Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/12

 or in short as capital, but only as the produce of the land and the soil, like the crops which are annually gathered from it, and it was put on a par with these. Landed property alone was regularly treated, at that time, as independent productive property. It was therefore only in complete accordance with this state of things, and a simple consequence of it, that the landed interest and those who had it almost exclusively in their hands, that is, as you are aware, the nobles and the clergy, formed the ruling factor of that society in all respects.

To whatever institutions of the middle ages we turn our eyes, this phenomenon is everywhere apparent in them.

We will content ourselves with a hasty glance at some of the most important of those arrangements, in which the land interest comes forth as the ruling principle.

First then let us look at the organisation of the public forces, or the feudal system. You know, gentlemen, that this was so constituted that the king, princes, and lords ceded to other lords and knights certain lands for their use, in consideration of which the recipients were obliged solemnly to undertake the obligation of service in the field, that is to say, of supporting their feudal lords in their wars or quarrels, both in person and with their dependents.

Let us next look at the organisation of the public Rights, or the constitution of the realm. In the assembly of the German States the princely class and the great landed interest were represented by the Counts of the Empire and the clergy. The towns only enjoyed a