any man to despoil his children of their
inheritance. The possessor could only mortgage them until the year of
jubilee--the fiftieth year. In Switzerland and Belgium, where the nobles
did not entirely get rid of the FREEMEN, the lands continued to be held
in small estates. In Switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for
every hundred families, and in Belgium the average size of the estate is
three and a half hectares--about eight acres. These small ownerships are
not detrimental to the state. On the contrary, they tend to its security
and well-being. I have treated on this subject in my work, "The Food
Supplies of Western Europe." These small estates existed in England at
the Norman Conquest, and their perpetual continuance was the object of
the law of William I., to which I have referred. Their disappearance was
due to the greed of the nobles during the reign of the Plantagenets,
and they were not replaced by the Tudors, who neglected to restore the
men-at-arms to the position they occupied under the laws of Edward the
Confessor and William I.

The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the
other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman
commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the rent
was of two classes--personal service or money; the latter was considered
base tenure. The legislation of the Tudors abolished the payment of rent
by personal service, and made all rent payable in money or in kind. The
land had been burdened with the sole support of the army. It was then
freed from this charge, and a tax was levied upon the community. Some
writers have sought to define RENT as the difference between fertile
lands and those that are so unproductive as barely to pay the cost of
tillage. This far-fetched idea is contradicted by the circumstance
that for centuries rent was paid by labor--the personal service of the
vassal--and it is now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as
land will be unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by
tame animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them.
Rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the occupant.
In some cases it is income derived from the labors of others. A broad
distinction exists between the rent of land, which is a portion of the
fruits or its equivalent in money, and that of improvements and houses,
which is an exchange of the labor of the occupant given as pay