A number of changes in the conceptions of political relations, in
methods of life and of political economy brought further changes in
property conditions on the same lines as those prevailing in the 14th
and 15th centuries. These changes were especially influenced by the
spread of Roman law doctrine regarding the rights of the governing
classes; by the growth of the cities, favoring industrial development
and changing methods of life; by the change from barter to money
management, favored by the discovery of America, by other world
movements, and by the resulting changes in economic theory.
Through the discovery of the new world and the influx of gold and silver
that came with it gave impetus to industry and commerce of the cities;
the rapid increase of money capital increased extravagance and induced a
desire for amassing wealth, which changed modes of life, changed
policies and systems of political economy.
The fiscal policy of the many little principalities was dominated by a
desire to get a good balance of trade by fostering exports of
manufactures, but forbidding exports of raw materials like forest
products, also by forbidding imports, subsidizing industries, fixing
prices by law, and taking in general an inimical attitude towards
outsiders except in so far as they sent gold and silver into the
country.
This so-called mercantilistic system, which saw wealth not in labor and
its products but in horded gold and silver, had also full sway in
England under Cromwell, and in France under Colbert’s influence. This
fiscal policy, which was bent upon bringing cash into the country, led,
under the direction of servile officials, to oppressive measures. A
reaction naturally followed, when it was pointed out that the real
wealth of a nation lies in its natural resources and in its labor. But
this so-called physiocratic doctrine had little practical influence
except to prepare men’s minds for the reception of the teachings of Adam
Smith at the end of the period.
The doctrine of the Roman law, deified by the jurists and commentators,
undermined the national conceptions and institutions of free citizenship
and of existing property relations; courts, legislation and
administration were subject to their sway, and this influence lasted, in
spite of reactions, until the end of the 18th century. Under it the
doctrine of the _imperium_--the seignorage or superior power of the
princes (Hoheitsrecht)--was further developed into the _dominium
terrae_, i.e., superior ownership of all the land, which gives rise to
the title and the exercise of the function of “_Landesherren_,” masters
of the land, and confers the privilege of curtailing and even
discontinuing private property rights. To sustain their position in each
of the state units, a restriction of the autonomy of churches and
cloisters, of the Mark and of the vassals became needful to the princes.
This was secured by taking the first under their protection, by making
themselves Obermärkers, and by changing vassals who held office in fief
into employes (Beamte). For a time the three privileged classes of
prelates, knights and burghers, combined in the _Landstand_ or
_Landtag_, participated in some of the functions of government,
especially in raising and administering taxes, but by the second half of
the 14th century the princes had become absolute, and the doctrine of
the _Hoheitsrecht_ was firmly established.
Under this doctrine, the historic position of the Mark is perverted and
instead of being the common property of the people, it becomes the
property of the prince, on which he graciously permits the usufruct;
for, forest, pasture and water (Wald, Weide, Wasser) are _res publicae_,
hence ownerless and at the disposal of the king. Through this new
construction of relationship, as well as through the same machinations
and tricks which the princes as _Obermaerker_ or headmen of the Mark had
employed during the foregoing period in usurping power, and partly
through voluntary dissolution was the decadence of the social, economic
and political organization of the Mark gradually completed.
The original usufruct of a property held in common is explained in the
Roman sense as a _precarium_ or servitude, and from being a right of the
whole organization becomes a right of the single individual or group of
individuals. In this way the socialistic basis of the Mark is destroyed.
Through the exercise of the _Forsthoheit_, _i.e._, the superior right of
the prince over all forest property, by the _appointment_ of the
officials instead of their _election_, by issuance of ordinances, in
short, by the usurpation of the legislative and police power, the
political power of the Mark is broken and the Thirty Years’ War
completes the breakdown; the pride of the burgher and the peasant is
gone, their autonomy destroyed and their economic and political
organizations sink into mere corporations based on land tenure, which,
according to Roman doctrine come under the regulation of the State or
Prince.
The nobility move into the cities and leave the administration of their
estates to officials who are constantly pressed to furnish the means for
the extravagant life of their masters. These in turn harass and oppress
the peasantry, who finally become bondsmen, _Gutshörige_ (bound to the
glebe) and lose their independence entirely. These, briefly, are the
steps by which the changes, social and economic, progressed.
Reforms in this situation of the peasantry began first in Prussia in
1702, when bondage was abolished for all those who could purchase their
houses and farms from the gentry. As few had the means to do so, the
result was the creation of a proletariat, hitherto unknown because under
the old feudal system the lord had to feed his impoverished bondsmen
from which he was now absolved.
* * * * *
_Changes in forest property_ in particular were brought about by the
increase of princely property through the various methods of exercising
the seignorage. Especially after the Thirty Years’ War ownerless tracts
falling under this right were plentiful. In addition, wherever waste
lands grew up to wood, they were claimed by the princes:
“Wenn das Holz dem Ritter reicht an den Sporn
Hat der Bauer sein Recht verlorn.”
When wood has grown up to the spur of the knight, the peasant has lost
his right.
Some additions came from the secularization of church and cloister
property, and others by the slices which the princes as Obermärker
secured from the Mark forests by various artifices. It is these
properties, which in Prussia were turned over by the King to the State
in 1713, and by other princes, not until the 19th century.
The same means which the princes employed were used by the landed gentry
to increase their holdings especially at the expense of the Mark from
which in their capacity of Obermärker they secured portions by force or
intrigue.
The peasants’ forest property--the Mark forest--had by the 19th century
been almost entirely dismembered, part having come into the hands of the
princes and barons, part having been divided among the Märker, and part
having become corporation forest in the modern sense.
Partition had become desirable when the restrictions of use which were
ordered for the good of the forest became unendurable under the rigid
rule of appointed officials, but the expected improvement in management
which was looked for from partition and private ownership was never
realized.
After the Thirty Years’ War the free cities were impoverished and their
autonomy undermined by Roman doctrine. From free republics they became
mere corporations under the supervision of appointed officials, and
experienced decadence in political as well as material directions.
Hence, no increase in city forest took place except through division of
the Mark forest in which cities had been co-owners, and through
secularized properties of cloisters.
The worst feature, from the standpoint of forest treatment, which
resulted from these changes in property conditions and relationship, was
the growth of the pernicious servitudes or rights of user, which were
either conferred to propitiate the powerless but dangerous peasantry, or
evolved out of the feudal relations. From the 16th to the 19th centuries
these servitudes grew to such an extent that in almost every forest some
one outside of the owner had the right to use parts of it, either the
pasture, or the litter, or certain classes or sizes of wood.
These rights have proved the greatest impediment to the progress of
forestry until most recent times, and only within the last few decades
have the majority of them been extinguished by legal process or
compromise.