antly to throw the burden of the
maintenance of the State, in open or disguised manner, in direct or
indirect form, on the propertyless classes. When Richelieu, in 1641,
demanded six million francs from the clergy as an extraordinary
revenue, the latter gave, through the archbishop of Sens, the
characteristic answer: "L'usage ancien de l'eglise pendant sa vigeur
etait que le peuple contribuait ses biens, la noblesse son sang, le
clerge ses prieres aux necessites de l'Etat." (The ancient custom of
the church in her prosperity was that the people contributed to the
needs of the State their property, the nobility their blood, the
clergy their prayers.)

Fourth: The social stigma that rested upon all work other than
occupation of the soil. To conduct manufacturing enterprises, to
acquire money by commerce and manual trades, was considered
disgraceful and dishonorable for the two privileged ruling classes,
the nobility and the clergy, for whom it was regarded as honorable to
obtain their revenue from landownership only.

These four great and determining motives which established the basic
character of the period are entirely sufficient, for our purpose, to
show how it was that landed property put its stamp upon that epoch and
formed its ruling principle.

This was so far the case that even the movement of the Peasant War,
which apparently was completely revolutionary--the one which broke out
in Germany in 1524 and involved all Swabia, Franconia, Alsace,
Westphalia, and other parts of Germany--depended absolutely upon
this same principle, and was therefore in fact a reactionary movement
in spite of its revolutionary attitude. The peasants at that time
burned down the castles of the nobles, killed the nobles themselves,
and made them run the gauntlet according to the custom of the times;
but, nevertheless, in spite of this externally revolutionary
appearance, the movement was essentially thoroughly reactionary. For
the new birth of State relations--the German freedom which the
peasants desired to establish--was to consist, according to their
ideas, in the abolition of the special and intermediary position which
the princes occupied between the emperor and the empire, and, in its
stead, the representation in the German parliament of nothing but free
and independent landed property, including that of the peasants and
knights (these two classes up to this time not having been
represented), as well as the individual independen