He has the right of surveillance over their private life, and he chastises them if drunk or lazy.

When young they serve for years as servants in his mansion; as cultivators they owe him corvees and, in certain places, three times a week.

But, according to both law and custom, he is obliged "to see that they are educated, to succor them in indigence, and, as far as possible, to provide them with the means of support." Accordingly he is charged with the duties of the government of which he enjoys the advantages, and, under the heavy hand which curbs them, but which sustains them, we do not find his subjects recalcitrant.

In England, the upper class attains to the same result by other ways.

There also the soil still pays the ecclesiastic tithe, strictly the tenth, which is much more than in France.[1302] The squire, the nobleman, possesses a still larger portion of the soil than his French neighbor and, in truth, exercises greater authority in his canton.