will not have to be placed on State aid
alone. It is through the medium of these institutions that the peasant
will have to acquire such instruction in improved agricultural methods
as shall cause him to discard his old-fashioned notions, and enable him
to secure an adequate return for his labour.

III.

When we come to consider the past history of Roumania, we shall find
that in the earlier periods the peasants were first independent tillers
of the soil; that later on they were enslaved by the boyards, or sold
themselves and their families to secure sustenance; that they were
nominally emancipated from the ownership of the native boyards, only to
be transferred as _scutelnici_ to officials and other favoured nobles;
and that eventually a democratic government and the increasing power of
the people secured for them not only actual liberty but a real ownership
of the soil which they had for centuries tilled for landlords who lived
in idleness.

It will be interesting, especially during the present attempted land
reforms in Great Britain and Ireland, to state here what has occurred in
Roumania during the last few years, and to consider what further changes
are likely to result from the conversion there of a large portion of the
soil into peasant holdings. Previous to the year 1864 there were three
kinds of tenure in Roumania in which the peasantry were interested. The
soil of the country was practically divided between the boyards and the
State, the former holding by far the larger share. The peasants owned a
small patch of land contiguous to their huts or hovels (many of which
are, as we have already stated, to this day semi-subterranean), and so
much was their undoubted property. But they cultivated the soil on three
different conditions or principles. In Moldavia the boyard allotted a
certain portion of the estate to his peasants for cultivation for their
own use, and in return the latter rendered stipulated services to their
landlord. In Wallachia a portion of the fruits of the soil was given to
the boyard for the right to cultivate a definite quantity of land; and
in the neighbourhood of Bucarest a kind of mixed system prevailed. In
1864, however, the Government practically said to the boyards, 'The
peasantry have been deprived of their right to the soil, but you, having
inherited it, have also a vested interest in it, and your respective
ownerships must now be equitably adjusted.' The peasantry were therefore