cultivated lands was owned by a landlord.Because all the land was annexed, and most of it was annexed by a few big landowners.

Although the annexation of wasteland will cause great harm at first, this harm may only be temporary.These lands could have been dismantled through inheritance or division, but the existence of patriarchal inheritance law prevented large land from being dismantled due to inheritance, and the law of limited succession on offspring also restricted large land from being dismantled due to division. . If we regard land as a means of livelihood like chattels, then according to the law of natural succession, land has to be distributed to all sons and daughters like chattels, because the father is concerned about the livelihood of each son and daughter.This natural succession method was generally adopted by the Romans.In Rome, as long as the children were adopted by their parents, regardless of their size, they could inherit their parents' land.They divided land in the same way we divide chattels now.However, when land is no longer just a means of livelihood, but also a symbol of power, a more appropriate method of distribution is not to divide it, making it exclusive to one person.The great landowner in times of insecurity was at the same time a minor nobleman, his tenants his appendages, and he was not only their legislator and judge in time of peace, but also their leader in time of war, who could treat his neighbors as he pleased. Even fight against the king.The size of the land determines whether the real estate is safe and whether the residents are guaranteed.The act of breaking up an estate, therefore, is undoubtedly a destruction of it, that is, exposing its parts to the encroachment and annexation of its powerful neighbours.

The law of eldest son succession gradually became popular in response to this need at that time, and the throne of the monarch was usually inherited by the eldest son alone.However, this was not the case initially.For the sake of safety and power, the monarch would rather not split the country, but choose one of the sons and daughters to inherit the country alone.But the important thing is, who to choose?Naturally, there must be a general law of solemnity, so that the selection has a clear and indisputable standard, so as to avoid the phenomenon of screening according to the quality of individual qualifications that are less reliable.Children of the same family differ only in gender and age.However, males are generally better than females, and older ones are better than younger ones, so primogeniture came into being, followed by so-called direct lineage.

When a law is first established, it generally needs the support of the surrounding environment to make it rational.In fact, this law can still be in effect after the environment changes.In today's Europe, a small landowner with an acre of land can live as safely and securely as a large landowner with tens of millions of acres.Although the environment for the law of primogeniture has changed, the law of primogeniture has not disappeared. Instead, it has become the law most suitable for maintaining the dignity of nobles among various systems, and it may exist for hundreds of years.However, the law of primogeniture has only this advantage, and its other features all violate the real interests of the extended family.For this right, in order to enrich one son, necessarily impoverishes the others.

The natural result of the implementation of the primogeniture law is the limited succession law.The purpose of implementing the law of limited succession is to maintain the direct lineal inheritance derived from the law of primogeniture, and to prevent part of the inheritance from falling into the name of others due to unworthy grandchildren or misfortune during gift or cession.The Romans were ignorant of such laws.Although there are several French jurists who like to echo the ancient Roman system, both the so-called pre-appointment law of the Romans and the testamentary bequest law are completely different from the law of limited succession.

A law of limited succession, perhaps not unreasonable in a time when great landed estates were still vassals, might, like the fundamental laws of some monarchies, save many from the misfortunes of one man's indiscretions.But since large and small estates are now equally protected in all European countries, the enforcement of this law has become absurd.The basis for enacting this kind of law is a wrong assumption that the descendants of human beings do not have equal rights to all land and other possessions. Instead, it is the will of ancestors 500 years ago that determines the ownership of contemporary people.There are still many places in Europe today where limited succession laws are in place, especially where aristocratic blood is still the sine qua non for civil or military honors.In the eyes of the nobles, the law of limited succession was a necessary means to maintain the exclusive privileges of high officials.For the nobles, though they have gained more undue advantage than their fellows, still fear that others will laugh at their poverty, so they want to obtain another undue advantage.It is said that the system of Shiye Shilu is very unpopular in Britain, so the local restrictions on this system are greater than those of other European monarchies.Nevertheless, England did not abolish this system.However, more than one-fifth, or even more than one-third of the land in Scotland is still strictly controlled by the law of limited succession.

In this case, a small number of powerful families annexed large areas of wasteland and made it impossible for them to disperse again.And big landowners are often not great reformers. Their energy is almost all used to protect their existing territories from being violated in times of chaos, and to expand their jurisdiction and dominance to their neighbors, so they have no time at all. Cultivate and improve land.In peacetime, although the stability of the legal system and order ensured that they had enough leisure, they often did not have the necessary talents and thoughts to cultivate the land.If his expenses were greater than or equal to his income, he would have no capital with which to cultivate the land.

If you are an economist, you will find it better to spend a year's savings on new lands than on improving existing ones.Gaining a profit from improving land requires the same grit and economy as any business plan.But this is something that most people who are born into wealthy families cannot do. Even if they are naturally frugal, they will naturally pay attention to those decorations that can please themselves, and will not pay attention to those small profits.Because, in the eyes of the rich, those small profits can't meet any needs; he is fond of luxurious clothes, prosperous carriages and horses, spacious living rooms, and gorgeous furnishings, which are habits he has developed since childhood; even if he wants to improve the land, his psychology will also be governed by this habit.Assuming that there are four to five hundred acres of land near his house, if he improves these lands, he may get some profits; These lands are greatly decorated.For, if he improved all his estates in this way, he would sooner or later find that, even if he had no other inclinations, his property would be exhausted before he could improve a tenth of it.In England and Scotland, since feudal anarchy, some great estates have continued to remain in the hands of a few.Large estates, therefore, are unfavorable to improvement, and this need only be proved by comparing them with the neighboring small estates.

Since the improvement of the land cannot be expected from the great landowners, still less can it be expected from those who possess less land.In Europe under the old social state, the cultivators were all tenant farmers, and they could withdraw the rent at will.Although almost all of them were slaves, the level of slavery they suffered was not as serious as that of ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or even the West Indian colonies.Strictly speaking, they are not subordinate to the master, but to the land.Therefore, they can be sold with the land, and can marry with the consent of the owner, and their marriage will not be broken up by the owner.Because, the owner has no right to sell a couple to different people.In addition, if the master abused or killed the slave, there were some minor punishments.

However, slaves were not allowed to accumulate property, and everything they acquired had to be taken by the master at any time and without conditions.Because the cost of land reclamation and improvement by slaves is borne by the master.Whether it is seeds, livestock, agricultural implements, or the benefits of improvement, it is the master's.All that such a slave can acquire is what is necessary to maintain daily life.Therefore, the land in this case is still occupied by the landlord and cultivated by the serf.This kind of slavery still exists in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germany. Only the western and southwestern parts of Europe have completely abolished it.

It is hard enough to hope that great landowners can improve the land, but it is even more difficult to ask them to use slaves to improve it.For, though the labor of the slaves is apparently only necessary to sustain them, its total value is the highest of all labours.This has been proved by national experience in all ages.If a laborer gets no property at all, he is concerned only with plenty of food and the least amount of labor, so that he works only enough to maintain him.If someone wants to squeeze more value out of him, the only way is to force him to work.According to the writings of Pliny and Colamera, under the slave system, the ancient Italian grain farming business declined to the detriment of the master; in the ancient Greece of Aristotle’s time, the farming business did not make much progress.Plato once said in his novel that in order to feed 5,000 soldiers and their wives and servants guarding the Utopia, at least one piece of fertile and broad land like the Babylonian Plain is needed. The competitive psychology of human beings makes most people think that it is an honor to rule the inferior, and it is a shame to condescend to the inferior.Therefore, if the law and the nature of the work allow it, people must be willing to use slaves to work for themselves instead of hiring free people.The income from the cultivation of sugar and tobacco can be provided at the expense of slave cultivation, but not from the cultivation of corn.The chief product of the English colonies was corn, the cultivation of which was largely done by free men.The recent resolution of the freeing of the Negroes in Pennsylvania leads us to believe that the total number of Negroes there must not be many.Because, if most of people's property is slaves, then the resolution to free slaves is absolutely impossible to pass.In all the British colonies, the jobs in which sugar was the chief product were done by slaves, and the jobs in which tobacco was the chief product were mostly done by slaves.In the West Indian colonies the cultivation of sugar-cane yields a greater profit than almost all the cultivation of Europe and America.Tobacco is less profitable than sugar-cane, and more profitable than corn.Both the cultivation of sugar cane and the cultivation of tobacco can provide the cost of slave farming, but the former is more capable of providing this cost.Therefore, compared with the number of white people, the number of black slaves in the sugar cane area is much larger than that in the tobacco area. After the ancient slave cultivators, another kind of farmers gradually appeared. They are called sharecroppers in today's France, and they are called Coloni Partarii in Latin.Since this system has long since been abolished by England, I don't know what to call them in English now.Under this system, all the capital needed for farming such as seeds, livestock, and agricultural tools belonged to the landlord. Once the peasants left or were evicted, they had to return these capitals to the landlord.As for the produce of the land, after deducting the part necessary to maintain the original capital, it is divided equally between the landlord and the peasant. Under the sharecropper farming system, the cost of cultivating the land was also strictly borne by the landlord.However, there is a fundamental difference, that is, the tenant farmers under the tenant farming system are free people who can own property by themselves, and he can enjoy a certain proportion of land products.Moreover, the greater the total amount of the land's produce, the greater the portion he can occupy.Therefore, they will naturally produce as much as possible out of self-interest considerations, and produce as much as they can.A slave who has no hope of possessing property, on the contrary, since he can only support himself, will naturally measure his production for his own comfort, so as not to produce more of the produce of the land than he himself can afford. need. Perhaps it was because the sharecropping farming system was beneficial to farmers, and the monarch encouraged farmers to rebel against landlords because of his jealousy of big landlords, so everyone felt that slave farming was not conducive to development, so slave farming was gradually abolished in most parts of Europe.As for when and how such a great change occurred, it is one of the most difficult events in modern history.The Roman Church often boasted of its abolition of slavery.We know that the Pope of Rome did issue an edict to free slaves as early as the time of Alexander III in the twelfth century.However, this injunction seems to be only a persuasive exhortation, because it does not punish those who do not obey the injunction.The Roman slavery system lasted for hundreds of years until it was gradually abolished under the combined effect of the above-mentioned interests of the landlord and the monarch.Although the lowly slaves were released and could continue to own the land, they had no capital of their own and could only cultivate the land by borrowing capital from the landlord. Therefore, they naturally evolved into what the French call "shareholders" today. However, even with the implementation of the sharecropping farming system, land improvement still cannot be carried out on a large scale, and the landlord can still enjoy half of the land's products without spending a penny.In this way, the portion occupied by the sharecroppers is naturally very small, and what they can save is even more limited. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible for them to use this limited savings to improve the land.The "tithe" which takes away one-tenth of the value of the produce has greatly hindered the improvement of the land; and under the system of sharecropping farming, half of the produce is taken away, which undoubtedly completely hinders the improvement of the land. land improvement.What the tenant farmers want is to use the landlord's capital to obtain as much produce as possible from the land, instead of mixing their own capital with the landlord's capital.Five-sixths of the land in France are said to have been cultivated by sharecroppers.They were often reprimanded by landowners on the grounds that instead of plowing the fields with their master's livestock, they used them to tow carts.The fact is that all the profits from the trailers go to the farmers, but the profits from the plowing are divided equally between the farmers and the landowners.In some parts of Scotland, there are still such tenant farmers who are called "tenants lent seeds and farm tools by the landlord".In the opinion of great lords Dr. Gilbert and Brixden, the tenant-peasant in ancient England was more properly called the servant of the lord than the farmer.Such tenant farmers can probably also be counted as servants of the landlord. After the sharecroppers, the real farmers gradually appeared.They have their own farming capital, but they have to pay a certain amount of land rent to the landlord.Because the fields they cultivate have a certain lease period, they sometimes think that as long as they can recover their investment and make a lot of profits before the lease period expires, they will use the land for their own interests. Invest capital in improvement.However, even this kind of land lease is extremely unreliable, and it will be unreliable for a long time.This situation is common in many parts of Europe today.For example, it is not illegal for the new owner of the land to evict farmers before the lease expires.Landlords in England even got their leases back by fictitious waivers.When farmers were violently evicted by landlords, they often could not find a comprehensive legal procedure to obtain compensation; even if they got compensation, it was only less than the compensation for their losses, and they might not be able to reoccupy the original land. Among all European countries, England still respects farmers more.However, even in England, it was not until the 14th year of Henry VII that the "Law of Tenancy Change Procedure" was established.The law stipulates that tenant farmers can demand compensation for losses and restore land lease rights when changing tenants.The demands of the tenant farmers will not be terminated after only one interrogation, so the implementation effect of this procedural law is also extremely obvious.Therefore, in recent years, a situation has emerged: If the landlord wants to sue for possession of the land, he will often sue in the name of the tenant in the name of the tenant instead of in his own name and in the letter of title.The tenant in England, therefore, enjoyed the same security as the landowner.Another law in England stipulates that as long as the annual rent is more than 40 shillings, one can obtain real estate that can be kept for life such as the right to lease land for life, and has the right to elect members of Congress.Most of the farmers have a lot of political power because they own real estate for life, so they will not be easily despised by the landlords.Tenant farmers in England can invest in building warehouses without signing leases, because the landlords dare not snatch them.But I believe no tenant farmer anywhere in Europe would have dared to do so, except in England.This legal custom, so much in favor of the peasants, has done, perhaps, far more in promoting the greatness and glory of England than the exaggerated regulations of commerce. There is, so far as I know, a law peculiar to England, which fixes a maximum lease, to ensure that the various heirs of the land abide by the terms of the deed.This law was passed to Scotland by James II as early as 1449.However, since the heirs of property with limited inheritance at that time were generally not allowed to lease the land for a period of more than one year, this law did not do much good in the local area.Even with the recent legislative remedy, the shackles are still very strong.In addition, since Scottish tenants did not have the right to elect members of parliament, they were not as highly valued by landlords as English farmers. Laws safeguarding tenant farmers' rights against heirs and purchasers of the land arose elsewhere in Europe, but for a very short period.In France, for example, the lease of land, originally fixed at nine years, was not until lately extended to twenty-seven years.But the twenty-seven-year period was still too short to encourage tenant farmers to invest in various important land improvements.We also know that in ancient Europe, the landowners were originally legislators, so the land laws were formulated according to the interests of the landowners they imagined.Considering the interests of the landlords, they believe that if they want to fully enjoy the value of the land, they should not lease the land for a long time.Greed and injustice made them short-sighted, and they never thought that such regulations would hinder improvement and ultimately harm their own real interests. In ancient times, farmers not only had to pay land rent to the landlord, but also provided the landlord with various labor services.Moreover, these labor services are neither clearly written in the lease, nor are there any customary regulations, but are simply determined by the wishes of the owners and princes.As long as the owners and princes needed this kind of labor, the peasants had to be there whenever they were called.I don't know how much pain this kind of unregulated labor has brought to the tenant farmers!Recently, Scotland has abolished all unregulated labor, so that the situation of domestic farmers has been greatly improved within a few years. The private labor of the peasants was very violent, and so was the public labor.The labor of building and mending roads, for example, is but an example.I believe that this kind of labor has not been abolished everywhere, but the degree of violence is different.When the king's officers passed by, the local farmers were obliged to provide them with chariots, horses, and food; even if there was a price for obtaining these items, the price was determined by the officials who collected the food.Of the principalities of Europe, England alone, I believe, has removed the oppression of food collection, neither France nor Germany. Farmers not only had to bear the above-mentioned servitude, but also had to bear irregular tax obligations that were as brutal as servitude.In ancient times, the nobles were unwilling to provide financial help to the monarch, and would only decisively allow the monarch to tax the tenant farmers, without seeing that such exorbitant taxes would eventually seriously affect their income.An example of the exorbitant taxation of the ancient French monarchs is the tribute which still exists.A tribute tax was a tax on profits, assessed on the basis of the capital farmers had invested in the land, and the profits the farmers were likely to receive.Therefore, farmers will pretend to be poor as much as possible out of self-interest considerations.The capital which he employs in cultivation must thus be reduced irreducibly; and the capital which he invests in improving the land, will most properly be reduced to nothing.So, even if French farmers had some capital, they were reluctant to invest in land.In fact, the tribute tax was almost a prohibition on the farmers from investing their savings in the land. Moreover, such taxes seem to reduce the status of the taxpayer to that of the gentry and the townspeople.Since the taxpayer is a renter, neither gentleman nor property citizen would be willing to invest in land, lest he suffer the stigma of this lowering of his status.The imposition of this taxation, therefore, prohibits virtually all capital which can be employed in the improvement of the land.The "tithes" and "fifteenths," which had formerly existed in England, seem to have had the same effect on land as tribute. Farmers rarely invest in improving land due to policies that are harmful to agriculture.Although this class of people can be guaranteed by law in terms of freedom and security, they are in a very disadvantageous situation in land improvement.Here, the peasant can be compared to a person who borrows money to do business, while the landlord can be compared to a person who has capital and can do business himself.It is true that whether you do business with borrowed capital or with your own capital, as long as you manage it carefully, you can increase your wealth.In contrast, the growth rate of the capital of the merchant with borrowed money is much slower, because a large part of his profits are used to repay the interest on the loan.In the same way, even if the tenant is as prudent as the landlord, the improvement of the cultivated land of the tenant will be much slower than that of the landlord, because most of the produce of the tenant has to be rented, while most of the produce of the landlord can be used for further deepening. land improvement.Moreover, the status of farmers is lower than that of landlords.In much of Europe the farmer was regarded as a lesser class than the small tradesman and technician.Throughout Europe the peasants were generally inferior to the great merchants and manufacturers.In this world, there are not many rich men who are willing to give up their high position to be with the low class.The capital of Europe, therefore, is seldom diverted from other trades to agriculture even at this day, and the improvement of the land is naturally insignificant. England employs, perhaps, a little more capital to the improvement of her land than any other country in Europe.In fact, most of the large capital invested in agriculture in many parts of the UK was originally obtained from agriculture, but the accumulation speed of agricultural assets is the slowest among all assets.However, we should know that the class that can improve the land in a country is the small landlords, followed by the rich peasants and the big peasants.This is true of all the principalities of Europe, but most notably of England.The peasants in the republics of Holland and Berne, Switzerland, are said to hold as high a position as the peasants of England. The policies unfavorable to land improvement and cultivation in ancient Europe are not limited to the above.At that time, both landlords and farmers who improved and cultivated the land were subject to the following two laws: first, no grain could be exported from anywhere without a charter; trade to establish market centralization.In order to achieve this goal, the government has implemented the wrong practice of prohibiting monopoly, retail sales, and hoarding.As I mentioned earlier, although ancient Italy had fertile land and was the center of the largest empire in the world, the progress of its farming was hindered by many obstacles because the export of grain was prohibited and the import of grain was rewarded.It is still more difficult to imagine how much the cultivation of countries less fertile and less advantageously situated would have been hindered by restrictions on the inland trade in corn, and prohibitions on their exportation.