xert themselves
to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow
linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who
carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings
when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.[32] What was the feeling
of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded
from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from
the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young
nobles should have their heads broken betimes."[33]

Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we
would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall
find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies
of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange
and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called
philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars
in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the
views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more
human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox
errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new
philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve,
and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the
peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his
calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and
his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a
manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once
been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth
century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor
countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he
rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the
straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard
labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]

On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic
State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the
greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of
keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such
material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be
perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also