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however, has been much obstructed by entails; ly unwilling to grant, themselves, any pecunithe heirs of entail being generally restrained ary aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him from letting leases for any long term of years, to tallage, as they called it, their tenants, and frequently for more than one year. A late act of parliament has, in this respect, somewhat slackened their fetters, though they are still by much too strait. In Scotland, besides, as no leasehold gives a vote for a member of parliament, the yeomanry are upon this account less respectable to their landlords than in England.

had not knowledge enough to foresee how much this must, in the end, affect their own revenue. The taille, as it still subsists in France, may serve as an example of those ancient tallages. It is a tax upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which they estimate by the stock that he has upon the farm. It is his interest, therefore, to appear to have as litIn other parts of Europe, after it was found tle as possible, and consequently to employ as convenient to secure tenants both against heirs little as possible in its cultivation, and none and purchasers, the term of their security was in its improvement. Should any stock hapstill limited to a very short period; in France, pen to accumulate in the hands of a French for example, to nine years from the com- farmer, the taille is almost equal to a prohimencement of the lease. It has in that coun- bition of its ever being employed upon the try, indeed, been lately extended to twenty-land. This tax, besides, is supposed to disseven, a period still too short to encourage the honour whoever is subject to it, and to degrade tenant to make the most important improve him below, not only the rank of a gentleman, The proprietors of land were ancient- but that of a burgher; and whoever rents the ly the legislators of every part of Europe. lands of another becomes subject to it. No The laws relating to land, therefore, were all gentleman, nor even any burgher, who has calculated for what they supposed the interest stock, will submit to this degradation. This of the proprietor. It was for his interest, they tax, therefore, not only hinders the stock which had imagined, that no lease granted by any of accumulates upon the land from being emhis predecessors should hinder him from en ployed in its improvement, but drives away al! joying, during a long term of years, the full other stock from it. The ancient tenths and value of his land. Avarice and injustice are fifteenths, so usual in England in former always short-sighted, and they did not foresee times, seem, so far as they affected the land, to how much this regulation must obstruct im- have been taxes of the same nature with the provement, and thereby hurt, in the long-run, taille. the real interest of the landlord.

ments.

Under all these discouragements, little imThe farmers, too, besides paying the rent, provement could be expected from the occuwere anciently, it was supposed, bound to per-piers of land. That order of people, with all form a great number of services to the land- the liberty and security which law can give, lord, which were seldom either specified in must always improve under great disadvanthe lease, or regulated by any precise rule, but tage. The farmer, compared with the pro

by the use and wont of the manor or barony. prietor, is as a merchant who trades with borThese services, therefore, being almost entire-rowed money, compared with one who trades ly arbitrary, subjected the tenant to many vex- with his own. The stock of both may im

ations. In Scotland the abolition of all ser-prove; but that of the one, with only equal vices not precisely stipulated in the lease, has, good conduct, must always improve more in the course of a few years, very much alter-slowly than that of the other, on account of ed for the better the condition of the yeoman- the large share of the profits which is consum. ry of that country. ed by the interest of the loan. The lands culThe public services to which the yeomanry tivated by the farmer must, in the same manwere bound, were not less arbitrary than the ner, with only equal good conduct, be improvprivate ones. To make and maintain the ed more slowly than those cultivated by the high roads, a servitude which still subsists, I proprietor, on account of the large share of believe, everywhere, though with different de- the produce which is consumed in the rent, grees of oppression in different countries, was and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he not the only one. When the king's troops, might have employed in the further improvewhen his household, or his officers of any kind, ment of the land. The station of a farmer, passed through any part of the country, the besides, is, from the nature of things, inferior yeomanry were bound to provide them with to that of a proprietor. Through the greater horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price re- part of Europe, the yeomanry are regarded as gulated by the purveyor. Great Britain is, I an inferior rank of people, even to the better believe, the only monarchy in Europe where sort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all the oppression of purveyance has been entire- parts of Europe to the great merchants and ly abolished. It still subsists in France and master manufacturers. It can seldom happen, Germany. therefore, that a man of any considerable

The public taxes, to which they were sub-stock should quit the superior, in order to ject, were as irregular and oppressive as the place himself in an inferior station. Even in services The ancient lords, though extreme-¡the present state of Europe, therefore, little

stock is likely to go from any other profession them with a wall, for the sake of common deto the improvement of land in the way of fence. After the fall of the Roman empire, farming. More does, perhaps, in Great Bri- on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem tain than in any other country, though even generally to have lived in fortified castles on there the great stocks which are in some places their own estates, and in the midst of their employed in farming, have generally been ac-own tenants and dependents. The towns were quired by farming, the trade, perhaps, in which, chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, of all others, stock is commonly acquired most who seem, in those days, to have been of serslowly. After small proprietors, however, vile, or very nearly of servile condition. The rich and great farmers are in every country privileges which we find granted by ancient the principal improvers. There are more such, charters to the inhabitants of some of the prinperhaps, in England than in any other Euro- cipal towns in Europe, sufficiently show what pean monarchy. In the republican govern- they were before those grants. The people ments of Holland, and of Berne in Switzerland, to whom it is granted as a privilege, that they the farmers are said to be not inferior to those might give away their own daughters in marof England. riage without the consent of their lord, that The ancient policy of Europe was, over and upon their death their own children, and not above all this, unfavourable to the improve-their lord, should succeed to their goods, and ment and cultivation of land, whether carried that they might dispose of their own effects by on by the proprietor or by the farmer; first, will, must, before those grants, have been eiby the general prohibition of the exportation ther altogether, or very nearly, in the same of corn, without a special licence, which seems state of villanage with the occupiers of land to have been a very universal regulation; and, in the country. secondly, by the restraints which were laid up- They seem, indeed, to have been a very on the inland commerce, not only of corn, but poor, mean set of people, who seemed to traof almost every other part of the produce of vel about with their goods from place to place, the farm, by the absurd laws against engross-and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and ers, regraters, and forestallers, and by the pri- pedlars of the present times. In all the difvileges of fairs and markets. It has already ferent countries of Europe then, in the same been observed in what manner the prohibition manner as in several of the Tartar governof the exportation of corn, together with some ments of Asia at present, taxes used to be leencouragement given to the importation of fo- vied upon the persons and goods of travellers, reign corn, obstructed the cultivation of an- when they passed through certain manors, cient Italy, naturally the most fertile country when they went over certain bridges, when in Europe, and at that time the seat of the they carried about their goods from place to greatest empire in the world. To what de- place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth gree such restraints upon the inland commerce or stall to sell them in. These different taxes of this commodity, joined to the general pro-were known in England by the names of passhibition of exportation, must have discouraged age, pontage, lastage, and stallage. Somethe cultivation of countries less fertile, and times the king, sometimes a great lord, who less favourably circumstanced, it is not, per- had, it seems, upon some occasions, authority haps, very easy to imagine.

CHAP. III.

Note 22.

to do this, would grant to particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of servile, or very nearly of servile condition, were upon this account called free traders. They, in return, usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll-tax. In those days pro

OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CITIES AND tection was seldom granted without a valuTOWNS, AFTER THE FALL OF THE ROMAN

EMPIRE.

able consideration, and this tax might perhaps be considered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from THE inhabitants of cities and towns were, af- other taxes. At first, both those poll-taxes ter the fall of the Roman empire, not more and those exemptions seem to have been altofavoured than those of the country. They gether personal, and to have affected only par consisted, indeed, of a very different order of ticular individuals, during either their lives, or people from the first inhabitants of the an- the pleasure of their protectors. In the very cient republics of Greece and Italy. These imperfect accounts which have been published last were composed chiefly of the proprietors from Doomsday-book, of several of the towns of lands, among whom the public territory of England, mention is frequently made, somewas originally divided, and who found it con- times of the tax which particular burghers venient to build their houses in the neigh-paid, each of them, either to the king, or to bourhood of one another, and to surround some other great lord, for this sort of protec

tion, and sometimes of the general amount only of all those taxes. •

being thus taken away from them, they now at least became really free, in our present sense of the word freedom.

But how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the inhabitants of the Nor was this all. They were generally at towns, it appears evidently, that they arrived the same time erected into a commonalty or at liberty and independency much earlier than | corporation, with the privilege of having mathe occupiers of land in the country. That gistrates and a town-council of their own, of part of the king's revenue which arose from making bye-laws for their own government, such poll-taxes in any particular town, used of building walls for their own defence, and commonly to be let in farm, during a term of of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort years, for a rent certain, sometimes to the she-of military discipline, by obliging them to riff of the county, and sometimes to other per- watch and ward; that is, as anciently undersons. The burghers themselves frequently stood, to guard and defend those walls against got credit enough to be admitted to farm the all attacks and surprises, by night as well as revenues of this sort which arose out of their by day. In England they were generally own town, they becoming jointly and several- exempted from suit to the hundred and counly answerable for the whole rent. To let a ty courts: and all such pleas as should arise farm in this manner, was quite agreeable to among them, the pleas of the crown exceptthe usual economy of, I believe, the sovereigns ed, were left to the decision of their own maof all the different countries of Europe, who gistrates. In other countries, much greater used frequently to let whole manors to all the and more extensive jurisdictions were fretenants of those manors, they becoming joint- quently granted to them.* ly and severally answerable for the whole rent; It might, probably, be necessary to grant to but in return being allowed to collect it in such towns as were admitted to farm their their own way, and to pay it into the king's own revenues, some sort of compulsive jurisexchequer by the hands of their own bailiff, diction to oblige their own citizens to make and being thus altogether freed from the inso-payment. In those disorderly times, it might lence of the king's officers; a circumstance have been extremely inconvenient to have left in those days.regarded as of the greatest im- them to seek this sort of justice from any portance.

other tribunal. But it must seem extraordiAt first, the farm of the town was probably nary, that the sovereigns of all the different let to the burghers, in the same manner as it countries of Europe should have exchanged had been to other farmers, for a term of years in this manner for a rent certain, never more only. In process of time, however, it seems to be augmented, that branch of their revenue, to have become the general practice to grant which was, perhaps, of all others, the most it to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a likely to be improved by the natural course of rent certain, never afterwards to be augment- things, without either expense or attention of ed. The payment having thus become per- their own; and that they should, besides, have petual, the exemptions, in return, for which in this manner voluntarily erected a sort of it was made, naturally became perpetual too. independent republics in the heart of their Those exemptions, therefore, ceased to be per-own dominions. sonal, and could not afterwards be considered In order to understand this, it must be reas belonging to individuals, as individuals, membered, that, in those days, the sovereign but as burghers of a particular burgh, which, of perhaps no country in Europe was able to upon this account, was called a free burgh, protect, through the whole extent of his dofor the same reason that they had been called minions, the weaker part of his subjects from free burghers or free traders. the oppression of the great lords. Those whom Along with this grant, the important privi- the law could not protect, and who were not leges, above mentioned, that they might give strong enough to defend themselves, were ob.. away their own daughters in marriage, that liged either to have recourse to the protection their children should succeed to them, and of some great lord, and in order to obtain it, that they might dispose of their own effects by to become either his slaves or vassals; or to will, were generally bestowed upon the burgh- enter into a league of mutual defence for the ers of the town to whom it was given. Whe-common protection of one another. The inther such privileges had before been usually habitants of cities and burghs, considered as granted, along with the freedom of trade, to single individuals, had no power to defend particular burghers, as individuals, I know not. themselves; but by entering into a league of I reckon it not improbable that they were, mutual defence with their neighbours, they though I cannot produce any direct evidence of it. But however this may have been, the principal attributes of villanage and slavery

See Brady's Historical Treatise of Cities and Boroughs, p. 3. &c.

+ See Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 18; also History of the Exchequer, chap. 10, sect. v, p. 223, first edition.

were capable of making no contemptible resistance. The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves,

* See Madox, Firma Burgi. See also Pfeffel in the Remarkable events under Frederick II. and his Succes sors of the House of Suabia.

almost of a different species from themselves. [towns of Germany received the first grants of The wealth of the burghers never failed to their privileges, and that the famous Hanseaprovoke their envy and indignation, and they tic league first became formidable.* The militia of the cities seems, in those plundered them upon every occasion without mercy or remorse. The burghers naturally times, not to have been inferior to that of the hated and feared the lords. The king hated country; and as they could be more readily and feared them too; but though, perhaps, he assembled upon any sudden occasion, they might despise, he had no reason either to hate frequently had the advantage in their disputes In countries or fear the burghers. Mutual interest, there- with the neighbouring lords. fore, disposed them to support the king, and such as Italy or Switzerland, in which, on acthe king to support them against the lords. count either of their distance from the princiThey were the enemies of his enemies, and it pal seat of government, of the natural strength was his interest to render them as secure and of the country itself, or of some other reason, independent of those enemies as he could. the sovereign came to lose the whole of his By granting them magistrates of their own, authority; the cities generally became indethe privilege of making bye-laws for their own pendent republics, and conquered all the nogovernment, that of building walls for their own bility in their neighbourhood; obliging them defence, and that of reducing all their inha- to pull down their castles in the country, and bitants under a sort of military discipline, he to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the gave them all the means of security and inde- city. This is the short history of the republic pendency of the barons which it was in his of Berne, as well as of several other cities in Without the establishment Switzerland. If you except Venice, for of power to bestow, of some regular government of this kind, that city the history is somewhat different, it without some authority to compel their inha- is the history of all the considerable Italian bitants to act according to some certain plan republics, of which so great a number arose or system, no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them any permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any considerable support. By granting them the farm of their own town in fee, he took away from these whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion, that he was ever afterwards to oppress them, either by raising the farm-rent of their town, or by granting it to some other farmer.

and perished between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

In countries such as France and England, where the authority of the sovereign, though frequently very low, never was destroyed altogether, the cities had no opportunity of becoming entirely independent. They became, however, so considerable, that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, besides the stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. They were, therefore, called The princes who lived upon the worst terms upon to send deputies to the general assembly with their barons, seem accordingly to have of the states of the kingdom, where they might been the most liberal in grants of this kind to join with the clergy and the barons in granttheir burghs. King John of England, for ing, upon urgent occasions, some extraordiexample, appears to have been a most muni-nary aid to the king. Being generally, too, ficent benefactor to his towns.* Philip I. of more favourable to his power, their deputies France lost all authority over his barons. To- seem sometimes to have been employed by wards the end of his reign, his son Lewis, him as a counterbalance in those assemblies known afterwards by the name of Lewis the to the authority of the great lords. Hence Fat, consulted, according to Father Daniel, the origin of the representation of burghs in with the bishops of the royal demesnes, con- the states-general of all great monarchies in cerning the most proper means of restraining Europe. the violence of the great lords. Order and good government, and along consisted of two different proposals. One was with them the liberty and security of indivito erect a new order of jurisdiction, by estab-duals, were in this manner established in cities, lishing magistrates and a town-council in every at a time when the occupiers of land in the considerable town of his demesnes. The o- country, were exposed to every sort of vioBut men in this defenceless state nather was to form a new militia, by making the lence. inhabitants of those towns, under the com- turally content themselves with their necessary mand of their own magistrates, march out up- subsistence; because, to acquire more, might on proper occasions to the assistance of the only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. king. It is from this period, according to On the contrary, when they are secure of enthe French antiquarians, that we are to date joying the fruits of their industry, they natuthe institution of the magistrates and councils rally exert it to better their condition, and to of cities in France. It was during the un-acquire not only the necessaries, but the conprosperous reigns of the princes of the house veniencies and elegancies of life. That inof Suabia, that the greater part of the free dustry, therefore, which aims at something

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more than necessary subsistence, was estab-| great armies which marched from all parts to lished in cities long before it was commonly the conquest of the Holy Land, gave extraorpractised by the occupiers of land in the coun-dinary encouragement to the shipping of Vetry. If, in the hands of a poor cultivator, op-nice, Genoa, and Pisa, sometimes in transportpressed with the servitude of villanage, some ing them thither, and always in supplying little stock should accumulate, he would na- them with provisions. They were the comturally conceal it with great care from his missaries, if one may say so, of those armies; master, to whom it would otherwise have be- and the most destructive frenzy that ever befel longed, and take the first opportunity of run- the European nations, was a source of opuning away to a town. The law was at that lence to those republics. time so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, The inhabitants of trading cities, by importand so desirous of diminishing the authority ing the improved manufactures and expensive of the lords over those of the country, that if luxuries of richer countries, afforded some food he could conceal himself there from the pursuit of his lord for a year, he was free for ever. Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired

it.

to the vanity of the great proprietors, who eagerly purchased them with great quantities of the rude produce of their own lands. The commerce of a great part of Europe in those times, accordingly, consisted chiefly in the exchange of their own rude, for the manufactured produce of more civilized nations. Thus the wool of England used to be exchanged for the wines of France, and the fine cloths of Flanders, in the same manner as the corn in Poland is at this day, exchanged for the wines and brandies of France, and for the silks and velvets of France and Italy.

The inhabitants of a city, it is true, must always ultimately derive their subsistence, and the whole materials and means of their industry, from the country. But those of a city, situated near either the sea-coast or the banks of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined to derive them from the country in their neighbourhood. They have a much wider range, and may draw them from the most remote corners of the world, either in exchange for the manufactured produce of their own industry, or by performing the office of carriers between distant countries, and exchanging the produce of one for that of another. A city might, in this manner, grow up to great wealth and splendour, while not only the country in its neighbourhood, but all those to which it traded, were in poverty and wretchedness. Each of those countries, perhaps, taken singly, No large country, it must be observed, ever could afford it but a small part, either of its did or could subsist without some sort of masubsistence or of its employment; but all of nufactures being carried on in it; and when it them taken together, could afford it both a is said of any such country that it has no magreat subsistence and a great employment.nufactures, it must always be understood of There were, however, within the narrow circle the finer and more improved, or of such as are of the commerce of those times, some coun- fit for distant sale. In every large country. tries that were opulent and industrious. Such both the clothing and household furniture of was the Greek empire as long as it subsisted, the far greater part of the people, are the proand that of the Saracens during the reigns of duce of their own industry. This is even the Abassides. Such, too, was Egypt till it more universally the case in those poor counwas conquered by the Turks, some part of the tries which are commonly said to have no macoast of Barbary, and all those provinces of nufactures, than in those rich ones that are Spain which were under the government of the Moors.

A taste for the finer and more improved manufactures was, in this manner, introduced by foreign commerce into countries where no such works were carried on. But when this taste became so general as to occasion a considerable demand, the merchants, in order to save the expense of carriage, naturally endeavoured to establish some manufactures of the same kind in their own country. Hence the origin of the first manufactures for distant sale, that seem to have been established in the western provinces of Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire.

said to abound in them. In the latter you will generally find, both in the clothes and household furniture of the lowest rank of people, a much greater proportion of foreign productions than in the former.

The cities of Italy seem to have been the first in Europe which were raised by commerce to any considerable degree of opulence. Italy lay in the centre of what was at that time the improved and civilized part of the world. The crusades, too, though, by the great waste of stock and destruction of inha- Sometimes they have been introduced in the bitants which they occasioned, they must ne- manner above mentioned, by the violent ope cessarily have retarded the progress of the ration, if one may say so, of the stocks of par. greater part of Europe, were extremely fa- ticular merchants and undertakers, who esta vourable to that of some Italian cities. The blished them in imitation of some foreign ma

Those manufactures which are fit for dis tant sale, seem to have been introduced into different countries in two different ways.

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