edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry.
The “glorious Revolution” brought into power, along with William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of surplus-value.[1] They inaugurated the new era by practising on a colossal seale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been hitherto managed more modestly. These estates were given away, sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private estates by direct seizure.[2] All this happened without the slightest observation of legal etiquette. The crown lands thus fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of the Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again during the republican revolution, form the basis of the to-day princely domains of the English oligarchy.[3] The bourgeois capitalists favoured the operation with the view, among others, to promoting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modern agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand. Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective duties. The English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest quite as wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing the process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of the Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since 1604 under Charles X. and Charles XI.
Communal property—always distinct from the State prop-
- ↑ On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things: “The large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of the king’s affection, and the lady’s influence.… Lady Orkney’s endearing offices are supposed to have been—fœda labiorum ministeria.”’ (In the Sloane Manuscript Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript is entitled: “The charakter and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc., as represented in Original Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury, from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secretary Vernon, etc.” It is full of curiosa.)
- ↑ “The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is a scandalous chapter in English history … a gigantic fraud on the nation.” (F. W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy. London, 1851, pp. 129, 180.) [For details as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into their possessions see “Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige.” London, 1879.—Ed.]
- ↑ Read e.g., E. Burke’s Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshoot was Lord John Russell, the “tomtit of Liberalism.”
