the very qualities which are his
characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are
the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists,
however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system
with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails
on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult
to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet
wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of
his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for
him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German
peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The
noble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons,
frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy,
technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like
manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures,
trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of
progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the
better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among
the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the
development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of
intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval
manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies,
and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our
industry. If this circumstance is perhaps a surety for our stability,
on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German
countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other
classes of the German people.

If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of
human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not
yet gained, comparatively with the other classes of the people, the
independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in
the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And
whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened
that the strength of the nation has passed from the rural districts
into cities, and that the nobleman has raised himself so much above his
neighbour the peasant, must beware of asserting, that this depression
of the country-people is the natural consequence of th