emigration (Auswanderungsrecht); (3) the right of choosing a calling or trade (Freie Wahl von Beruf und Gewerbe); and this third right we are informed was given to the Prussians by the Edict of October, 1807. The same is said of the first of the rights which go to make up the second Title; viz., free right to the acquisition and possession of property (Freies Recht zum Erwerbe und Besitze des Eighenthums). I proceed to give the text of this Edict, the vast importance of which will have by this time become clear. The less important sections are printed in a smaller type, and of §§ III. and V., as purely technical, only the heading is given. "Edict concerning the facilitation of possession and the free use of landed property, as well as the personal relations of the inhabitants of the country. "WE, Frederick William, by the grace of God King of Prussia, &c., &c., "Make known hereby and give to understand. Since the beginning of the peace We have been before all things occupied with the care for the depressed condition of Our faithful subjects, and the speediest restoration and greatest improvement of it. We have herein considered that in the universal need it passes the means at Our command to furnish help to each individual, and yet We could not attain the object; and it accords equally with the imperative demands of justice and with the principles of a proper national economy, to remove all the hindrances which hitherto prevented the individual from attaining the prosperity which, according to the measure of his powers, he was capable of reaching; further, We have considered that the existing restrictions, partly on the possession and enjoyment of landed property, partly on the personal condition of the agricultural laborer, specially thwart Our benevolent purpose and disable a great force which might be applied to the restoration of cultivation, the former by their prejudicial influence on the value of landed property and the credit of the proprietor, the latter by diminishing the value of labor. We purpose, therefore, to reduce both within the limits required by the common well-being, and accordingly ordain as follows: — 66 I. Freedom of Exchange in Land. "Every inhabitant of our States is competent, without any limitation on the part of the State, to possess either as property or pledge landed estates of every kind; the nobleman therefore to possess not only noble but also non-noble, citizen, and peasant lands of every kind, and the citizen and peasant to possess not only citizen, peasant, and other non-noble, but also noble, pieces of land, without either the one or the other needing any special permission for any acquisition of land whatever, although, henceforward as before, each change of possession must be announced to the authorities. 66 § II. Free Choice of Occupation. "Every noble is henceforth permitted without any derogation from his position, to exercise citizen occupation; and every citi zen or peasant is allowed to pass from the peasant into the citizen class, or from the citizen into the peasant class. 66 “§ III. How far a legal right of Pre-emption and a First Claim still exist. "Owners of Estates and Lands of all kinds, in themselves alienable either in Town or Country, are allowed, after due notice given to the provincial authority, with reservation of the rights of Direct Creditors and of those who have the right of pre-emption (§ III.), to separate the principal estate and its parts, and in general to alienate piecemeal. In the same way Co-proprietors may divide among them property owned in common. "§ V. Granting of Estates under Leases for a Long Term. 66 "§ VI. Extinction and Consolidation of Peasant Holdings. "When a landed proprietor believes himself unable to restore or keep up the several peasant holdings existing on an estate which are not held by a hereditary tenure, whether of a long lease or of copyhold, he is required to give information to the government of the province, with the sanction of which the consolidation, either of several holdings into a single peasant estate, or with demesne land, may be allowed as soon as hereditary serfdom shall have ceased to exist on the estate. The provincial Authorities will be provided with a special instruction to meet these cases. “§ VII. If, on the other hand, the peasant tenures are hereditary, whether of long lease or of copyhold, the consolidation or other alteration of the condition of the lands in question, is not admissible until the right of the actual possessor is extinguished, whether by the purchase of it by the lord or in some other legal way. In this case the regulations of § VI. also apply. 66 § VIII. Indebtedness of Feudal and Entailed Estates in consequence of the Ravages of War. 66 Every possessor of feudal or entailed property is empowered to raise the sums required to replace the losses caused by war, by mortgaging the substance of the Estates themselves, as well as the revenues of them, pro vided the application of the money is attested by the Administrator (Landrath) of the Circle or the Direction of the Department. At the end of three years from the contracting of the debt the possessor and his successor are bound to pay off at least the fifteenth part of the capital itself. "IX. Extinction of Feudal Relations, Family Settlements, and Entails, by Family Resolution. 66 Every feudal connection not subject to a Chief Proprietor, every family settlement and entail may be altered at pleasure or entirely abolished by a Family Resolution, as is already enacted with reference to the East Prussian Fiefs (except those of Ermeland) in the East Prussian Provincial Law, Appendix 36. 66 "§ X. Abolition of Villainage. "From the date of this Ordinance no new relation of villainage, whether by birth, or marriage, or acquisition of a holding, or by contract, can come into existence. 66 "§ XI. With the publication of the present Ordinance the existing condition of villainage of those villains with their wives and children who possess their peasant-holdings by hereditary tenures, of whatever kind, ceases entirely both with its rights and duties. "§ XII. From Martinmas, 181о, ceases all villainage in Our entire States. From Martinmas, 1810, there shall be only free persons, as this is already the case upon the Domains in all Our provinces; free persons, however, still subject, as a matter of course, to all the obligations which bind them as free persons by virtue of the possession of an estate or by virtue of a special contract. 66 "To this declaration of Our royal Will every man whom it may concern, and in particular Our provincial and other governments, are exactly and loyally to conform themselves, and the present Ordinance is to be made universally known. "Authentically, under Our royal Signature. Given at Memel, Oct. 9th, 1807. "FRIEDRICH WILHELM, "Schrötter, Stein, Schrötter II." The elder Schrötter was at this time Minister for the province of Prussia, and he with his brother was entrusted with the task of publishing the Ordinance in the province where it had received the king's signature. It is for this reason that their names are affixed to it along with Stein's. That threefold character of the Edict which was pointed out above, will appear very visibly by observing the three groups of sections, which on account of their especial importance have been printed in large type. The abolition of caste, both in land and in persons, is accomplished in the first two sections; the abolition of villainage in the last three, which, it is evident, might as well have composed a separate edict. Sections 6 and 7 are introduced to prevent the system of free trade in land from bearing too hard on the peasant and making the proprietorship of land a monopoly of the richer classes. Having traced the history of the preparation of this Edict, and examined its nature and the changes it introduced, we are in a condition to inquire who are the persons to whom the Prussians may consider themselves chiefly indebted for it. In such cases the popular mind invariably makes a misapprehension which it is almost in vain to attempt to correct. It attributes to the unassisted intelligence and will of a single author what was necessarily the joint-work of many. In this instance Stein has obtained a popular fame to which he has little right, and which partly compensates for much unjust neglect. While his real life and actions have been little known, he has gained a sort of legendary reputation, such as has gathered round many other legislators, and has been credited with all the judgment, technical skill and wisdom implied in the framing of a law which has revolutionized a country. His admirers need not hesitate for a moment to disown for him all such ungrounded pretensions. In the construction of the Emancipating Edict Stein had no great share. Before it reached his hands it was almost complete, and we may distinguish two agents by whom it had been made such as it then was. The first agent was what we call the Spirit of the Age, that is, the sum of influence proceeding partly from the humanitarian writers, partly from the economists of the eighteenth century, by which the majority of those who guided public affairs had been convinced of the necessity of certain great changes. When a man like Hardenberg, who had no special or professional learning, confidently sanctioned such sweeping proposals as those which Altenstein laid before him, he proclaimed in effect that the work of the Zeitgeist was done. From that moment the matter of the law existed, and the question of the form came under consideration. Then began the work of the second agent, that is, the Immediate Commission. We have seen who the men were from whose deliberations the law came forth clothed in form. But perhaps the question may be asked which member, or members, of the Commission deserved best of the law; and this question can only be answered partially and doubtfully, many of the documents being missing in the archives. We have the fact that Niebuhr separated himself deliberately from his colleagues because he would not take the responsibility of their plans. For the rest we have Schön's Report, of which an abstract has been given above, and we have some reminiscences of Schön, which were written down at a much later period and not published till 1875. The latter indeed give us many statements, but we are embarrassed when we find that their drift is to claim the whole credit of the Edict for Schön. It seems hardly fair to the other members of the Commission to accept a representation which is made at their expense and published after their death. When we test it in the only way open to us, that is, by comparing it with Schön's Report, which for what it asserts is far better testimony, we find the suspicions decidedly strengthened, which the claim itself by its exorbitant and egotistic character suggests. That Schön deserved a great share of the credit we are quite prepared, from what we hear of the influence he exerted, to believe; nay, after a reasonable deduction for evident self-conceit, we might be willing to think that perhaps his claim to have been the guiding spirit of the Commission was substantially well-founded. But when we compare his late reminiscences with his own report written at the time, as well as with other evidence, we discover that his self-conceit was of an unusual intensity, and that it certainly clouded and corrupted his remembrances. His statement is not merely exaggerated; it is certainly untrue, and gives an incorrect impression of the nature as well as of the degree of the influence he exerted. We have gathered from Niebuhr's hints that he had friends on the Commission who applied certain doctrinaire theories with a consistency which appalled him, and in fact frightened him away. It is scarcely possible to doubt who is pointed at. Schön was just such a doctrinaire, and such inexorable consistency was just in his character, while nothing similar seems to be true of Altenstein or Stägemann. It seems also unquestionable what rigorous applications of theory are pointed at. The introduction of free trade in land created so manifest a danger of the absorption of the peasant-holdings by the rich, that it was found |