ed the pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing
deer in the royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the
nobility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some degree to
persons of lower birth.[555]

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced those evils
which are apt to result from it--a strenuous idleness which disdained
all useful occupations, and an oppressive spirit towards the peasantry.
The devastation committed under the pretence of destroying wild animals,
which had been already protected in their depredations, is noticed in
serious authors, and has also been the topic of popular ballads.[556]
What effect this must have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture.
The levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation
of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first objects of
man's labour in reclaiming the earth to his use; and these were
forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control over the progress of
agricultural improvement was unlimited, and who had not yet learned to
sacrifice their pleasures to their avarice.

[Sidenote: Bad state of agriculture;]

These habits of the rich, and the miserable servitude of those who
cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavailing. Predial
servitude indeed, in some of its modifications, has always been the
great bar to improvement. In the agricultural economy of Rome the
labouring husbandman, a menial slave of some wealthy senator, had not
even that qualified interest in the soil which the tenure of villenage
afforded to the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country
presenting many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into
cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians.[557] That revolution
destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeeding calamities
during five or six centuries left the finest regions of Europe
unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible modes in which the
produce of the earth can be increased; one by rendering fresh land
serviceable, the other by improving the fertility of that which is
already cultivated. The last is only attainable by the application of
capital and of skill to agriculture, neither of which could be expected
in the ruder ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always
practicable while waste lands remain; but it was checked by laws hostile
to improvement, such as the manerial and commonable rig