ABSTRACT
THE Domains are a material element and play an important part in the public administration of the States of Western Europe; something analogous is found in the Russian Empire,—the so-called Estates of the Crown and their administration. In the latter country however they are materially and fundamentally different from the domains of the Romanic and Germanic States, and ought never to be confounded with them. In Western Europe they originated in private property and private rights; which was never the case in Russia, nor even in the countries annexed to her. In Einland, Ingria, and Carelia, the Domains were never the private hereditary property of the Royal family of Sweden, but the property of the Crown and nation. In Livonia they were ecclesiastical property, which had been secularized, of the Teutonic Order. In Courland indeed, after the Reformation,
they passed into the hands of the Dukes from the families of the Kettlers and Birons; but they were always regarded as national, never as allodial property of these families, nor did they remain in their possession or in that of their heirs after their abdication, but were transferred with the dominion of the country to Russia. Whether the Domains in Lithuania were originally property belonging to the family of the Jagellons, I know not, but I believe the contrary. In the Polish provinces they were generally national property of the Polish Republic, or King, and were transferred as such to Russia.
