Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Blaðsíða 249

CHRONIQUE TRIMESTRIELLE
239
social and economic evil of the
time. This is not surprising, for he
was influenced by circles which
were inspired by the “enlighten-
ment” of those days: writers, polit-
ical economists, prominent land-
owners, and politicians representing
noble families — the Moltkes, Bern-
storffs, and Reventlows — all of
whom became prominent members
of the Commissions by which all
the work of emancipation was pre-
pared. Of the commoners who took
part in the work of these Commis-
sions there is reason to single out the
name of the Norwegian Chr. Col-
bjornsen, secretary to the great Agri-
cultural Commission, an eminent
jurist, who performed the ex-
ceedingly difficult task of drafting
the instruments which implemented
the reforms and of putting them
into legal form. He also constituted
the link with the enlightened com-
moners in the country and secured
their support for the reforms.
The broad stream of reforms
which began about the year 1788
continued to flow, with interrup-
tions it is true, well into the nine-
teenth century and gradually re-
sulted in a reconstruction of Danish
society. It dissolved the system of
village community and thus en-
couraged the parcelling out of the
common fields and the establish-
ment of farms away from the vil-
lages. It effected a change-over
from leasehold to freehold to such
an extent that, when the last rem-
nants of the leasehold system were
compulsorily abolished in 1919,
there were only about 1600 tenant-
farms left, whereas about 1780 the
overwhelming majority of Danish
farms were held on leases. This
development, which was stimulated
by a period of economic prosperity,
paved the way for the free employ-
ment of personal skill and initiative
in agriculture to such an extent that
“now three or four ears of corn
grew where there had formerly been
one”, and it almost made Arthur
Young’s saying about “the magic
of property, which transmutes sand
into gold” come true. It placed Dan-
ish farming on a world trade basis
in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies.
And then, when the Free Consti-
tution was introduced in 1849, came
the opportunity of the farmer class
— at that time the most numerous
class in Denmark — to leave its
mark in the field of politics too. In
Denmark the political power has
been shared by all classes in turn:
the Church, the nobility, the abso-
lute monarchy, the bourgeoisie and
official class during the first genera-
tion after 1849, and then the farmer
class from about 1880 till the out-
break of the Great War. At the
same time the farmer class, aided
by the Grundtvigian movement, the
co-operative movement, and the
farmers’ high schools, evolved its
own form of education which in
fact made the Danish farmer and
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