Volume 1 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book Volume 1 (of 6) 20/42 A good many personal serfs, or so constituted through their own gratitude, or that of their progenitors, are still found."[1228] There, man is a serf, sometimes by virtue of his birth, and again through a territorial condition. Whether in servitude, or as mortmains, or as cotters, one way or another, 1,500,000 individuals, it is said, wore about their necks a remnant of the feudal collar; this is not surprising since, on the other side of the Rhine, almost all the peasantry still wear it. |