defined privileges. They grazed their cattle during a part of the
year on the manor-land; they received firewood and occasionally logs for
repairing their huts; sometimes the proprietor lent them or gave them
a cow or a horse when they had been visited by the cattle-plague or the
horse-stealer; and in times of famine they could look to their master
for support. All this has now come to an end. Their burdens and their
privileges have been swept away together, and been replaced by clearly
defined, unbending, unelastic legal relations. They have now to pay the
market-price for every stick of firewood which they burn, for every log
which they require for repairing their houses, and for every rood of
land on which to graze their cattle. Nothing is now to be had gratis.
The demand to pay is encountered at every step. If a cow dies or a horse
is stolen, the owner can no longer go to the proprietor with the hope of
receiving a present, or at least a loan without interest, but must,
if he has no ready money, apply to the village usurer, who probably
considers twenty or thirty per cent, as a by no means exorbitant rate of
interest.

Besides this, from the economic point of view village life has been
completely revolutionised. Formerly the members of a peasant family
obtained from their ordinary domestic resources nearly all they
required. Their food came from their fields, cabbage-garden, and
farmyard. Materials for clothing were supplied by their plots of flax
and their sheep, and were worked up into linen and cloth by the female
members of the household. Fuel, as I have said, and torches wherewith
to light the izba--for oil was too expensive and petroleum was
unknown--were obtained gratis. Their sheep, cattle, and horses were bred
at home, and their agricultural implements, except in so far as a little
iron was required, could be made by themselves without any pecuniary
expenditure. Money was required only for the purchase of a few cheap
domestic utensils, such as pots, pans, knives, hatchets, wooden dishes,
and spoons, and for the payment of taxes, which were small in amount
and often paid by the proprietor. In these circumstances the quantity of
money in circulation among the peasants was infinitesimally small, the
few exchanges which took place in a village being generally effected
by barter. The taxes, and the vodka required for village festivals,
weddings, or funerals, were the only large items of expenditure for the
year,