Not only in Russia, but also in many other countries, private property in land owed its origin to relations of public law. Public land (_ager publicus_) was primarily held by officers on the ground of, and for the purposes of their office as a benefice. In proportion as the offices became hereditary, and the relations growing out of administration of public affairs developed into personal dependence of the common people upon the office holders, the tenure of land by reason of office became hereditary, and subsequently developed into an institution of private law. The next step was in the direction of freeing the landholder from the duty of public service connected with the tenure of his land. Thus his possession became independent. On the other hand, the free ownership of land by the people was replaced, in the course of evolution, by dependent possession. And finally, with the abolition of the personal dependence of the peasant, his right to land expired. Such was, taking a bird’s eye view, the evolution of private property in most European countries. In Russia the course was essentially the same. Old republican and semi-republican Russia of “the period of federation and witenagemote” knew no firm government. The prince was elected and deposed by the people, and it was very difficult for him to hold his position for more than any single year amidst the dissensions of the hostile factions of turbulent citizens. Usually princes tramped their whole life long from one principality to another, attendants tramping with them. War was their chief business and war was also their chief source of income. Moreover, through a confiscation of the judicial functions by the prince, a part of the wergild paid by the convicted wrongdoer to the right party, found its way into the treasury of the prince to be distributed among his followers. No bond wedded the prince and his followers to the land until the nomadic elected prince was replaced by the Muscovite Great Prince and Lord of All the Russias. Struggle with the Tartar conquerors--a struggle that lasted for two centuries--furthered the growth of centralization and of monarchical authority, and the former free attendant of the prince became the servitor of his sovereign. The State in Russia has always been a self-sufficing entity, which claimed the services of everybody, without owing in return anything to anybody. And this still remains to-day the fundamental principle wherein Russian public law differs from constitutional law. If, perchance, the state engaged in suppressing crime, it was not for the sake of justice or defense to the people, but rather for fiscal considerations, or for the sake of the safety of the state, threatened by gangs of brigands and highway robbers. It was the duty of the “servitor” (_sloozhiliy chelovek_) to prosecute bandits, to defend the frontiers from invasion by nomadic tribes, and to appear in case of war among his sovereign’s troops with a number of armed men.