lso to determine the amount of work that should be done in
a day. This was effected in such a way that the peasants had, in fact, to
serve three and four times the number of days due.

The power to acquire more land from the freeholders, and to increase the
amount of labour due by the peasants, was characteristic of the
legislation of the eighteenth century. By a decree of Prince Moruzi, in
1805, the lords were for the first time empowered to reserve to their own
use part of the estate, namely, one-fourth of the meadow land, and this
privilege was extended in 1828 to the use of one-third of the arable land.
The remaining two-thirds were reserved for the peasants, every young
married couple being entitled to a certain amount of land, in proportion
to the number of traction animals they owned. When the Treaty of
Adrianople of 1829 opened the western markets to Rumanian corn, in which
markets far higher prices were obtainable than from the Turks, Rumanian
agriculture received an extraordinary impetus. Henceforth the efforts of
the boyards were directed towards lessening the amount of land to which
the peasants were entitled. By the _Reglement Organique_ they succeeded in
reducing such land to half its previous area, at the same time maintaining
and exacting from the peasant his dues in full. It is in the same Act that
there appears for the first time the fraudulent title 'lords of the land',
though the boyards had no exclusive right of property; they had the use of
one-third of the estate, and a right to a due in labour and in kind from
the peasant holders, present or prospective, of the other two-thirds.

With a view to ensuring, on the one hand, greater economic freedom to the
land-owners, and, on the other, security for the peasants from the
enslaving domination of the upper class, the rural law of 1864 proclaimed
the peasant-tenants full proprietors of their holdings, and the
land-owners full proprietors of the remainder of the estate. The original
intention of creating common land was not carried out in the Bill. The
peasant's holding in arable land being small, he not infrequently ploughed
his pasture, and, as a consequence, had either to give up keeping beasts,
or pay a high price to the land-owners for pasturage. Dues in labour and
in kind were abolished, the land-owners receiving an indemnity which was
to be refunded to the state by the peasants in instalments within a period
of fifteen years. This reform is charac