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The free peasant has, indeed, the advantage that he can go off and seek his fortune in the wide world; whereas the serf who is attached to the soil, glebae adscriptus, has an advantage which is perhaps still greater, that when failure of crops or illness, old age or incapacity, render him helpless, his master must look after him, and so he sleeps well at night; whereas, if the crops fail, his master tosses about on his bed trying to think how he is to procure bread for his men.
It is not desirable to be adscriptus glebes, whether the bonds be physical or only moral ones. We may well be content to have our limits free, even though our architecture suffer for it. It is better that houses should belong to men, and not men to houses.
Let us compare the condition of the free Englishman of 1845 with the Saxon serf under the lash of the Norman barons of 1145. The serf was glebae adscriptus, bound to the soil, so is the free working-man through the cottage system.
I was born and bred a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me adscriptus glebae.
And this creature, rooted to one spot through life and death, was in its infancy a free swimming animal, hovering from place to place upon delicate ciliae, till, having sown its wild oats, it settled down in life, built itself a good stone house, and became a landowner, or rather a glebae adscriptus, for ever and a day.
He recognises that the husbandman, patiently toiling on his farm, adscriptus glebæ, holds in his toil-worn hands the destiny of his country. He knows that the excellent work done in tranquil seclusion by men of letters and scholars will outlast the braggart achievements of well-advertised millionaires and "prominent" citizens.
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