onpayment of the rent, a
right of pre-emption in case of sale, and a certain control over the
mode of cultivation. We have, therefore, in the Emphyteusis a striking
example of the double ownership which characterised feudal property,
and one, moreover, which is much simpler and much more easily imitated
than the juxtaposition of legal and equitable rights. The history of
the Roman tenure does not end, however, at this point. We have clear
evidence that between the great fortresses which, disposed along the
line of the Rhine and Danube, long secured the frontier of the Empire
against its barbarian neighbours, there extended a succession of
strips of land, the _agri limitrophi_, which were occupied by veteran
soldiers of the Roman army on the terms of an Emphyteusis. There was a
double ownership. The Roman State was landlord of the soil, but the
soldiers cultivated it without disturbance so long as they held
themselves ready to be called out for military service whenever the
state of the border should require it. In fact, a sort of
garrison-duty, under a system closely resembling that of the military
colonies on the Austro-Turkish border, had taken the place of the
quit-rent which was the service of the ordinary Emphyteuta. It seems
impossible to doubt that this was the precedent copied by the
barbarian monarchs who founded feudalism. It had been within their
view for some hundred years, and many of the veterans who guarded the
border were, it is to be remembered, themselves of barbarian
extraction, who probably spoke the Germanic tongues. Not only does the
proximity of so easily followed a model explain whence the Frankish
and Lombard Sovereigns got the idea of securing the military service
of their followers by granting away portions of their public domain;
but it perhaps explains the tendency which immediately showed itself
in the Benefices to become hereditary, for an Emphyteusis, though
capable of being moulded to the terms of the original contract,
nevertheless descended as a general rule to the heirs of the grantee.
It is true that the holder of a benefice, and more recently the lord
of one of those fiefs into which the benefices were transformed,
appears to have owed certain services which were not likely to have
been rendered by the military colonist, and were certainly not
rendered by the Emphyteuta. The duty of respect and gratitude to the
feudal superior, the obligation to assist in endowing his daughter and
e