the most dear to a people, received a cruel blow. But, on the other hand, the Roman domination was more regular, more able than that of the chiefs of the Gaulish clan; a better and firmer order was introduced into the relations of the coloni with the proprietors; so that, perhaps, on the whole, the condition of the former (I refer solely to their material condition), was very little deteriorated by this change of sovereigns.

I have thus given what appears to me the most probable explanation of the state of the agricultural population in Gaul under the Roman administration. This state was, as it appears to me, neither the sudden work of conquest, nor the slow labour of legislation: it was an ancient natural fact, which the Romans found existing on their arrival, and which was to endure after them.

It was a state which in no degree appeared singular to the new conquerors who succeeded to Rome; on the contrary, it was entirely conformable with their own customs and manners, with their own social state. The Germans also had labourers, coloni, living on their domains, and hereditarily cul tivating them on payment of a ground rent. It was therefore naturally to be supposed that the state of the agricultural population would undergo no essential change, and that, subject to a few inevitable modifications, it would survive this second conquest as it had survived the first. Did this prove to be the case? The question will form the subject of our next lecture

EIGHTH LECTURE.

Of the state the agricultural population in Gaul from the 5th to the 14th century-It has not changed so much as is commonly supposed--Of the two principal changes which it was to be expected would take place in it, and which did, in point of fact, take place-Insurrections of the peasants in the 10th and 11th centuries-Continuance of the distinction between the coloni and the serfs-Progress of the condition of the coloni from the 11th to the 14th century-Proofs.

I EXHIBITED in our last lecture the state of the agricultural population in Gaul under the Roman administration. What was its condition after the invasion-first, from the fifth to the tenth century, during the epoch which we may denominate the barbarous epoch, and then from the tenth to the fourteenth century, during the feudal epoch? Did that condition undergo the so entire change that has been generally represented?

In itself, such a change was not probable. Not only was the condition of the coloni general and well established in Gaul, established de jure as well as de facto, rooted in civilization as in society, but moreover, in the last days of the empire, and amidst the repeated incursions of the barbarians, the number of coloni had very greatly increased. A passage in Salvienus, the writer who has perhaps more vividly than any other depicted the social misery of this period, leaves no doubt on the subject:

"Some of the men of whom we speak, more prudent than the rest, or rendered so by dint of necessity, despoiled, in the course of the repeated incursions, of their humble dwellings and poor fields, or driven thence by the exactors, and no longer able to retain them, repaired to the domains of the great men, and became their coloni. And as

men seized with fear, on the approach of the enemy, retire unto some stronghold, or, as those who, having lost the honourable position of freedmen, retreat in despair into some asylum, so the men of whom I speak, being no longer in condition to preserve their property, and the dignity of their origin, submit to the yoke of the humble condition of colonus, reduced to this extremity, that the extortioner despoils them, not only of their goods, but of their state, not only of that which belongs to them, but of themselves; that they lost themselves at the same time that they lose all that they had; that, retaining no property, they renounce even the right of liberty."

It hence resulted, that at the period of the conquest, and when the barbarians definitively established themselves on the Roman territory, they found almost all the rural population reduced to the state of bond-labourers. Now a condition so general, was a powerful fact, and capable of resisting many crises. We do not change very easily the lot and condition of so great a number of men. Considering then the thing in itself, independently of all special testimony, we may presume that the condition of the bond-labourers would survive the conquest, and remain, for a very long time at least, very nearly the same.

In fact, in certain parts of the empire, especially in Italy, we positively know that it was not changed; explicit monuments, more especially letters from the popes in the sixth and seventh century, prove this. The Roman church possessed, as you are aware, considerable territorial property; this was, in fact, the principal source of her revenues at that time. There is a letter addressed by Gregory the Great, (590--604), to the sub-deacon Peter, the officer charged with the administration of the property of the church in Sicily, which gives some very curious details as to the state of the rural population after the fall of the empire. I will lay a portion of this epistle before you.

"We have learned that the bond-labourers of the church are extremely troubled by reason of the price of grain, which occasions the amount of the rent to which they are bound to be no longer the same as in times of abundance.

Salvienus, De gubern. Dci, b. v

We order

that, upon all occasions, whether the harvest be good or bad, only the same proportion be collected from them. As to the grain which shall be shipwrecked during its transport to our granaries, we direct it to be reckoned as received. But let there be no negligence on your part, in reference to its transmission; for if you take not the fitting time for shipment, the loss that may arise will be by your fault.

"We regard, also, as very unjust and iniquitous, that any portion of the measures of grain furnished by the bondlabourers of the church, should be taken by the collectors, and that for this purpose they should be compelled to furnish a fuller measure than that which is delivered into the granaries of the church; we forbid, by these presents, that the bond-labourers of the church should be called upon to furnish bushels containing more than 18-, excepting such extra quantity as the masters of the ships receive according to custom, in consideration of the waste which they state takes place during the voyage.

"We have learned, also, that in some farms of the church there exists a most unjust system-namely, that out of seventy bushels the farmers exact three and a half; and even this is not sufficient, for it is said that for many years past they have exacted even more. We wholly detest this custom, and will extirpate it entirely from our patrimony. Do you inquire, in reference to the various descriptions of weights and measures, what is exacted of the bond-labourers, beyond the justice of the case, and do you appoint one uniform sum for their various rents, so that they may pay in the whole two bushels in seventy, but that beyond this no shameful exaction be made upon them. And least after my death, when we shall have augmented the total fixed sum to be paid, suppressing the other charges which were heretofore made, these charges may again be imposed upon the coloni, so that while their rent remains higher they are burthened besides with the extra charges, I order that you draw up formal registers, in which you set down, once for all, what each man shall henceforth pay, distinctly abolishing the old rates, dues, and the tax upon vegetables and grain. As to what was formerly paid out of these items to the collector for his own use, we order it to be henceforth given him out of the portion paid to us as

rent.

"Above all things, we desire you to take the greatest care that no unjust weight be used by our collectors; if you find such weights, destroy them, and substitute just ones. We would not have anything exacted from the church coloni besides the legal weights, except some common provisions.

"We have learned, moreover, that the first collecting of the tax very much straitens our coloni, for before they are able to sell their commodities, they are forced to pay the tribute; and having nothing of their own at the moment when they are called upon to pay, they borrow of the officer, and for this service pay heavy interest. . . . We therefore order, by these presents, that thou make to the coloni, out of our public treasury, the loans which they might otherwise demand of strangers; let payment be exacted of them only gradually, and in proportion to what they shall have to pay with, and let them not be troubled for the present: for what would suffice for them being kept till some future time, when sold too soon and at low price when they are pressed, becomes insufficient for them."

I omit other recommendations dictated by the same spirit of benevolence and justice. We can thus understand how people were eager to place themselves under the rule of the church; lay proprietors were certainly very far from thus watching over the condition of the inhabitants of their domains. But however that may be, it is evident that this condition, such as it is described by St. Gregory, was very similar to that which existed before the fall of the empire. His words, it is true, are applied to the coloni of the church in Sicily; but we may hence judge of those of the south of Gaul, where the bishop of Rome likewise possessed domains, which he probably administered in the same way.

As to northern Gaul, far less Roman, and more frequently ravaged by the incursions of barbarians, we do not find documents so detailed, or which prove with the same precision the permanence of the condition of the agricultural population. But the general fact is not the less certain, and attested by numerous texts; the following are taken from the seventh to the ninth century:

'S. Greg., Ep., lib. i., ep. 47: in his Works, vol. xi., col. 588.