Peasant Rents; Being the First Half of an Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tion still afflict the peasantry, and the condition of the serfs of the crown is sometimes even worse than that of the slaves of the neighbouring nobility. In the mean time, the insensibility for which the body of the Russian peasantry have been renowned, seems to be giving away. Soon after the accession of the present Emperor, many of the tenants of the crown refused to pay their abroc or rents, and the serfs of individuals to perform their accustomed labor. A proclamation appeared, reproaching them with entertaining unreasonable expectations of being released from rents and services altogether, and threatening them, in a style which it must be confessed is truly oriental, with severe punishment if they even petitioned the Czar on such subjects again. But we must not judge the conduct of the Russian court by the harsh language of a proclamation issued on such an emergency. The spirit in which the Czars have dealt with their serfs has hitherto been evidently paternal. The form of their government is theoretically bad; but Russia offers at present no materials for forming any not likely to be worse, and the gradual improvement in the condition of such a people, however slowly we see it proceed, is probably, after all, safer in the hands of the monarch, than it would be in their own, or in those of their masters the nobles. SECTION III. Of Labor Rents in Hungary. In Hungary, the nobles alone are allowed to become the proprietors of land, either by inheritance or purchase. They constitute about one part in twenty-one of a populationof eight millions.1 Of the other inhabitants, a great majority are peasants; for in 1777 there were only 30,921 artizans in Hungary, and their number is said to be not much increased.2 These peasants occupy about half the cultivated surface of ...