Note 32 — LAING'S OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPE.

Previous to Hardenberg's administration, the peasants enjoyed the dominium utile of their lands, (bauern hofe, as they were called,) but subject to the payment of a certain quit-rent or feu-duty to the superior lord; and the scope of the change was to make these quit-rents redeemable, by the cession of a certain fixed proportion of the land and to vest the absolute property of the remainder in the vassal. It is obvious, therefore, that there is not the slightest analogy between the case of the Prussian feuar (as we should call him in Scotland) and that of an ordinary tenant-at-will or lessee of land, and that the commutation we have described has no similarity whatever to the schemes of "tenant-right," of which we now hear so much.