[p. 570]
|570| labours. With this, then, a peculiar kind of relationship enters. Not only has the principal the monopoly of writing in his district, but to him, who is supposed to be the supervisor over the actions of his subordinates, there must be paid, not for a labour performed on his part, but as it were as to the dynast, once more precisely the same as what his scribes earn for themselves and about whose exaggeration complaint is already made so much. This levy to the town or district scribe is independent of the seigniorial fees which are laid upon such documents besides, and falls into his private treasury. It says on this with right, p. 137 of the place cited: “That the scribes are always the money-makers of the town and district scribes, that these always only gain by every illegal and exaggerated charging and prolixity of their subordinates, – nothing worse than this arrangement can be devised.” – The thought of a relationship of dynast or fief, according to which the town and district scribe levies dues from the citizens as it were as from subjects or scribe-vassals, as one could call them, appears fully developed in the case cited Div. XVIII, p. 57. A district scribe charged, in the past year, a tenant farmer who had inherited from a deceased brother, a Catholic parish priest, and had obtained dispensation from the inventory and division, the sum of 200 fl., because through the dispensation he could not come by his division fees. It is cited there further that the heir also actually paid the sum and the district scribe pocketed it without having put pen to paper, and it is further not noted that this extortion had restitution and penitentiary or other punishment as a consequence. Obligations which arise from the feudal relationship still contain, in part, a right of the feudal lord to land, in part the duty of protection of his vassals. But those fees too which the town and district scribe draws are free of such
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