Limitations of Enlightened Despotism 285
“The peasant as a property- owner,” declared one of the estate- assemblies, “will take
an even more puffed up attitude toward his lord than he does already.”^5
Joseph II never abolished serfdom in the absolute and abrupt way in which
slavery was later abolished in the United States. He proceeded by stages, though
they were rapid; and he intended, to the end, that the lords should continue to
draw substantial incomes from peasant labor. It is desirable to look closely at his
agrarian program, for the better appraisal both of its revolutionary character and of
the opposition that it aroused.
His first step was to abolish that personal dependency which reformers de-
nounced as Leibeigenschaft. Maria Theresa had already abolished it on lands where
she had sufficient control, that is, those that belonged to the crown. Joseph de-
clared it abolished on lands of the church and aristocracy also. By decrees begin-
ning in 1781 peasants gained the legal freedom to depart at will from landed es-
tates, to take up new trades on the estates or elsewhere, and to marry without
permission. The peasant was authorized to appeal from his lord’s court to the em-
peror’s district chief, though only after protest and notice given orally to the lord.
This might be embarrassing to the peasant, who was required in many places to
kiss hands and bow to the ground on approaching the lord or the lord’s agents.
Joseph tried for years to do away with this custom, in which he saw a badge of
servility; doubtless to others it seemed the natural etiquette of interclass relations.
The decrees, however, stated emphatically that the peasants, while now personally
free, still owed, so long as they remained as agricultural workers on the estates, the
same obedience and labor services as before; and they provided that recalcitrant
workers might be chained, imprisoned on bread and water, or subjected to corporal
punishment. Excessive punishment was forbidden; and the law prohibited certain
new machines invented to facilitate the administration of floggings.
It became apparent to Joseph and his advisers that the peasant would never be-
come an independent producer, or reliable taxpayer, so long as the lord had control
of his time through exaction of labor services. Maria Theresa had attempted to
limit these labor services, or robot, to three days a week. Joseph in 1783 made pro-
vision for optional conversion of robot to money payments by agreement of lord
and peasant in individual cases; but since the lords preferred to keep control of
their labor force very few such agreements were made. The problem of forced labor
became part of the problem of the great estates or latifundia, and so part of the
problem of taxation.
The great noble estates, though not tax- exempt, were seldom appraised for tax
purposes in correspondence to their real income. We have seen how in England
land was valued for tax purposes at its valuation in 1692, and how in France re-
peated attempts were made to obtain realistic assessments. The problem was uni-
versal, and it was one of Joseph’s main objectives to draw up a modern cadaster, or
official register of true land values. He hoped thus to equalize the tax burden both
among social classes and among regions of the empire. It was Joseph’s belief, as it
was that of Turgot and the French economists, that a direct tax on land, in propor-
tion to income, might replace a complex array of indirect taxes that interfered with
5 Ibid., 60 0, 649.