i.; Collection of Materials on Landholding, and Statistical Descriptions of Separate Governments, published by several zemstvos (Moscow, Tver, Nyzhniy-Novgorod, Tula, Ryazan, Tambov, Poltava, Saratov, &c.); Kawelin, The Peasant Question; Vasilchikov, Land Property and Agriculture (2 vols.), and Village Life and Agriculture; Ivanukov, The Fall of Serfdom in Russia; Shashkov, " Peasantry in the Baltic Provinces," in Russkaya Mysl.

Foreign and Colonial Laws: Field, Landholding and the relation of Landlord and Tenant in various Countries; Ruling Cases (American Notes), (London and Boston, 1894-1901).

The employment of the precarium by the Church seems to have been one of the surest means by which this form of landholding was carried over from the Romans to the Frankish period and developed into new forms. It came to be made by degrees the subject of written contract, by which the rights of the holder were more definitely defined and protected than had been the case in Roman law.

The numerous townships which then sprang_up acquired rights of self-government according to German law, Breslau being refounded about 1250 as a German town, and a feudal organization was introduced among the landholding nobility.

The dominant element in this minority is the rich landholding interest, and the constitution and the laws of the first half-century were framed for the special protection of that interest.