Campestres melius Scythae,
    Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos,
      Vivunt, et rigidi Getae,
    Immetata quibus jugera liberas
      Fruges et Cererem ferunt,
    Nec cultura placet longior annua.

[Sidenote:  Estates for life.]

[Sidenote:  Inheritance.]

[Sidenote:  Book-land.]

[Sidenote:  Folk-land.]

[Sidenote:  Saxon fiefs.]

This custom of an annual property probably continued amongst the Germans as long as they remained in their own country; but when their conquests carried them into other parts, another object besides the possession of the land arose, which obliged them to make a change in this particular.  In the distribution of the conquered lands, the ancient possessors of them became an object of consideration, and the management of these became one of the principal branches of their polity.  It was expedient towards holding them in perfect subjection, that they should be habituated to obey one person, and that a kind of cliental relation should be created between them; therefore the land, with the slaves, and the people in a state next to slavery, annexed to it, was bestowed for life in the general distribution.  When life-estates were once granted, it seemed a natural consequence that inheritances should immediately supervene.  When a durable connection is created between a certain man and a certain portion of land by a possession for his whole life, and when his children have grown up and have been supported on that land, it seems so great an hardship to separate them, and to deprive thereby the family of all means of subsisting, that nothing could be more generally desired nor more reasonably allowed than an inheritance; and this reasonableness was strongly enforced by the great change wrought in their affairs when life-estates were granted.  Whilst according to the ancient custom lands were only given for a year, there was a rotation so quick that every family came in its turn to be easily provided for, and had not long to wait; but the children of a tenant for life, when they lost the benefit of their father’s possession, saw themselves as it were immured upon every side by the life-estates, and perceived no reasonable hope of a provision from any new arrangement.  These inheritances began very early in England.  By a law of King Alfred it appears that they were then of a very ancient establishment:  and as such inheritances were intended for great stability, they fortified them by charters; and therefore they were called Book-land.  This was done with regard to the possession of the better sort:  the meaner, who were called ceorles, if they did not live in a dependence on some thane, held their small portions of land as an inheritance likewise,—­not by charter, but by a sort of prescription.  This was called Folk-land.  These estates of inheritance, both the greater and the meaner, were not fiefs; they were to all purposes allodial, and had hardly a single