With these serfs may be compared the Roman coloni. “The colonatus consists in this, that men are inseparably attached to a landed property for the purpose of cultivating it.… This connection with a determinate estate, from which the colonus might be severed only in some cases fixed by law, brought about an approximation of the colonus to the slave (as servus terrae), but also a difference between them, a security for the colonus, which protects him from the lord’s arbitrary power. Hence the colonus stands with regard to the lord on the free footing of one bound only to comply with the [[37]]yearly canon, annua functio, a tribute fixed by contract or custom, which he has to pay to the lord, generally in products of the land”[53].
The foregoing statements once more prove the sufficiency of our definition of slavery. As soon as the forced labourer is no longer entirely at the disposal of the lord, the latter being entitled to fixed services and tributes only, such a state of things is called serfdom, or colonatus, or subserviency, but not slavery. This agrees with our definition of slavery. The slave, as we have remarked above, is the property of his master, whose power is in principle unlimited, not restricted to fixed performances. Therefore, even if the writers referred to here called such institutions as serfdom and colonatus slavery, we are not to do so; but we may regard it as a corroboration of the conclusion we had arrived at before, that such writers, most of whom have not made any special research into the nature of slavery, when they meet with such an institution as serfdom, feel that they are not to call it slavery.
Now let us look what the theorists have to say on the subject.
Ingram remarks: “The transition to serfdom took place in civic communities, when the master parted with or was deprived of his property in the person of the slave, and became entitled only to his services, or a determinate portion of them. In rural life, where the march of development was slower, the corresponding stage was reached when, in accordance with the fundamental principles of feudalism, the relation between the lord and serf, from being personal, became territorial”[54].
The first words here perfectly express the truth: when the master loses “his property in the person of the slave”, he is no longer a slave-owner. What follows, that the master “became entitled only to his services”, is less correct; for he who is entitled to all the services of another is his owner; just the limiting of the master’s right to “a determinate portion of them” is the change from slavery to something else. If I may require all the services a man can perform, I am his owner; if I am restricted to a determinate portion of them, I am not. [[38]]
Spencer says: “As the distinctions between different forms of slavery are indefinite, so must there be an indefinite distinction between slavery and serfdom, and between the several forms of serfdom. Much confusion has arisen in describing these respective institutions, and for the sufficient reason that the institutions themselves are confused”[55].
This consideration, however true, will not prevent us from drawing a theoretical line of demarcation. Not a single social institution is practically strictly separated from kindred institutions; yet we cannot understand such institutions, unless we make a distinction, and not an “indefinite” one.
Letourneau, after describing the state of the colonus, adds: “In a word, he was not an object of possession, a slave, but only a proletarian attached to the soil.” In another passage he remarks that slavery always undergoes some mitigation in the course of civilization: “Less and less is the person of the slave himself oppressed; one is contented with exploiting him, depriving him in a larger or smaller degree of the fruits of his labour, in a word the slave becomes a serf”[56].
These quotations may suffice to show that our view of the matter is held by theorists as well as historians.
The serf, therefore, is not a slave, because he is not the property of his master, and the particulars of serfdom related by historians provide us with means of more clearly understanding the practical meaning of this notion “property”. It means a power that, however leniently exercised in many cases, is in principle unlimited. Among many peoples the master may ill-use and even kill his slave, without the law taking any notice of it. And even where his power is restricted by social regulations, he may have a right of property, viz. if his authority be in principle unbounded, and any limitation put upon it suppose a special legal provision. The slave-owner may do with his slave whatever he is not by special laws forbidden to do; the master of a serf may require from his man such services and tributes only, as the law [[39]]allows him to require. The slave-owner has a right of property; the master of a serf has, so to speak, a ius in re aliena.[57]