LANDS OF THE PEASANTS IN GERMANY.
Amongst the peasantry there were many families who were not only freemen and owners of land, but whose estates formed a perpetual entail. The estate they possessed could not be divided, and was inherited by only one of the sons, usually the youngest, as is the case in certain English customs. This son was only bound to pay a certain portion to his brothers and sisters.
These Erbgüter of the peasantry were more or less common throughout Germany; for in no part of it was the whole of the soil swallowed up by the feudal system. In Silesia, where the nobility still retain immense domains, of which most of the villages formed a part, there were nevertheless villages owned entirely by their inhabitants, and entirely free. In certain parts of Germany, such as the Tyrol and Friesland, the predominant state of things was that the peasants owned the soil as Erbgüter.
But in the greater part of Germany this kind of possession was but a more or less frequent exception. In the villages where it existed the small proprietors of this kind formed a sort of aristocracy among the peasantry.
Note (VIII.)—Page [22], line 3.
POSITION OF THE NOBILITY AND DIVISION OF LANDS ALONG THE BANKS OF THE RHINE.
From information gathered on the spot, and from persons who lived under the old state of things, I gather that in the Electorate of Cologne, for instance, there was a great number of villages without lords, governed by the agents of the Prince; that in those places where the nobility existed, its administrative powers were much restricted; that its position was rather brilliant than powerful (at least individually); that they enjoyed many honours, and formed part of the council of the Prince, but exercised no real and immediate power over the people. I have ascertained from other sources that in the same electorate property was much divided, and that a great number of the peasants were landowners; this was mainly attributable to the state of embarrassment and almost distress in which so many of the noble families had long lived, and which compelled them constantly to alienate small portions of their land which were bought by the peasants, either for ready money or at a fixed rent-charge. I have read a census of the population of the Bishopric of Cologne at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which gives the state of landed property at that time, and I find that even then one-third of the soil belonged to the peasants. From this fact arose a combination of feelings and ideas which brought the population of this part of Germany far nearer to a state of revolution than that of other districts in which these peculiarities had not yet shown themselves.