making the peasants sow their own grain a little
later than that of the proprietor, so that the master's harvest work
was finished, or nearly finished, before their grain was ripe. This
combination did not, however, always succeed, and in cases where there
was a conflict of interests, the serf was, of course, the losing party.
All that remained for him to do in such cases was to work a little in
his own fields before six o'clock in the morning and after nine o'clock
at night, and in order to render this possible he economised his
strength, and worked as little as possible in his master's fields during
the day.

It has frequently been remarked, and with much truth--though
the indiscriminate application of the principle has often led to
unjustifiable legislative inactivity--that the practical result of
institutions depends less on the intrinsic abstract nature of the
institutions themselves than on the character of those who work them.
So it was with serfage. When a proprietor habitually acted towards his
serfs in an enlightened, rational, humane way, they had little reason to
complain of their position, and their life was much easier than that
of many men who live in a state of complete individual freedom and
unlimited, unrestricted competition. However paradoxical the statement
may seem to those who are in the habit of regarding all forms of slavery
from the sentimental point of view, it is unquestionable that the
condition of serfs under such a proprietor as I have supposed was more
enviable than that of the majority of English agricultural labourers.
Each family had a house of its own, with a cabbage-garden, one or
more horses, one or two cows, several sheep, poultry, agricultural
implements, a share of the Communal land, and everything else necessary
for carrying on its small farming operations; and in return for this it
had to supply the proprietor with an amount of labour which was by no
means oppressive. If, for instance, a serf had three adult sons--and the
households, as I have said, were at that time generally numerous--two of
them might work for the proprietor whilst he himself and the remaining
son could attend exclusively to the family affairs. By the events which
used to be called "the visitations of God" he had no fear of being
permanently ruined. If his house was burnt, or his cattle died from the
plague, or a series of "bad years" left him without seed for his fields,
he could always count upon temporary