entirely. Blackstone says: "The statute of Charles II. reserves the reliefs incident to soccage tenures; and therefore, whenever lands in fee simple are holden by a rent, relief is still due of common right upon the death of a tenant."
It was inevitable that the feudal system should be abolished. It had long been an anachronism, and the more often money-rent took the place of the old personal service, the more the system lost such virtue as it once possessed. But the practical outcome of the abolition was to benefit landlords, not tenants. The "great men" succeeded in shaking off their feudal burdens, but it was at the expense of the little men, just as the Excise Act passed by the Long Parliament in 1642-1643 was a relief to the rich at the expense of the people at large. The landlords got their lands free of all aids and tenures, and their tenants, no longer bound to them by any reciprocal obligations, were compelled to pay whatever rent the landlord demanded, on pain of being turned out ; and, after the Rent Act of William III., of having their private goods distrained on.[1]
The feudal was a system of dual ownership, and when first established it implied the fullest responsibility of the tenant of the Crown for the land he held. It was fully recognised that the tenant held the land first of all, with regard to the good of the State, and only secondly to his own benefit. For the good of the State, he was bound to perform certain duties. For the good of the State, he was not allowed to turn his sub-tenants adrift—if he did, he would be preventing them from performing their duty to the State. But in proportion as personal service came to be compounded for by money, this grand original idea of mutual duty began to decay, and the way for the new landlords of the Reformation had been preparing long before Henry VIII. seized the Church lands. The idea that the possession of land involves duties has faded more and more into the idea of the "sacredness of property." Formerly, it
- ↑ In feudal times, if the tenant did not pay his rent, all the lord could do was to seize such movable property (ploughs, etc.) as went with the holding, and really belonged to the lord, who originally provided it. And the officers were so afraid of seizing the property of the wrong man that they often dared not seize at all.
