A change of still more unquestionable benefit, of which England had enjoyed the fruits for fully two centuries, likewise proved impracticable in Prussia, even on the domains of the Crown. Each holder, whether noble or peasant, had a number of scattered strips of land in huge fields which were unenclosed and were ploughed and sown in common by the labour of the whole village. The abuses of such a system were manifold. It stereotyped the succession of crops, checked individual enterprise, prevented the high cultivation which depended on the aid of walls or hedges, and exposed the strips of the industrious to the spreading tares of his slothful neighbour. Frederick, once more guided by his loftier outlook on affairs, ordered commissioners to remedy this unprofitable system by a rearrangement of all the holdings. Peasants, bailiffs, ministers, all protested in vain, but Frederick in his turn commanded in vain. All that he could accomplish in his lifetime was the severance of noble from peasant land. He was compelled to content himself with abolishing practical slavery as distinguished from serfdom, with codifying the services due from the peasants, and with other minor reforms. Whatever may have been its effect in the long run, however, there can be little doubt that it was Frederick’s deeds rather than his laws which conferred the greatest immediate benefit upon Prussian agriculture. His subjects were assured, as were those of no other great monarch in Europe, that there would be a market for their produce in years of plenty, relief of their necessities in years of dearth, and succour from the State where fire or flood or pest would otherwise have ruined them. This sense of security against starvation, though now so common that it is difficult to appreciate it, was then so rare that thousands of freemen left their native lands for the despotism and sterile soil of Prussia. In the sphere of industry Frederick was less hampered than in that of agriculture by the inertia of his people. He found Prussia making few commodities save the simplest and exporting only three,—wool, linen, and wood. Before he died his minister, Hertzberg, could boast that every conceivable manufacture found a home in his dominions. The record of the steps by which the transformation was effected is simply a further series of illustrations of the autocracy and diligence of the King. He strove with might and main to reanimate and develop the old industries and to establish new ones. This involved incessant contrivance and inspection on his part, the free use of subsidies by the State, and the constant imposition of vexatious restrictions upon every form of trade.