conditions. The plan was afterwards extensively imitated by individual
proprietors, and the tenant, whose relation to the owner had
originally been determined by his contract, was subsequently
recognised by the Praetor as having himself a qualified proprietorship,
which in time became known as an Emphyteusis. From this point the
history of tenure parts into two branches. In the course of that long
period during which our records of the Roman Empire are most
incomplete, the slave-gangs of the great Roman families became
transformed into the _coloni_, whose origin and situation constitute
one of the obscurest questions in all history. We may suspect that
they were formed partly by the elevation of the slaves, and partly by
the degradation of the free farmers; and that they prove the richer
classes of the Roman Empire to have become aware of the increased
value which landed property obtains when the cultivator had an
interest in the produce of the land. We know that their servitude was
predial; that it wanted many of the characteristics of absolute
slavery, and that they acquitted their service to the landlord in
rendering to him a fixed portion of the annual crop. We know further
that they survived all the mutations of society in the ancient and
modern worlds. Though included in the lower courses of the feudal
structure, they continued in many countries to render to the landlord
precisely the same dues which they had paid to the Roman _dominus_,
and from a particular class among them, the _coloni medietarii_ who
reserved half the produce for the owner, are descended the _metayer_
tenantry, who still conduct the cultivation of the soil in almost all
the South of Europe. On the other hand, the Emphyteusis, if we may so
interpret the allusions to it in the _Corpus Juris_, became a
favourite and beneficial modification of property; and it may be
conjectured that wherever free farmers existed, it was this tenure
which regulated their interest in the land. The Praetor, as has been
said, treated the Emphyteuta as a true proprietor. When ejected, he
was allowed to reinstate himself by a Real Action, the distinctive
badge of proprietory right, and he was protected from disturbance by
the author of his lease so long as the _canon_, or quit-rent, was
punctually paid. But at the same time it must not be supposed that the
ownership of the author of the lease was either extinct or dormant. It
was kept alive by a power of re-entry on n