on the contrary, who can acquire nothing but
his maintenance, consults his own ease, by
making the land produce as little as possible
over and above that maintenance. It is probable
that it was partly upon account of this
advantage, and partly upon account of the encroachments
which the sovereigns, always jealous
of the great lords, gradually encouraged
their villains to make upon their authority,
and which seem, at least, to have been such as
rendered this species of servitude altogether
inconvenient, that tenure in villanage gradually
wore out through the greater part of Europe.
The time and manner, however, in
which so important a revolution was brought
about, is one of the most obscure points in
modern history. The church of Rome claims
great merit in it; and it is certain, that so early
as the twelfth century, Alexander III. published
a bull for the general emancipation of
slaves. It seems, however, to have been rather
a pious exhortation, than a law to which
exact obedience was required from the faithful.
Slavery continued to take place almost
universally for several centuries afterwards,
till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation
of the two interests above mentioned;
that of the proprietor on the one hand, and
that of the sovereign on the other. A villain,
enfranchised, and at the same time allowed to
continue in possession of the land, having no
stock of his own, could cultivate it only by
means of what the landlord advanced to him,
and must therefore have been what the French
call a metayer.
It could never, however, be the interest
even of this last species of cultivators, to lay
out, in the further improvement of the land,
any part of the little stock which they might
save from their own share of the produce; because
the landlord, who laid out nothing, was
to get one half of whatever it produced. The
tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce, is
found to be a very great hindrance to improvement.
A tax, therefore, which amounted to
one half, must have been an effectual bar to it.
It might be the interest of a metayer to make
the land produce as much as could be brought
out of it by means of the stock furnished by
the proprietor; but it could never be his interest
to mix any part of his own with it. In
France, where five parts out of six of the
whole kingdom are said to be still occupied by
this species of cultivators, the proprietors complain,
that their metayers take every opportunity
of employing their master's cattle rather
in carriage than in cultivation; because, in the
one case, they get the whole profits to themselves,
in the other they share them with their
landlord. This species of tenants still subsists
in some parts of Scotland. They are
called steel-bow tenants. Those ancient English
tenants, who are said by Chief-Baron Gilbert
and Dr Blackstone to have been rather
bailiffs of the landlord than farmers, properly
so called, were probably of the same kind.
To this species of tenantry succeeded, though
by very slow degrees, farmers, properly so called,
who cultivated the land with their own
stock, paying a rent certain to the landlord.
When such farmers have a lease for a term of
years, they may sometimes find it for their interest
to lay out part of their capital in the further
improvement of the farm; because they
may sometimes expect to recover it, with a
large profit, before the expiration of the lease.
The possession, even of such farmers, however,
was long extremely precarious, and still
is so in many parts of Europe. They could,
before the expiration of their term, be legally
ousted of their leases by a new purchaser;
in England, even, by the fictitious action of
a common recovery. If they were turned out
illegally by the violence of their master, the
action by which they obtained redress was extremely
imperfect. It did not always reinstate
them in the possession of the land, but
gave them damages, which never amounted to
a real loss. Even in England, the country,
perhaps of Europe, where the yeomanry has
always been most respected, it was not till about
the 14th of Henry VII. that the action
of ejectment was invented, by which the tenant
recovers, not damages only, but possession,
and in which his claim is not necessarily concluded
by the uncertain decision of a single assize.
This action has been found so effectual
a remedy, that, in the modern practice, when
the landlord has occasion to sue for the possession
of the land, he seldom makes use of
the actions which properly belong to him as a
landlord, the writ of right or the writ of entry,
but sues in the name of his tenant, by the
writ of ejectment. In England, therefore
the security of the tenant is equal to that of
the proprietor. In England, besides, a lease
for life of forty shillings a-year value is a freehold,
and entitles the lessee to a vote for a
member of parliament; and as a great part of
the yeomanry have freeholds of this kind, the
whole order becomes respectable to their landlords,
on account of the political consideration
which this gives them. There is, I believe,
nowhere in Europe, except in England, any
instance of the tenant building upon the land
of which he had no lease, and trusting that the
honour of his landlord would take no advantage
of so important an improvement. Those
laws and customs, so favourable to the yeomanry,
have perhaps contributed more to the
present grandeur of England, than all their
boasted regulations of commerce taken together.
The law which secures the longest leases against
successors of every kind, is, so far as I
know, peculiar to Great Britain. It was introduced
into Scotland so early as 1449, by a
law of James II. Its beneficial influence,