Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/465

 of the empire. In the German parliaments the princes and the large landholdings of the counts, the empire, and of the clergy were represented. The cities had the right to a seat or a vote only if they had succeeded in acquiring the privileges of an imperial free city.

Third: The exemption from taxation of the large landholdings. It is a characteristic and constantly recurring phenomenon that every ruling privileged class tries constantly to throw the burden of the maintenance of the State, in open or disguised manner, in direct or indirect form, on the propertyless classes. When Richelieu, in 1641, demanded six million francs from the clergy as an extraordinary revenue, the latter gave, through the archbishop of Sens, the characteristic answer: "L'usage ancien de l'église pendant sa vigeur était que le peuple contribuait ses biens, la noblesse son sang, le clergé ses prières aux necessités de l'État." (The ancient custom of the church in her prosperity was that the people contributed to the needs of the State their property, the nobility their blood, the clergy their prayers.)

Fourth: The social stigma that rested upon all work other than occupation of the soil. To conduct manufacturing enterprises, to acquire money by commerce and manual trades, was considered disgraceful and dishonorable for the two privileged ruling classes, the nobility and the clergy, for whom it was regarded as honorable to obtain their revenue from landownership only.

These four great and determining motives which established the basic character of the period are entirely sufficient, for our purpose, to show how it was that landed property put its stamp upon that epoch and formed its ruling principle.

This was so far the case that even the movement of the Peasant War, which apparently was completely revolutionary—the one which broke out in Germany in 1524 and involved all Swabia, Franconia, Alsace, Westphalia, and other parts of Germany—depended absolutely upon