Switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for every hundred
families, and in Belgium the average size of the estate is three
and a half hectares--about eight acres. These small ownerships are
not detrimental to the state. On the contrary, they tend to its
security and well-being. I have treated on this subject in my work,
"The Food Supplies of Western Europe." These small estates existed
in England at the Norman Conquest, and their perpetual continuance
was the object of the law of William I., to which I have referred.
Their disappearance was due to the greed of the nobles during the
reign of the Plantagenets, and they were not replaced by the
Tudors, who neglected to restore the men-at-arms to the position
they occupied under the laws of Edward the Confessor and William I.

The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the
other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman
commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the
rent was of two classes--personal service or money; the latter was
considered base tenure. The legislation of the Tudors abolished the
payment of rent by personal service, and made all rent payable in
money or in kind. The land had been burdened with the sole support
of the army. It was then freed from this charge, and a tax was
levied upon the community. Some writers have sought to define RENT
as the difference between fertile lands and those that are so
unproductive as barely to pay the cost of tillage. This far-fetched
idea is contradicted by the circumstance that for centuries rent
was paid by labor--the personal service of the vassal--and it is
now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as land will be
unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by tame
animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them.
Rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the