To furnish the “gentleman” with the necessary means for the support of his detachment, and in general for the discharge of his office, he was granted a certain tract of land “in fee.” The peasant who settled upon this lot was bound to pay a certain tax (in kind) to the “gentleman” to whom the power of taxation was delegated by the State. However, it was no easy task to enforce the exact payment of the taxes, since the peasant could run away at any time he chose as soon as he found the payments becoming burdensome. Indeed, even in modern Russia, wherever land is in abundance, agriculture is to a great extent a nomadic pursuit. A field is cultivated uninterruptedly for from two to three years, and the peasant then leaves it and turns to another fresh lot. It is only after a period of not less than twenty years that the peasant will perhaps return to the first lot. It may be, however, that he will change his place for an entirely new one. In olden times the facilities for migration were the same as they now are in Siberia. This state of things gave rise to competition among the gentry, who vied with one another in cutting down the rate of payments exacted from the peasants. The gentry constantly complained of being unable to fulfil their duties toward the State so long as this self-willedness on the part of the peasants continued. In order to secure exact fulfilment by each of his duties toward the state, freedom of migration was first limited, and then gradually abolished. The free peasant became bound to the soil, _glebæ adscriptus_. Yet this dependence was based entirely upon public law. The peasant was made subject to the gentleman, not for the gentleman’s sake, but for the benefit of the state. The only restriction of civil rights imposed upon the peasant by his dependence was the prohibition of emigration; and even in that no distinction existed between the peasant and the gentleman, since the latter was also forbidden to quit his fee. Throughout the Muscovite period the peasant was considered as a citizen, and was protected by the state against abuses of power on the part of the gentleman. The latter was not even the owner of the land; it belonged to the state, or to the Czar, as the personification of the state. Land was allotted to the gentleman for service, and for lifetime only, and could escheat by the state for cause. Inasmuch, however, as the gentleman’s son also entered the service of the Czar, it became little by little a custom to transfer to the son his father’s fee. Thus the fee became hereditary.