The student of history will learn, on the threshold,
that he is not to expect precise, or even very consistent,
accounts of the institutions of a barbarous age and people from
contemporary annalists.]
A more thorough and effectual agrarian law than this cannot be
imagined. In other countries where such a law has been
introduced, its operation, after a time, has given way to the
natural order of events, and, under the superior intelligence and
thrift of some and the prodigality of others, the usual
vicissitudes of fortune have been allowed to take their course,
and restore things to their natural inequality. Even the iron
law of Lycurgus ceased to operate after a time, and melted away
before the spirit of luxury and avarice. The nearest approach to
the Peruvian constitution was probably in Judea, where, on the
recurrence of the great national jubilee, at the close of every
half-century, estates reverted to their original proprietors.
There was this important difference in Peru; that not only did
the lease, if we may so call it, terminate with the year, but
during that period the tenant had no power to alienate or to add
to his possessions. The end of the brief term found him in
precisely the same condition that he was in at the beginning.
Such a state of things might be supposed to be fatal to any thing
like attachment to the soil, or to that desire of improving it,
which is natural to the permanent proprietor, and hardly less so
to the holder of a long lease.
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