Personal property at that time, in comparison with the ownership of real estate, came only slightly into consideration; how far this was the case is shown very plainly by property law, which always gives a very clear criterion for the economic relations of the period in which it arises.  Medieval property law, for instance, with the object of holding the property of families from generation to generation and protecting it from dissipation, declared family property or “estate” inalienable without the consent of the heirs; but by this family property or “estate” was expressly understood only real estate.  Personal or portable property, on the other hand, could be disposed of without the consent of the heirs; and in general all personal property was treated by the old German law not as an independent self-perpetuating basis of property (capital), but always as the fruit of the soil—­in the same way, for instance, as the annual crop from the soil—­and was subject to the same legal conditions as the latter.  Nothing but real estate was then regularly treated as an independent self-perpetuating basis of property.  It is therefore entirely in keeping with this condition of things, and a simple consequence of it, that landed property and those who had it in their hands almost exclusively—­the nobility and clergy—­formed the ruling factor, from every point of view, in the society of that period.

Whatever institution of the Middle Ages you may consider, you meet this phenomenon at every point.  It will suffice us to glance at a few of the most essential of these institutions in which landholding appears as a ruling principle.

First:  The organization of the public power given by it, or the Feudal System.  The essential point of this was that kings, princes and lords ceded to other lords and knights land for their use, in return for which the recipient had to promise military vassalage—­that is, he had to support the feudal lord in his wards or feuds, both in person and with retainers.

Second:  The organization of public law, or the constitution of the empire.  In the German parliaments the princes and the large landholdings of the counts, the empire, and of the clergy were represented.  The cities had the right to a seat or a vote only if they had succeeded in acquiring the privileges of an imperial free city.

Third:  The exemption from taxation of the large landholdings.  It is a characteristic and constantly recurring phenomenon that every ruling privileged class tries constantly to throw the burden of the maintenance of the State, in open or disguised manner, in direct or indirect form, on the propertyless classes.  When Richelieu, in 1641, demanded six million francs from the clergy as an extraordinary revenue, the latter gave, through the archbishop of Sens, the characteristic answer:  “L’usage ancien de l’eglise pendant sa vigeur etait que le peuple contribuait ses biens, la noblesse son sang, le clerge ses prieres aux necessites de l’Etat.” (The ancient custom of the church in her prosperity was that the people contributed to the needs of the State their property, the nobility their blood, the clergy their prayers.)