probable that emphyteusis was not
employed in those states until after the year B.C. 146--between that
and B.C. 120.]

After the Western Empire had apparently fallen beneath the Northern
arms--that is to say, five hundred years later--and not until then,
the Roman Code ameliorated the baneful tenure of emphyteusis. A law of
the emperor Zenos (A.D. 474-491) fixed whatever had theretofore been
uncertain in the nature and incidents of emphyteusis. The tenant was
guaranteed from increase of rent and from eviction--the alienation
of the property by the state being held thenceforth to affect the
quit-rent only--and finally he obtained full power to dispose of the
land, which nevertheless remained subject to the quit-rent in whatever
hands it might be. Before these reforms were effected, Portugal was
conquered by the Visigoths, the Roman proprietors of the soil were
expelled, and their laws and institutions suppressed. This occurred
in the year 476. Whether emphyteusis in any form remained is not quite
certain, but it seems not; and during this government, and the Moorish
one which superseded it in the year 711, the Iberian Peninsula enjoyed
an interval of prosperity to which it had been a stranger for ages.

In the eleventh century this happy condition of affairs was disturbed
by the appearance of certain Spanish crusading knights, who, issuing
from the mountainous parts of the country adjacent to their own, began
to war against the Moorish authorities. In the course of a century,
and with little voluntary aid from the peasants, who distrusted
them and their religious pretensions and promises of advantage, they
managed to acquire possession of the country. Now, what do you suppose
was one of the first acts committed by these adventurers? Nothing less
than the re-enactment of the odious Roman tenure of emphyteusis, and
that in its most ancient and worst form--liability to increased
rent and to eviction; not only this, but with certain base services
combined. The wretched inhabitants were required to work so many days
in the week for these lords, to break up a certain amount of waste
land; to furnish so many cattle; to kill so many birds; to provide (in
rural districts remote from the sea) so many salt fish; to furnish so
much incense or so many porringers, iron tools, pairs of shoes, etc.

Talk of the Western Empire having "declined and fallen," as Messrs.
Gibbon and Wegg put it! Why, here it was again, and with the worst
o