Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SWISS ALLMENDS.

All the realm shall be in common, * * *

And there shall be no money.—Shakespeare.

The reader will have seen that I was, throughout the excursion recorded in the foregoing pages, paying some attention to the Swiss Allmends. Allmend means land which is held and used, as the word itself indicates, in common. In this general sense it includes common land of all kinds, whether in pasture, under forest, or in cultivation. In ordinary usage, however, it has come, without absolutely excluding the two former kinds, to signify common land under cultivation, with, in fact, almost a further restriction to common land, in which the cultivation is effected by the spade, or at all events, by the hand of man.

It is to the old burgers in any commune that these kinds of land are common. The old burgers are, with but very few exceptions, the lineal descendants of those who were burgers, say 200, it may have been 500, or even 1,000 years ago. New burgers are those, or the descendants of those, who, having come in from other cantons, or communes, settled in the place, and who have no rights of any kind in the common land. Land may be common to all the old burgers of a commune equally: it is then said to belong to the commune. Or it may belong to sections of the old burgers, as, for instance, to those who reside in a particular hamlet; or to those who belong to a particular class of families; and these may hold it either simply for their own use, or for the promotion of some defined object: in any such cases it is said to belong to a corporation.

A Swiss commune may be taken as the analogue of an English parish. The difference is that all the burgers, old and new, of a commune have now, generally—the old burgers, according to the old theory of the commune, had always had—an equal voice in the government and administration of the affairs of the commune, with the exception of the management and usufruct of the common property, which belongs, as it always has done, exclusively to the old burgers, either collectively, or sectionally. Residents from other cantons, or communes, are now pretty generally admitted more or less completely to participation in political rights. Formerly this was not the case: they were only tolerated. But with respect to the common property, whether of the commune or of its corporations, they are still rigidly excluded from all participation in it. For instance, there are alien families, that is to say, not descended from old burgers, which have been settled in Schwyz for two centuries, but which at this day have no share in the common lands. In order to bring an English rural parish into the same political condition as a Swiss commune, the humblest day-labourer ought to have, theoretically and practically, an equal voice with the squire in the election of the magistrates and officials of all kinds, and in the management of the Church funds, the schools, the roads, the water supply, the poor, &c., of the parish. To take an extreme supposition, the parochial assembly ought to be competent to enact that the parish should hire or buy so much land as would enable it to allow to each family a quarter, or half, of an acre of garden-ground, rent free. If, for the purpose of enabling us to understand the difference, we take the Swiss commune to represent, in the political order, the natural state of things, we must then regard the English rural parish as having lost a part of its rights through the usurpations of the central government, which now appoints the magistrates &c.; and as having had the majority of its inhabitants disfranchised by the usurpations of the rate-payers. Or if we regard the English rural parish as the perfection of local organization, we must say that the Swiss commune has usurped on the one side the legitimate powers of the central government, and on the other deprived the natural parochial depositaries of power, that is to say, the rate-payers, of their rightful privilege of being the exclusive administrators of everything in which the parish is concerned. The governing element in the idea of our parish appears to be the land, in that of the Swiss commune, the individual man.

The commune, then, is not far from being an independent, autonomous entity, both politically and economically. What we have now to consider is one department of its economy; that of its common lands. These, as I have already mentioned, consist of three distinct kinds; summer pastures, forests, and cultivable land. It follows from the fact of its autonomy that each commune will manage its common property very much in its own fashion; and probably there are no two communes which manage it in precisely the same fashion. But it also follows from the general similarity of their circumstances and conditions, that certain general features will pervade their management everywhere. It is with these general features that, in a notice of this kind, we are chiefly concerned. The little I shall have to say, in order to make them understood, will be founded on what I observed in the cantons I visited this summer, and in which I inquired into the system, and saw it at work. Those cantons were Unterwalden, Uri, Schwyz, and Glarus. My observations will, to some extent, be illustrated and checked by facts drawn from other quarters. For there is nothing in the world, whether in human institutions, in physiology, or in anything else, that can be understood if looked at as an isolated phenomenon. There is no such thing as an isolated phenomenon. Not even is the world itself such, any more than anything it contains. Everything is relative, concatenated, dependent; has causes, a milieu, functions, &c.; all of which so modify it, have so much to do with its being as and what it is, and throw so much light upon it, that if it is to be understood, some reference must be made to them.

We will begin with the common pastures for summering cattle—the alpes. Upon this subject the Statistical Bureau of the Federal Government published, in 1868, a quarto volume of 435 pages, to which I have already referred. It is a work of very comprehensive details, and of much interest. It exhibits completely, and analyzes thoroughly, all the information the office had, up to that date, been able to collect on the subject. I will now extract from this report such leading particulars as will give the reader a general knowledge of this part of the matter, premising the observation, which the Bureau makes, that whatever errors there may be in the figures must always, for obvious reasons, be on the side of their falling short of the truth.

The number of alpes is 4,559. Their aggregate area, in English acres, is somewhere about 2,650,000; which about equals the area of the four counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent. Their capital value, by the returns made, is 77,186,103 francs. But, as the office remarks, that probably at least a half must be added to this sum to get at the true figures, we may suppose that their aggregate capital value is, in English money, about 4,500,000l. Their letting value is returned at 3,362,642 francs. The number of cow-runs is returned as 270,389. The average number of days the alpes are fed at 93. The gross revenue at 10,893,874 francs. The net revenue at 9,545,007 francs. A fairly good cow in Switzerland, I was told, is worth twenty napoleons. We will take the good and the indifferent as averaging fifteen napoleons. This will make the value of the stock yearly put on the alpes, in English money, 3,250,000l. If then we put the capital value at 4,500,000l., and to this add the value of the stock, and for the sake of round sums, raise the net proceeds, which we may do safely, to 12,500,000 francs, we shall have 500,000l. as the net revenue on a capital of 7,750,000l. This will give a little less than 7 per cent. profits for this portion of the property of the Swiss people, for 93 days. The Bureau calculates a much higher rate of profit. I say for 93 days, because though this is all they get during the year from the alpes, the cows are earning profits for them elsewhere during the rest of the year.

To this 500,000l. of profits we must add, looking at the concern from a national point of view, the support of all those who, as cowherds and cheese-makers, or as engaged in the sale at home of the cheese, or in its transportation to foreign markets, are wholly, or in part, maintained by it. No deductions need be made from this net sum, for the cows replace themselves; and whatever is expended on the pastures has been already deducted.

We now come to the distribution of this property, and of its income. Taking

	Francs
The capital value at the low and uncorrected figures of	77,186,103
The letting	3,362,642
The total gross revenue	10,893,874

and distributing these several sums according to ownership, we find the respective interests of the several owners to be as follows:—

	Communes	Communes and private owners jointly	Corporations	Private owners
Capital value.	26,226,265	3,851,489	14,565,487	32,542,853	}	Francs
Letting value.	1,127,355	199,270	443,803	1,592,214
Gross revenue	4,010,102	624,102	1,788,224	4,471,446

From this it would appear that the average selling value of a cow-run for an average of 93 days is 287 francs. Its average letting value 12 francs 48 cents. Its gross average revenue 40 francs 45 cents. This is according to the returns, which very much underrate the true figures. Their respective values in the neighbourhood of populous towns rise to several times the amounts of these averages.

The figures given will enable the reader to understand the magnitude of this part of our subject. The population of Switzerland, now somewhat over 2,500,000, has, in proportion to its numbers, a larger share in the manufacture of cotton and silk than any other in the world. Of course this, and the rapid increase in the number of travellers who every year visit the country, must have of late very much augmented the population. If, however, we divide this augmented population into families of 6 souls each, we shall find that the revenue accruing from communal and corporation alpes, excluding those held by private owners, is still sufficient to give yearly, for these 93 days, 10s. to every family in the country. The sum required to do the same for every family in the United Kingdom would be 2,666,666l. a year. But as we know that in Switzerland the majority of families, from living in towns and from other causes, have no share in the revenue accruing from the use of the common alpes, we must set down the average share of each actual participant as very much more than double this sum. In fact, two would be a low average for the number belonging to those who send up cows to these alpes: but if we take two as the average, this would give about 3l. a year as the average net profit of each usager.

The next point for consideration is, how has it come about that these common pastures form so large a feature in Swiss agronomy? The probability is that the system was once universal in Switzerland; and not among the Swiss only, but also among all other people when they were in the stage which is intermediate between the pastoral and the agricultural condition. The agricultural condition implies a precedent pastoral condition. Now as long as people are in the pastoral stage, or in the intermediate stage, when the agricultural and the pastoral are in conflict, common pasturage is inevitable. The system now in vogue in our Australian colonies is not a case to the contrary, because that belongs to the era of capital, and takes its form from the action of capital. There is abundant evidence of this conflict, with its necessary condition, common pasturage, having once been the rule in Germany, in France, in this country, and elsewhere. Circumstances, which are absolutely sovereign in a matter of this kind, for there is no possibility of resisting them, carried other countries out of this state of things, while they kept Switzerland in it. If a thousand, or five hundred years ago, some Titans of the race that undertook to set Ossa upon Pelion, and to roll to the top of the pile Olympus with all his forests, had run a mountain-crusher over Switzerland and flattened in its Alps, then the system of common pasturage could no more have existed there down to our time than in the plains of Lombardy or the vale of Aylesbury.

But this is a point there is no understanding without a general acquaintance with the whole subject, which belongs to, and is indeed the main stem in, the growth and evolution of human society. The history of human society is the record of its growth; no particular stage of which can be understood, if disconnected from what preceded it; that is to say, without a knowledge of the precedent history, which was that out of which the subsequent history grew. We ourselves cannot be regarded as having reached the final stage in that evolution. The time of course will come, when it will be seen that the point at which we now are, as respects not the land only but many other things also, was not a permanent resting place, but merely a step in an endlessly ascending series. The evolution, in other words the orderly advance, in harmony with advancing circumstances, of the uses of the land, which has been going on from the beginning, will continue—at all events we have no reason for supposing the contrary—as long as man and the land shall continue. If the past in this matter had been compounded of haphazard progression and retrogression on the same level, or of mingled ascents and descents on haphazard uneven ground, there would probably be no evidence perceptible of plan or design; and then we should not be able to understand how any particular stage—indeed, there would then be no stages—had been reached. Nor, with respect to our own existing position, should we be able to conjecture in what direction things might be tending. Observation and thought would be futile, and action aimless, were everything, in such a fashion, the sport of blind accident. But now, because we see that these matters are subject to a law of growth, we can trace their history, and reason about them, and understand them; and notwithstanding the action of temporarily disturbing causes, even when accompanied with checks and hardships, can rest in the belief that Omnipotent and Beneficent Intelligence directs them, no less than all the other phenomena of the universe.

What, then, we have to determine is, What, as constituted by nature, is the relation of man to the land? What have been the advances in circumstances that bear upon this relation? And how have they affected it, or how has it dealt with them? That is to say, What are the facts, or the principles, that underlie the history? And what has been their history? It is evident that some general knowledge of this kind must be requisite for the right appreciation of any particular stage. For instance, without it we shall not be able to understand what this Swiss system, about which we are now inquiring, really was? what made it what it was? what is the place it occupies in the great historical series of advances through which man’s relation to the land has passed? and what it is that is now rendering it unsuitable to existing circumstances, and so preparing the way for something higher and better?

We must begin at the beginning. What, in the earliest times of all, was the relation of man to the land? What had nature ordained it to be? What was its original purport, form, and character? They will, we can believe, be seen most distinctly under the simplest and least complicated conditions. The first stage must have been that in which man lived by the chase—by the pursuit and capture of wild animals; and in a less degree by the fruits of the earth produced spontaneously in their season. This must have come first, because if man were placed abruptly in a world, already peopled with wild animals, and with plants that at times bore fruit, these could have been the only means available for supporting life. To this day it continues to be so among many savage tribes; a fact which throws much light upon man’s history. We also know that it was so once in parts of the world where it has long ceased to be so. For instance, geological investigations have shown that there was a time when it was so in this island. The relation therefore of the land to primitive man was that it supplied him with the food that was to support his life. That was the substance, the principle, of the relation. Man and the land were two related terms; and the food, which the land produced and the man consumed, was the third term, which brought them into relation. It constituted the relation.

And in the character and purport of this relation there was no difference at all between sovereign man and the lower animals. The relation was precisely the same for everything that breathed. In the first stage, indeed, man’s condition was very little in advance of that of the lower animals. His life was passed, and supported very much in the same fashion as theirs.

A coefficient condition of this primæval relation was that of property. Each tribe had its own hunting ground, which was its own property. It was its own property because other tribes were not allowed to hunt over it, to use it, or to encroach upon it in any way. It was jealously guarded for the separate use of the tribe. This was necessary: and therefore, like the relation itself, an ordinance of nature. And it, too, is a condition which exists among and is enforced by, and we cannot but suppose must always have existed among and been enforced by, the lower animals. Each pair of lions, and each pair of redbreasts, has its own hunting ground, from which other lions, or other redbreasts, that attempt to encroach upon it, are violently expelled. But property, among these hunting tribes, must always have been, as we see that it is at this day, of two kinds. There was that which belonged to the whole tribe equally. This applied to the land they hunted over. It was held in common, because, under the circumstances, it was necessary that it should be so held. This was the only way in which the fundamental principle of the relation of the land to man—that its use is to supply man with food—could have been carried out then. Its common use arose out of, and was necessitated by existing circumstances. It could not have been divided into portions for each family, because the wild game, the human food it then produced, was not at all times evenly distributed throughout it, but would sometimes be on one part of the run and sometimes on another. Still the recognition of this necessity, as respected the land, did not exclude either the idea, or the fact, of separate individual property. That form also of property was, in this the lowest stage of human society, understood and acted upon. If a man had fortified a cave against the entrance of wild beasts, or had built a hut, or wigwam, that did not belong to the tribe, but to himself, as much so as the burrow, or lair, or nest, an animal forms for itself, is its own. So with the skins he might have dressed; the stones and bones he might have chipped and pointed; the bows and arrows, the spears and clubs, the slings and throwing sticks he had made; and after a time, too, with the women he had acquired by capture or purchase; and the children they had borne to him.

The necessity of association must also, from the beginning, have been a corollary to the right of property. There never could have been a time when it could have been dispensed with. If each family had dwelt in isolation, it could not have protected itself, or its hunting ground, either against wild beasts, or against encroaching neighbours. Nor could it have hunted so effectually as to have secured a supply of food. Association, therefore, was a necessity. And this, again, we find is resorted to by those animals which are not strong enough to protect themselves, or to capture their food, individually; or which require for their security more vigilance than could be maintained at all times by an isolated individual. It is not acted on by lions or tigers, because they can do without it, but it is acted on by the herbivorous animals, and even by some of the less swift, or less strong species of carnivors. The herbivors associate because though, notwithstanding their association, many will be destroyed by their natural enemies, still in consequence of their association into large communities, many will escape. And some of the carnivors, which pursue animals stronger or fleeter than themselves, as for instance wild dogs and wolves, associate, because by this means they can best secure their prey. Lions and tigers would associate if their herbivorous prey were to become far stronger than themselves.

Here, then, we have three main facts, a determinate relation, ordained by nature, of the land to man, a coefficient condition of that relation, and a corollary to that condition, which have existed from the beginning; and which, as far as we can see, must exist to the end. Neither society nor life could be maintained without them. Each of the three, in a sense and degree, the brute also recognizes.[4] The advancing circumstances of human society have in no way abrogated, or weakened them. The only difference is that the constitutive facts themselves, remaining throughout the same, have been suitably applied to the successive advances, whatever their character may have been, that have been made in the circumstances.

To these circumstances, which play so great a part in the history, for they it is that make the matter progressive, and so give it a history, we must now direct our attention. After a time some kinds of animals are domesticated, and society enters on the second, the pastoral stage. This was the first clearly defined advance in the circumstances. We know not where, or when, or how, or by whom were first domesticated the ox, the sheep, the goat, the hog, the horse, the ass, or the camel. The dates of these achievements, pregnant with so vast a series of mighty consequences, lie far back beyond the reach of the dimmest traditions of mankind. Here, however, we are concerned only with the way in which their domestication affected the tenure and the use of the land. The most obvious effects were that the extent of land, which had formerly been required for the maintenance of the tribe by the chase, would now maintain a great many more families; and that, in this part of the world, where moisture is continuous, and therefore grass abundant, (it would be different in the dry plains of Asia,) their lives could not possibly be so vagrant as had been the case with their hunting forefathers. Because now, instead of following the migrations of wild animals, and searching for them when sparingly dispersed over large areas, they would have to attend to their flocks and herds. But their flocks and herds would still have to be protected from wild beasts, and from their neighbours. A sufficient number therefore of families must be associated into a village community to enable it to guard its own pasture ground; which in no part of Europe needed to have been of any great extent. Our three great facts, that the object of the land is to produce food; that for this purpose it must be held as property; and that, in order that it may be so held, those to whom it belongs must associate themselves, have in no way been enfeebled. They still remain in force, and govern human life. And we shall see that they will continue to do this under every new combination of circumstances that will arise. We shall never come to a time when men will not remove whatever would, under the circumstances of the day, hinder the land from producing the greatest amount of food; nor when property will cease to exist, or cease to be modified according to circumstances; nor when men will cease to associate for its protection. With respect to the latter, history will show us the village growing into the city, and neighbouring cities associating, and growing, in one way or another, into unions of cities, nations, and empires; but the necessity for, and the object of association will remain the same; for persons and property will always need protection; collectively, against aggressions from without, and, in the case of the individual, against aggressions from within. The need of protection will remain, and will be provided for in just the same way when property shall have become so varied in kind, and the new kinds so vast in amount, that the aboriginal property of land, that once was all in all, shall have become of secondary importance. Neither will the need disappear, or the old means of providing for it become obsolete, when the number of the millions of those who are associated shall exceed the number of families that were associated in the old pastoral or hunting community. The purpose and principle were precisely the same in the village of a score of families, or in the combination of such villages in the primæval German forest, as it is at this day among the forty millions who are now associating themselves into the German Empire.

With respect to the form of private, individual property, that in the pastoral period assumed a great extension: for the flocks and herds—which had now become all in all to the community—were private property; whereas the wild animals, which in the foregoing stage had occupied that position, had been common property. The pasturage, however, still remained common to the flocks and herds of the inhabitants of the village; just as formerly the hunting area had been open to all the members of the old tribe. But the commencement of individual appropriations of land is now becoming visible; for any enclosures, near to the homestead, for the purpose of penning the cattle at night, and for protecting them against wild beasts and bad weather, will belong to those who have themselves constructed them for their own cattle.

In the hunting stage the tribe had ever been on the move, and their whole time had been expended in a hard, and often ineffectual struggle for bare existence. Nothing more was possible. But the inhabitants of the pastoral village have now become stationary; and have, on easy terms, a sufficiency of food. This places some leisure time, during the year, at their disposal. A great advance has been made; and it proves to be one which like all others has in itself the germ of future advances; for it leads on to the culture of the soil, which is the third stage. But this, too, was brought about at so remote a period in the lost history of the race, that there are no traces of traditions of when, or where, or how, or by whom was introduced the culture of any one of the different kinds of cereals. All of the matter that we know for certain is that the fact turns out to be exactly the contrary of what we might have expected. Such improvements, amounting to transformations, of the seeds of some now untraceable natural grasses into our different kinds of grain, we should have felt almost sure were quite beyond the capacities and opportunities of little village aggregations of savages, or at best of semi-savages. First the idea of the possibility of such transformations, and then the thought, care, and patience necessary for effecting them, we should have been disposed to ascribe only to people among whom knowledge had largely accumulated.

Suppositions, however, of this kind, though they would, before the matter had been investigated, have been entertained by almost everybody, are completely contradicted by the facts of the case. These assure us that we are indebted, beyond controversy, not only for the domestication of animals, but also for the existence of our cereals in their present form, to the ideas, and to the patient and thoughtful labour of our remote unnamed barbarian ancestors. And these barbarian inventors of wheat, barley, and oats, and, that we may not ungratefully exclude from their due the natives of the New World, we must add of maize also, were as great benefactors of the race as the inventors of letters, and of the steam-engine. And this ought to awaken within us both a stronger sense than we now have of the continuity and unity of human history, and a greater respect than we have for still existing barbarian races.

A highly interesting illustration and confirmation of the fact now before us has lately been brought to light. In ’69 the government of Mauritius sent a commissioner to collect specimens of the different kinds of sugar-cane cultivated by the natives of New Caledonia, and to report on their respective merits. His report was issued only a few months ago. It figures, and describes separately, forty-four kinds he found still in cultivation. In the copy I now have before me each of the forty-four figures is carefully coloured; variation in colour being in this plant an indication of other variations, some of which might be useful. Here, then, are savages of a very low type, for they even practise cannibalism when other means of supporting life have failed, cultivating forty-four varieties of a plant, which probably was not originally indigenous to their island; and of which it is very doubtful whether in their island it ever produced a fertile seed. Every variety therefore which originated among them must have been the result of a sport. And this must have been watched for, and turned to account when it presented itself. Indeed, their method of cultivating the sugar-cane, which is as wonderful as the number of kinds they cultivate, appears to be intelligently directed to the aim of producing sports. But it will be better to allow the commissioner himself to describe to us in his own words what he saw.

He says, ‘Besides the sugar-cane the chief alimentary support of the New Caledonians were,’ before the French took possession of the island, ‘the taro and yam. The former, requiring an abundant supply of water, was usually grown in terraces formed on the slopes of the natural amphitheatres presented by the spurs of the main mountain range, and most ingeniously irrigated by a constant fillet of water. The latter, requiring a deep, open, rich, and well-drained soil, was planted on beds formed by heaping up the naturally thin surface soil of a few inches deep into beds of about three feet high by four feet wide, from which only one crop was taken, and the next year fresh ground was broken up for new plantations.

‘It was on the edges of these beds, forming, as will be at once evident, a peculiarly rich and deep loose soil, that the natives planted their canes, not in lines near each other, as we do, but twenty or thirty feet apart, and in a single row only. As the detached stools grew they were tied up in a bundle with straw, in order to exclude light and limit the number of shoots, and to force them to lengthen; and likewise to make them tender and juicy, instead of sweet. For a New Caledonian values a cane for the quantity of its juice, not for its saccharine qualities, and has probably never eaten a really ripe cane. No marvel that under such treatment, allowing only three or four canes to a stool, they should grow large and long; so long, in fact, that those which were tabooed, or kept for grand ceremonies, have, after two and a half or three years, attained a length of from twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of four inches or more, requiring to be supported on forked sticks as they fell over. Above all it should be noted, that in direct opposition to our system, the cane was never replanted in the same land, thus giving it the best chance of progressive development, and avoiding the chances of degeneracy or disease. Every intelligent cultivator will at once recognize the necessarily practical effect of such a continual principle of selection carried out for perhaps centuries.’

Note the carefulness of these New Caledonians in this matter. The soil is collected and piled up into beds to secure a sufficiency of depth for the descending roots, in order that every root that could be formed might be turned to account. The canes are set in single rows to give to each leaf of each plant all the air and the light possible. The stems are banded up with straw to prevent evaporation. The plants in the single rows are set twenty or thirty feet apart, that there may be no interference of the roots of one plant with the roots of another. That they may have all the stimulation possible, they are never grown in succession on the same spot. Our science can suggest nothing more adapted, were it a seeding plant, to give rise to improved varieties by seed-variation, or to force a plant that does not produce seed into producing varieties by sporting. All this, too, is done under great local disadvantages and discouragements, for the island is most years affected with severe droughts and devastated with swarms of locusts which destroy the leaves of the canes. It is worth noting that the commissioner expresses the surprise he felt at witnessing the wonderful acuteness with which the natives distinguish unerringly, and give the native name to any cane shown to them which may have only an inch or two fully formed; frequently recognizing a still smaller specimen merely by its leaves. He never saw them make a mistake.

In this careful cultivation of the sugar-cane, and preservation of its varieties, we can hardly doubt but that we have an existing instance, mutatis mutandis, of the process by which some branch of our remote barbarian ancestors improved some grasses producing small edible seeds, into the kinds of grain we now cultivate. Similar care they had already bestowed on the formation of the races of domestic animals we now possess. And we ought not to forget that they were at the same time rough-hewing our language and morality. With respect to their morality—the parent stock of ours, as was the case with their language—we may, in passing, observe that in all probability they enforced and practised it, as Mr. Wallace, who lived for some years among the savages of these islands, found them practising theirs, much more rigidly than we do ours.

We have now reached a point at which we find that some reconstruction of the agrarian arrangements of the pastoral village community is being forced upon them. Formerly their flocks and herds were their only support. They are so no longer. The cultivated produce of the soil has not taken their place, but has become, to an indispensable degree, a subsidiary means of support. And as time goes on it is becoming so more and more largely, through increasing skill in the cultivation of the soil, and through its consequence, an increase of population. This new means of support has now become necessary; and it cannot be turned to account on land absolutely common. Each crop must be the property of the man who prepared the land for it, sowed, protected, and harvested it. The land therefore upon which it was grown must be his, for at all events the space of time requisite for these operations. This gives rise to the system of property in land limited in respect of time, that is to say, some form of the system of shifting severalties. Of course this must gradually pass into absolute permanent property, because the day will come when that will be necessary for enabling the community to obtain from the land the greatest amount of food. The conditions, however, that will suggest that are still a long way off. As changes become necessary, they will, each in its turn, have to fight for its establishment. The old methods will always have prescription, fact, tradition, custom to support them; the new, utility and necessity.

It is interesting to recall how recently amongst ourselves a stage of this conflict had to be fought out. From the Saxon times there had been established in this country a form of the agrarian system of village communities, the members of which had defined common rights in the land. It had in the early part of the Middle Ages become general. It was not a survival of, or a reversion to the ideas of the pastoral age. The two main features of that system had been that all the land of the village had been in precisely the same common condition, and that the rights in it also of every member of the village community had been precisely the same. Of this our mediæval agronomic system can be regarded as only a very remote descendant. In the first place it was devised for an agricultural community; and in the next it had to be adapted to a complicated social system of lords of manors, large and small freeholders, peasant cultivators, cotters, &c.; and each of these classes was in a different position from the others for turning to account its commonable rights. It was an attempt, under the social and economic conditions of the times, to make the land support the community. It supplemented the use of land that was more or less appropriated by large and various common rights. In the case of the peasant cultivators this was intended as compensation, just as it was in Russia, for the services exacted from them. The lands of the feudal lord, as of his Saxon predecessor, both of whom were necessary personages in the political system of their times, could not have been cultivated otherwise; for a general arrangement of rents and wages to be paid in money was impossible then. That old system has left in our language some traces of its existence. The words Lammas lands, lot-meadows, shifting severalties, folkland, open time, field-constraint, &c., once stood for some of its details. It was already dying out towards the close of the middle ages. The influx of silver on the discovery of America, by raising the price of wool in foreign markets for manufacturing purposes, at a time when there was no cause in operation to raise the price of wheat, hastened its decay. For it made it profitable to those who were in a position to effect it, to consolidate small holdings, which involved the extinction of the commonable rights that had appertained to their old cultivators. The Enclosure Commissioners of our own day had to deal with the last traces of the system.

For many centuries it did good service. It was workable, when perhaps nothing else could have been with the single exception of the old world form of slavery. But it could not stand after rent and wages had become possible, and when it was seen that by cultivating larger farms, and by the extinction of common rights, the land might be turned to better account for the community generally. New circumstances, possibilities, and requirements necessitated a new system. The object of the land is to provide food for those to whom it belongs, that is to say, for the community to which it belongs. This object has always overridden, and must always override every other consideration. For instance, the practice of Lammas lands (which meant that the members of the agrarian village community must each year cultivate on contiguous pieces of land the same grain crop, in order that the stubbles and succeeding fallow, on the whole space so cultivated, might, after the crops had been carried, be thrown open as common pasture to the cattle of the whole village,) could not possibly have been maintained after the introduction of artificial grasses and turnips; because every one could see that the land might be made to produce a great deal more food by ceasing to be Lammas land, and by being laid down with artificial grasses and cultivated for roots. And this could be done only by enclosing the land, which could not have been enclosed under the old system, and by extinguishing the old common rights. A man would not lay down artificial grasses, and cultivate roots, for the flocks and herds of the parish. If this method of increasing the food supply of an increasing population was to be resorted to, the artificial grasses and roots must be the property of the man who grew them. The land must be enclosed, and his neighbours’ flocks must be excluded at all seasons.

Henceforth the number of those who can keep flocks and herds will be much reduced. These will, however, in the aggregate be much larger than in former times. And through the medium of the other forms of industry to which the other members of the community will now be able, and required, to devote themselves, these larger flocks and herds will be in a sense common to all: they certainly will be produced for all. At first, and for a long time, hardships will ensue. But these, and even their long continuance, are no proof that the change does not belong to the natural order of things. Most changes are accompanied by throes and inconveniences; the use of which is to prevent the introduction of any changes excepting those which circumstances and events have demonstrated to be necessary and inevitable; and to force men to struggle to accommodate themselves to such as are of this kind. Take as an instance the change we are now speaking of. It was accompanied for some generations with great hardships. But most people will now readily acknowledge that it was both necessary and beneficial; and that it would be extremely mischievous to attempt to revert to it in any way or degree.

And just as it was with this mediæval system of ours, and with the semi-pastoral, the pastoral, and the hunting stages that went before it, so we may suppose will it be with our present land system, which appears to most of us as an ordinance of nature, that has been from everlasting, and must continue to be to everlasting. It would be to everlasting if the circumstances which gave rise to it were to be everlasting: and the same might have been said of every system that preceded it. But if it should become distinct to men’s minds that by the introduction of some change in the system the land of the country could be made, through means that have now become possible, to produce for the people of the country a great deal more food than it does under the present system, then the present system would go as certainly as the Lammas lands, lot-meadows, folklands, &c. of the old system went. To maintain a system which is giving less food, to the exclusion of one which would give more food, would appear as a contravention of the purpose of nature. Its foundations, that upon which it was built, and which upheld it, would be gone. It would have nothing but unsupported prescription to support it. And there would be at the same time events, facts, necessity pushing against it to overturn it, just in the same way as it itself pushed against and overturned what had been before itself. It would be thawed, like snow upon which the sun was shining. The perception by the community of the possibility of turning the land of the country to better account would be the sun that would melt it away; just as it had every system in its turn when its day was done, back to the beginning. For the people have a right to insist that the land shall be allowed to yield for them as much food as it is capable, under the circumstances of the times, of being made to produce.

The new facts would sap, mine, and explode the old and now inadequate arrangements. And it would not be so much reasonings and opinions that would do this, as facts that had established themselves, and upon which reasonings and opinions would be based. Suppose that from actual, unmistakeable instances it were to become manifest to the general comprehension, that the application of capital to the culture of the land, in such amounts as none but owners of the land will apply to it, would vastly increase the amount of food the land of the country could be made to produce for the people of the country; and that what prevented those who might be ready to apply this amount of capital from becoming owners of the land to which they were ready to apply it, was the power the existing landowners have of charging and settling land, then this power in some way or other would disappear as completely as the Lammas lands &c. have disappeared, and for precisely the same reason. It may seem humiliating, but it must be acknowledged that the material interests of mankind have within themselves much more power for enforcing changes by which they may be promoted, than those interests which are moral and intellectual. The fact is that they come first. Man must live. His moral and intellectual interests are not his primary and most pressing concern. In the order of nature they come afterwards. They are, indeed, hardly seen, or even felt, till the material wants have been supplied.

The mass of mankind appreciates these things according to their natural order. What, for instance, can be more truly shocking than the pauperism of this country? The amount of moral and intellectual degradation it implies, and that in the bosom of a society conspicuous not only for wealth, but also for culture, refinement, and philanthropy, is perhaps the most saddening sight on the face of this earth. Its amount baffles calculation, for it is not to be ascertained by counting the numbers of those unhappy persons in the United Kingdom who are at any particular moment receiving relief, but by adding to their number, could it be done, the number of the present generation who have received, and of those who will receive, relief: for the man who received relief yesterday, and the man who will receive it to-morrow, are as much paupers as the man who is receiving it to-day. The total, therefore, of our pauperized population amounts not to one, but to several millions. Many see this and understand it, but no one is shocked at it. At all events, no one calls aloud for inquiry into the causes of so portentous an evil with a view to its mitigation. Why? because the mass of mankind are little affected, as things now are, at the sight of moral and intellectual degradation. Were they, however, only to be brought to see with distinctness, that the land of the country is, as Lord Derby tells us, producing no more than half as much as it might be made to produce; or, as the Lords’ Committee for inquiring into the means available for improving the land, tells us, that only one fifth of what requires draining has been drained; then everyone would be shocked, and would clamour loudly for inquiries and remedies. It is the abundance free trade supplies, so long as the highways of the sea are open, that is, in these piping times of peace, blinding our eyes to these facts and to their causes, nature, and consequences, and will probably continue to do so, till a maritime war shall have obliged us, when it will be too late, to understand the everyday wisdom of making the most of our own soil. (By the way, why are such committees as that just referred to exceptionally necessary for the land? Ship-builders, cotton-spinners, iron-masters, &c., do not ask for parliamentary inquiry into means for improving their unfettered industries. No one hears of their languishing for want of skill or capital.)

The foregoing sketch of some of the most prominent facts in the history of man’s relation to the land, taking it at the beginning, and bringing it down to the modification of it now existing amongst ourselves, though altogether inadequate as a sketch of the general subject, has occupied more space, I am well aware, than I can claim for anything of the kind here. Still it was quite necessary, for without it we should not be able to assign to the Swiss system its place in the series of advances that have been made in the application and working out of this relation, because without it we should not have had the series before us. Nor without it should we be able to see how honest and successful an attempt the Swiss system was to carry out the substantial purpose of the relation of the land to man, because without it we should not have had our attention directed to the nature of the relation. Nor again, without it, should we be brought to look for the peculiar circumstances upon which the Swiss system had to act, because without it we should not have been brought to see that circumstances are supreme in deciding in what form and fashion the relation itself, and its two efficient conditions of property and association—the three constant quantities in this matter—shall at any time be worked.

As then the substance of the relation is unvarying, and what variation there may be at any time or place can only be in the circumstances, which affect no more than the form of the relation, we have to look in the case now before us for the circumstances which, while other European countries were advancing step after step, in Switzerland, till within a very recent period, prohibited all advance. These, I think, will all be found to be included under two heads, viz., the peculiarities of the physical character of the country, and the absence of accumulations of capital: and the two were, I believe, closely connected. The country had no sources of mineral, nor, under the conditions of former times, of agricultural wealth. It could not maintain a large population on its own resources. Nor could it have any cities, the inhabitants of which, either like those of Flanders, by the easy terms upon which they might get the raw materials, could have manufactured for others, or like those of Venice, Genoa, and of the cities of Holland, might have become common carriers. They could have had no commerce except with their surplus cheese. And the amount of this that could be spared was so small, and the transportation so difficult, that but little could be made of it; and the whole of this little was wanted for the necessaries of labour, such as the useful metals &c. which the Swiss were obliged to procure from abroad. There was therefore no margin for saving, and so there could be no accumulations of capital. For long ages the most assiduous industry could supply the Swiss with only the necessaries of life, and barely with them, even when aided by the surplus cheese. Throughout all this time the system of common pasturage was maintained. It worked well: it saved from perishing a population that was ready to perish.

In these days, however, all this has been changed. By the aid of the new means of transportation and communication, and by the substitution of machinery for manual labour, the motive power for which Switzerland has in abundance, and can now turn to excellent account, the people are becoming rich. Capital has accumulated, and is still further accumulating rapidly. Families, therefore, can be supported without the common use of the land—and in most cases better without it than with it. And besides, if its common use be maintained, it will prove, when capital exists in abundance, a hindrance to the greatest possible production of food for the people. In short, the existence of capital has now brought about conditions which render the system of commonable land no longer the best. That will be its doom. No system that has been assailed by such conditions has ever been able to maintain itself. It will be no defence of it to say that it has hitherto been a good and workable system, and that the long ages of its existence have proved it to be so. This is what might have been said, and doubtless was said, with truth but without effect, of every system, not only of agronomy, but of everything else that was ever established in the world. This is the logic of sentiment, of habit, of custom, of tradition; and of those who think that they have interests distinct from and superior to the interests of the rest of the community; and of those who cannot understand what is understood by the rest of the world. It is, however, no match for the logic of facts, and of the general interest—the public good. That must ever be the strongest logic as well as the highest law. If, then, it is about to be overturned by capital, notwithstanding its long history and all that may be said on its behalf, we may infer that it was the absence of capital which brought it into being and maintained it down to the advent of capital.

Let us take the case of these Forest Cantons. In order to understand their position in respect of this matter, we must not limit our view to their present condition; we must go further back; our survey must include a wider range. Some centuries ago they were much secluded from the world. At that time there was, in comparison with what we now see in them, very little cultivable land reclaimed. Means of communication by wheeled carriages had not yet, in most places, been so much as thought about. The people therefore were thrown almost entirely upon their own scanty local resources. With hardly any means for getting supplies from without, with very little land for cultivating cereals, and in the days before maize and potatoes, their chief reliance was upon their cows. It is very much so even at this day. But in those days the reliance was all but unqualified. Their cows supplied them not only with a great part of their food, but also, through the surplus cheese, with tools, and everything else they were incapable of producing themselves from the singularly limited resources of their secluded valleys. The Switzer was then the parasite of the cow. There were no ways in which money could be made: there were no manufactures, and no travellers, and so there were no innkeepers to supply travellers, nor shopkeepers to supply the wants of operatives, manufacturers, and travellers; and there were none who had been educated up to the point that would enable them to go abroad to make money with which they might return to their old homes: neither they nor the world were then in a condition to admit of this. The adoption of foreign military service for a livelihood, which was a common practice at this period, was a proof of the poverty of the country, and did not at all contribute to enrich it; for the savings from their pay, brought home with them by those who returned, could never have compensated for the cost of bringing up those who through the practice were lost to the country. If the general population had not had the means for keeping cows, they would not have had the means for living. The problem, therefore, for them to solve was, How was every family to be enabled to keep cows? Under the conditions of those times the family that could not have kept cows must have ceased to exist.

The local conditions were very peculiar. Small prairies might be formed in the valley bottoms, and by quarrying the rocks, levelling, surface-soiling, and irrigation, they might in some places be carried a little way up the mountain sides. But if the grass of these prairies were to be consumed by the cattle in the summer, there would be no provision for them in the coming winter. As, then, the prairies could not be fed in summer, what was to be done with the cattle at that season? The mountain pastures, which could not be cut for hay, enabled them to meet this difficulty. The cows of the village community might during the summer be kept on these mountain pastures, and this would admit of the bottom and the irrigated prairies being reserved for making hay, which might support the cows in winter and spring. This, therefore, must be the plan. Everyone must have the right of sending his cows up to these summer pastures. Everyone in summer then would be able to devote himself to keeping up, perhaps to enlarging a little, his prairie land, and to making and storing up hay for winter. But this would depend on a sufficient amount of summer pasturage being kept common. Common property is not generally well looked after, or made the most of: but this is true of Alpine pasturage in a less degree than of other kinds of commonable land, because it does not depend for its produce upon care and labour, as a commonable cornfield or a commonable vineyard would; nor is it easily exhausted, for it is at rest throughout at least two-thirds of the year. It is very different with prairie, that is to say, made and cultivated grass land: its first formation—it is all made land—and the maintenance of its fertility sufficient for the two or three crops of hay taken yearly from it, and the making and storing up of this hay, require an amount of attention and labour it would be vain to expect as a general rule without the stimulus of private property. If common labour were attempted in a matter of this kind, most men would endeavour to throw as much as possible of the work on their neighbours; and as to improvements of the common property, what would then in theory be everybody’s business, would in practice be nobody’s: the labour would be both less in amount, and less enterprising. Clearly the best system with respect to the prairies was that they should be pretty generally private property. The mountain pastures were already formed. They were the gift of nature. They could not be very much improved. Under any treatment they would continue to exist. Not so with the prairies. They could not have been created without a vast amount of labour, and they could not be maintained without its continuance. And so it came to be the established rule, that the natural summer pastures should be common, and that every burger should have as many cows kept upon them in the summer as he had himself kept during the previous winter with the hay he had made from his labour-created and labour-maintained prairies; or, if as yet he had no prairies, with the dried leaves and coarse stuff he had been able to collect from the common forest.

If these mountain pastures had been allowed to become private property in those times when the people were parasites of the cows, the few who had got hold of them would have been very rich, and those who had failed to secure a share in them would have been quite starved out. They would not have been able to have kept cows through the winter, because in the summer they would have been obliged to put them on their little bits of prairie ground, and so could not have reserved their produce for winter.

And in the days anterior to accumulations of capital, this, which is a great point, worked fairly for all. All were placed on about an equal footing. Whatever differences of condition there might have been then, resulted mainly from differences of industry. But these were differences which had play within very restricted limits; for the field for industry had little extent and no variety. The community said to its members: ‘Do what you may your struggle for existence must be hard. It cannot possibly be maintained without cows; and you will not be able to keep your cows in the winter without their having been taken off your hands and off your prairies during the summer; for, throughout the whole of that season, you must be attending to your prairies, and to their produce, which must be reserved for winter. In order that this may be done, the mountain pastures shall be treated and used as common property; so that during the summer the cows of all may be kept upon them. Each shall have the right of sending up to them in the summer as many cows as he had kept from the produce of his prairies through the previous winter.’ As no family could reclaim and keep up more of this prairie land than was sufficient to provide hay for a few cows—an industrious and prosperous family might do this for five or six, a less industrious and less prosperous for two or three—the people were all placed by this system very much on a footing of equality. The system was both necessary and fair. It originated in the nature of the country, and in its then economical conditions; and, in turn, it created the Swiss life and character. It was evidently a form maintained down to our own times, under peculiar circumstances, of the semi-pastoral stage. The common pasturage was the same in both; and the prairies, held as private property and cultivated for hay, were analogous to the enclosed fields, held as private property and cultivated for grain, of that stage. The shifting severalties also of garden-ground, to which we shall come presently, were genuine incidents of it.

I will show presently how, under the altered conditions of the times, the old system of common pasturage has now become both unnecessary and unfair. To the existing circumstances of the country it is not at all adapted; and so, according to the law which makes them sovereign in human affairs, it must die out: but of that anon.

We now come to the second part of the common property of these Cantons—the forests. Under the conditions of the past it was as necessary that there should have been common forests as it was that there should have been common summer pastures. Wood, with the exception, here and there, of turf, and which followed the same rules, was in Switzerland the only fuel. In times when men did not live much, or at all, on wages, and wood was the only fuel, it was necessary that all the members of the community should have the right of taking so much as would supply their absolute wants from the contiguous forest. This also, therefore, must, at all events so far, remain common property. That it should have been so was quite imperative in Switzerland, on account of the length and the severity of the winter. If any members of the community had been excluded from the right of fuel, they would have died of cold. Suppose that these forests had been allowed to become private property: two evil consequences would have ensued; a large part of the existing population would forthwith have been deprived of the means of obtaining fuel; and as a private owner might do with his own what he pleased, his necessities, or greed, or bad judgment, might bring him to cut down, at one time, a large portion of the forest, or might prevent his taking the care necessary for maintaining it in a serviceable condition for the generations that would follow him. These difficulties were overcome by keeping the forest in the hands of the community, and distributing, on a plan which would be fair to all, the amount of fuel that would be necessary for each. It thus became the interest of all to see that the forests were not wastefully used, and were properly maintained; and a regular supply, which was the great point, of what was indispensable was secured for all.

The rule generally observed in the distribution of the produce of the common forests was, that each family should have an allowance of fuel, and of timber for repairs, in proportion to the size of his dwelling house and byre; so many solid klafters for the former, and so many hewn timber trees, generally fir, for the latter. In the days before accumulations of capital, when, through the condition of each being mainly the result of his own industry and actual manual labour, all were kept pretty much on an equality, this method of distribution was fair enough. Its principle was analogous to that which was observed in the use of the common pastures.

Under the circumstances of time and place the maintenance of common property in the forests was a matter of life and death. In these valleys at that time there were no ways of earning the means for buying fuel. The people had in summer to be attending, each to his little bit of prairie land, to his hay-making, and to his little plot of corn; and in winter he must still be at home, looking after and tending his cows, and doing the many things requisite for the maintenance of his family; and which, under the circumstances of the time and place, would not have been done at all if not done by himself.

What has now been said about the mountain pasture and fuel fully explains the disabilities laid on residents who had come in from other cantons, or communes. They were excluded from political rights, and from participation in the common property, not out of any mean and unreasonable jealousy, but because the common property was barely sufficient for the existing burgers—population always increases up to, it might be more truly said down to, the means of subsistence—and increase of numbers would have destroyed the action and benefits of the system: the only system then and there possible.

We still have to consider a third kind of commonable land—the garden-ground. This was, originally, as necessary as the other two kinds. It would amount for each to shares of an acre or two. It completed the support of the family. It was an indispensable supplement to the cows and the fuel. And even in these times, when money can be earnt in many ways, the quarter, or half, of an acre, in some places still the whole acre, which can be assigned to each member of the commune, has some advantages. It enables the family to secure a sufficient supply of cabbages, onions, haricots, flax, hemp, potatoes, and occasionally, a serviceable amount of wheat or maize. Formerly there was no other way for the household to procure these articles: though, indeed, in these days, this obvious advantage is sometimes counter-balanced by greater, but less obvious disadvantages. The old rule was that every commune should have a certain amount of terre laborable; and that this should, at stated periods, say every year, every five, ten, or twenty years, as might be the local arrangement, be reportioned among those who would themselves cultivate their lots. The community must have hands and hearts to protect it, indeed even to enable it to be a community; and these hands and hearts must have the means of living; and if all the terre laborable had been allowed to fall into the condition of private property, many would have been deprived of a necessary ingredient in the means of living. And here again, if Beisassen had been admitted to a participation in the communal garden-ground, the aim and object of the system would, so far as that went, have been defeated. In many, probably in all communes, it was the rule that new comers might purchase the position and rights of burgers, when, but only when, the old burgers were in favour, unanimously, of their admission. This wise requirement of unanimity upon the question of the admission of a new burger secured the community against the action of a cause, which, if unrestricted, would certainly and rapidly have reduced the severalties of its members in this, and all other kinds of their common property, to insufficiently small dimensions. It is true that they have at last been overtaken by this inconvenience; but it has been brought about by the action of a natural cause which could not have been met and obviated in any way: for it has been the result of an increase of population; and that increase of population has been the result of an increase of wealth; which again, in turn, was the result of an increase of variety in the ways opened for obtaining a living. Our porter from Meiringen to Brieg, Jean Ott, a burger of Im Hof, has ten children. He obtains his livelihood by carrying travellers’ knapsacks. Those knapsacks therefore have ultimately been the cause of the existence of the ten children. The boys will all be burgers of Im Hof. Their existence will lessen the value of the severalties of the common property of Im Hof. In this way, everywhere, the severalties are being so reduced as to be no longer sufficient for the support of families. Thus they become only prophylactics, if that, against pauperism.

The four parts then of the system we have been considering, the common summer pastures, the reclaimed appropriated prairies, the common forest for fuel, and for building and repairs, and the common terre laborable, hung together inseparably. Each was necessary under the circumstances of the character and natural formation of the country; and of the absence of accumulations of capital, and of anything else to give employment, the existence of which would have meant that there were other sources than land for supporting life. The Switzer—that is the governing fact—was the parasite of the cow. He could not have existed without it. But he could not have kept cows without their having been taken off his hands during the summer by their maintenance on the common mountain pastures. This was necessary for enabling him to form and maintain the prairie land, and to make hay from it. Otherwise the cows could not have been supported in the winter. But these prairies could not, as a general rule, have been formed without the stimulus of private property. Many families could not have existed unless they had had a supply of fuel from the common forest. An assured amount of garden-ground was almost as necessary as an assured amount of fuel.

It will help us to understand how this system acted, and why it acted as it did, if we observe how the introduction of the new conditions has affected it. Switzerland, which was for many ages the poorest country in Europe, is rapidly progressing towards becoming, in proportion to the amount of its population, one of the richest. As I have already reminded the reader, no other country in the world, in proportion to its population, manufactures cotton and silk so largely. Again, it is said that 150,000 travellers pass every year through the single town of Interlaken. We will not take into account any but these; and we will suppose that those who stay in the country some months as well as those who stay some weeks, and those who are careless, as well as those who are careful, about their outgoings, spend each, on an average of the whole, 35l. This will amount to 5,250,000l. As to Swiss investments in foreign securities, from what inquiries I have been able to make I have come to the conclusion that they are very considerable. This is nothing less than making foreign countries tributary to them. The interest paid on these investments is so much tribute. It is just as much a tribute as that which the Jews paid to the Romans, or which the Khedive is at this day paying to the Porte. How it came about in any one of these cases that the payment had, or has, to be paid, is practically, of no importance: what is essential, as far as the matter before us is concerned, is the fact of the payment. The money goes to Switzerland. Russians, Americans, French, Italians, Germans, are in this way working for, and are being taxed for, the Swiss. English, Dutch, and Danish funds do not pay interest enough for them. There is therefore no longer any point in the Frenchman’s sarcasm, ‘We fight for honour, but you fight for money.’ Nor in the Switzer’s rejoinder, ‘It is only natural that each of us, like the rest of the world, should fight for what he has not got.’ The Swiss have at last come to be so prosperous, and to have so many other means of making money, both at home and abroad, that they would not in these days risk their lives in foreign military service for a franc a day.

What we now have to observe is, that this influx of wealth has, to a great extent, rendered the old system of common pasturage both unnecessary and unfair. While it has been abrogating its necessity, it has been reversing its action. In these days a man keeps an hotel, or a shop; has a bank, or a factory; or in some way or other makes a good deal of money: perhaps it was made abroad, and he has returned home with it. He will now keep a dozen, he may even keep two dozen cows. He will be able to do this, because he will keep them out of the profits of his business, or from the interest of accumulated capital; and not, as was alone possible formerly, by his own labour and that of his family. If he were reduced to that means for keeping them, their number would be reduced to four or five. And this rich man is a burger, and therefore he is entitled to send them all up to the common pastures. If he have more than two dozen, all still may be sent. At the other extremity of society many are called into existence by the existence of the rich. These will be supported by wages. And these wages they will not get unless they work regularly. But if they work regularly for wages, they will not be able to spend the summer in collecting winter provender for cows. Nor in winter, if they had provender, could they devote their time to cows. These men, therefore, though burgers, equally with the rich, will be unable to turn their rights in the common pastures to account. Their rights thus fall into abeyance. And in many places the population has so increased that there is no longer common pasturage enough for those who do keep cows. Some half-dozen rich burgers, then, may alone have more cows than the pastures, which remain common, would be able to maintain, or an increase in the number of burgers who are able to keep a few cows each, may have brought things to the same point. And either of these cases may be coincident with the inability of a large proportion of the burgers to keep any cows at all. Increase, then, of wealth, and consequent increase of population, have altogether altered the action and defeated the purpose of the old system. In those communes in which the rich are in the majority—a state of society which, strange to say, does exist in some—the old rule is rigidly maintained: every burger is still entitled to send up to the common pastures all the cows he kept through the winter. In places, however, where wealth has so increased the number of cows that there is no longer sufficient common pasturage for all, each burger sends up a pro ratâ proportion of his herd, say a third, or a half. In such cases, by the very maintenance, as far as possible, of the old, originally fair rule, the poor, some partially, some utterly, are excluded from the use of their property. As Dr. Bekker observed to me, it is the literal application of the saying, that ‘to them who have shall be given, and they shall have abundantly; but from them who have not shall be taken away what they appear to have.’ In many places it has become the practice, and it is one which the force of circumstances is rapidly extending, to let the common pastures. The question then arises, of what is to be done with the proceeds? In the case of the communal alpes they may be applied to the payment of local rates; or they may be divided among the burgers, who may receive each an equal amount, or an amount proportionate to the number either of his cows, or of his family.

But to each of these methods, and I believe to every conceivable method of appropriating the proceeds, valid objections may be made. If they go in reduction, or whole payment, of rates for schools, roads, churches, fountains, police, &c., then the rich are eased in a far greater degree than the poor; who, according to the original principle of the system have an equal right in the common property with the rich; its use having been, at the time of its institution, so regulated—this was possible under the circumstances of those times—as to enable all to participate in it; and, too, to participate in it pretty equally. Riches have supervened, and have, as things now are, made this impossible. But as those who are now poor may some day become rich, their rights are still, contingently, equal to those of the rich. Or, if the proceeds are divided among the usagers in equal amounts, or in proportion to the number of cows owned, or of the family—and these methods of distribution are often resorted to in places where the population has quite outgrown the common pastures—the benefit to each burger will be very small. In the equal per capita distributions idleness will always be rewarded, without industry being ever encouraged. And in the proportionate distributions it will generally happen that those who want help most will get the least, and those who want it least will get the most; which difficulty will be further aggravated by the fact, that in these days many of those who want it most are least deserving of it. Again, all these methods of distribution exclude the new burgers; and such exclusions are in direct contradiction to the ideas, the sentiments, and the requirements of modern societies.

In those cases in which common pastures belong to sections of the burgers of a commune, that is to say, to corporations, for instance, to the burgers of a particular hamlet, or to certain families, either with or without a definite object to be promoted by the use, or the proceeds, of the common property, or in some way or other by those who hold it, it is found that the same disturbing action, as in the case of the communal property, though not quite to the same degree, has been introduced by the influx of riches. Some get rich, and some get poor; which in the case of these corporations also, renders the system unmeaning, and even noxious. And riches lead to an increase of population which renders the share of each corporator of little value.

The fact is that the old system is utterly inapplicable to the new conditions into which society has advanced. It was intended for that state of things, modified by the strong peculiarities of Switzerland, in which land is the only means of supporting life. Life may now be supported by capital, either invested or employed, a means which admits of indefinite extension, or by the labour and skill of those whom capital employs. This has deprived the old system of its character and utility; and even in many places made its action prejudicial to the interests both of individuals and of society. Its object—that of supporting life—can now be better attained by other arrangements, and also by other means.

Still the great principle to be dealt with in these days is identical with that which had to be dealt with originally. It must, however, be applied under the circumstances existing now, as it had to be under the circumstances existing then. It is the principle that the land of the country ought to be so held as to ensure the production of the greatest amount of food, possible under the conditions of the time, for the people of the country. Any arrangement which now excludes from the land the application to it of capital, the great modern agent of production, contradicts this principle. The old system therefore of holding the land in common contradicts it. It has also to be considered now, how what must be done for carrying out the paramount principle, can be done on a footing that is fair to all. A system which excludes a large part of the population from the chance of becoming owners of land contradicts this requirement. That is to say, the old system, which was in its day beneficial to the community, and fair to all, is now the reverse of beneficial to all, and the reverse of fair to all. Those who are now under the necessity of attempting to work it are beset with much the same kind of difficulties in which a general would find himself involved, if he were obliged to attempt to carry out a campaign with the commissariat and the tactics of the Homeric age. Much would be lost, much would be hindered, and the attempt, after all, could not be anything but unreal and mischievous; or their antiquated methods and position may be compared to what would be those of a colony of Esquimaux, who, having been settled in the genial climate, and amid the abundant resources, of a temperate region, were endeavouring to maintain inviolate the practices and the ways of living that had been necessary in their old Arctic home.

The administration of the common forests is, under existing circumstances, hampered with similar difficulties, though not quite to the same extent. Their produce for fuel, for building, and for repairs, was distributed in accordance with the size of the house. Now, however, there are large mansions, and very small tenements; and, if the old rule of distribution be maintained, the owners of the large mansions, who can very well afford to pay for their fuel, will receive half a dozen or more klafters of fuel, and timber in proportion, while the owners of small tenements may be receiving only one klafter of fuel, and timber in proportion to that. In some places, where the population has largely increased, the produce of the common forests is all sold, and the proceeds are applied to the maintenance of the destitute, or to some other public purpose.

As to the garden-ground, the increase of population has in many places reduced the share of each usager to an almost uselessly small plot of ground: the occupation of which must often prove a real detriment, by indisposing him to turn to some trade or employment, by which he might readily obtain the competency, with the hope, or appearance only of which, his few rods of land are now mocking him.

M. Emile de Laveleye, a learned writer, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, on the social and political relations of agriculture, thinks that he has discovered in the old Swiss system a remedy for the social and political maladies under which France has long been suffering. He advocates its adoption. Of course the adoption of anything of the kind is impossible. This is a matter in which the arrangements of the time can be engendered only by the circumstances of the time. As well might he advocate a reversion to bows and arrows as a scheme for enabling Europe to get rid of its costly armaments; or to domestic distaffs and looms as a remedy for the evils of the factory system. In these matters there can be no reversions. Even in Switzerland, where exceptional causes, the character of the country, and centuries of dearth of capital, so long maintained the system we have endeavoured to describe, and which he would fain endeavour to reproduce in France, it is seen by the more intelligent part of the nation that now, even in its remote and secluded valleys, in consequence of the increase of population and accumulation of capital, it is going, and must go. The holding of land in common they acknowledge to be, as things now are, an evil, and to be no longer capable of defence. The old ideas cannot now be carried out, the old objects cannot now be secured, by the old methods. Society has now needs, and has assumed a form, and has within it an agent, which renders some other arrangement more conformable to existing conditions, more workable, and more productive of the elements of moral and intellectual, as well as of material well-being; and, too, more fair for all. Those among the Swiss themselves who are in a position to take a view of the whole subject, now recognize what time has established among them—that land is no longer, as formerly, the only means of maintaining a family; that in the case of many it is not the best means; that more can be made of it that is to say, that it can be made to produce more food, which is the equivalent of its being made to support a greater number of families, by its being allowed to pass into the hands of private owners possessed of capital, than by its being kept as the common property of communes, or of corporations; and by its acquisition being made by the way of the results of any kind of industry, equally open and possible to all. They regret the difficulties which stand in the way of the removal of those antiquated shackles which now limit its uses and produce, and which do this mischief, ridiculously, in the name of equality; as if the perfection of equality were to exclude rigidly the majority of the community from all chance of ever acquiring any share in the property of the land. In this matter, the true equality for these days is to make the ownership of the land—the chief instrument of production, and participation in the produce of the land, as far as possible equal to all by the thousand ways of the thousand forms of industry society now requires. What is now wanted is that all should have the chance of such an education as would properly qualify each for some form of industry, and enable him by perseverance, thrift, and cultivated intelligence to turn it to good account. This would enable all, and each according to his merits, which should be the first aims of society in the era of capital, to participate in the produce of the soil. Make the produce as abundant as possible, and at the same time make that, as far as possible, common to all, in proportion to the exertions, which mean the intellectual and moral merits, of each. Of these times these are the requirements, which so far from being promoted, can only be thwarted by the system of common land, or by that of the minute division of the land. Both of these systems carry us in a thoroughly wrong direction.

So soon as facts oblige us to see these points, the existing system, so far as it is opposed to them, is demonstrated to have become antiquated and false. It begins therefore to be undermined, and to totter to its fall; no matter how unquestioned, varied, and great the services it was capable, under other circumstances, of rendering, and had rendered, to society. It was for the sake of those circumstances that it existed. When they are gone the reasons for its existence have gone with them. As it, itself, formerly superseded some other system, so must some other system now supersede it. This is the law of nature. In such matters gratitude for what once did good service, respect for the past, the charm that memory flings about old arrangements, have nothing to do with the settlement of the questions in debate, except in the way of securing ample time for their complete discussion. The governing consideration must always be, What under existing circumstances will be best for society? That is to say, in this particular case, What, as things now are, will give the community the best supply of food, and in such a manner as will be fairest and best for all, all the wants of society that are affected by the ownership and the produce of the land having been duly attended to? These are the old questions, which, from the beginning, advances in the conditions of society have reopened again and again, and which have been resettled again and again, always in conformity with the existing conditions of the epoch. They are questions that have relative as well as absolute elements, and which therefore, like that of government, and of almost everything belonging to the domain of human affairs, can never be settled once for all by the aid of some abstract theory. The circumstances, however, and events arising out of the circumstances, which are what force them into debate, always, sooner or later, force upon us a corresponding settlement of them.

A word more. Property, which, as we have seen, existed from the beginning, because it is an incident of life, is not theft. On the contrary, the worst theft is that of the highest property. And the highest property a man can have, and that, too, of which, in these days, the political and economical well-being of society requires that he should have as unrestricted use as of his capital and of his labour, is his capacity for moral and intellectual improvement; the point has now been reached at which these ideas are beginning to form themselves in the general mind; and the theft of this capacity is in a sense committed against those who are debarred from the opportunities, now possible, for its culture and development. We are beginning to see that it is a kind of theft to hinder a man from attaining to what, while it would be of advantage to him, is fairly within his reach; and, if this be just what would make him most truly a man, and enable him to discharge his duties to society as well as to himself, the theft is very far from being an insignificant one. It is, in fact, the very theft against which the Christian Church has all along been, or ought to have been, the protest of humanity: this was its raison d’être: though very naturally, but quite wrongly, so soon as it came to be an hierarchical organization, that part of the protest that had reference to what was intellectual was hushed, and, from obvious motives, knowledge and reason were thenceforth denounced. But so far it had falsified its purpose, abdicated its position, and ceased to be a Church, having become in its stead only an hierarchical organization. Society it is that is now unconsciously committing this theft, against which it is the highest duty of the true Church to protest. And it is society only, acting in its organized form, and through its accredited agent, the state, that can effectually make the restitution; and so far as the state attempts to do this, that is to say, to make the moral and intellectual improvement of the community its aim, it becomes the ally of the true Church.

The progress of society may be measured by the degree in which it enables larger and larger proportions of its members to enter upon a serviceable possession of this, their highest property. It will have attained a very high degree of progress when it shall have given to every member of the community opportunities and means for doing this: everyone will then have some chance of being able to turn his mental endowments to some account, to stand alone, and to take care of himself. That each should have this chance is now as necessary for society as it is for the individual. When the old Swiss system was established it was the material life only of small, poor, uncommercial communities that had to be thought about. Its originators therefore made such a portion of their land common as would be sufficient for this purpose. That arrangement only, then and there, could give the means for material existence; and no other kind of existence was or could have been at that time taken into consideration. All beyond this the Church took charge of, and attended to in accordance with its own ideas and in its own fashion. But now man can live a higher life; and for the requirements of his material life the possession, or direct participation in the use of land is not necessary: indeed, a better material life can, in many cases, be lived without its possession or use than with it. But these new conditions require that a man should be enabled to turn to good account his moral and intellectual capacities: they it is that must now be so cultivated as to enable him to obtain a livelihood by their exercise in the new world in which his lot has been cast.

This is what the present Swiss system of education aims at doing for every man in the country. Their old agrarian system gave to each, when that was what was necessary, a share in the common land. Life with them has now risen into a higher stage. It has moral and intellectual possibilities, which are also requirements, formerly not needed, nor dreamt of. The Swiss recognize this, and give to each opportunities for participating in the knowledge and moral training, as they conceive it, now possible. Having already freedom and political equality, they were able to rise to the idea of humanity. Their old agrarian system, too (morally it had acted in the very opposite direction to ours with its necessary supplement of a communistic poor law) had made industry, thrift, honesty, and foresight traditional and instinctive among them. There was therefore nothing to obscure their perception of, or weaken their desire for what ought to be done under the altered circumstances of the times. Formerly, in conformity with the possibilities and requirements of the age, the community had made some material provision for all; as much as it could, and as fairly as it could; and which would be enough, if turned to the best account by the industry of the individual, for a competent living in the fashion of those days. Time has rendered those arrangements antiquated and inapplicable. This landed provision cannot any longer be made for all. There are too many people and not enough land for that. But contemporaneously with this increase of numbers, which is the same thing as relative decrease and failure of the old landed means for living, a great variety of other means have been opened on all sides; and the stage upon which these may be turned to account has been expanded in the case of each from a small mountain-locked valley to, practically, the whole world. For these reasons, just as their old agrarian system made land, so their new educational system is making intellectual training, and some amount of moral training (though already they have much of that) common to all. The powers these confer are now in a sense common pastures, upon which all may keep flocks and herds; common forests, from which all may get fuel and building materials; and common garden-ground, by the cultivation of which all may supply their minor wants.

They have endeavoured to apply the old principle to a new, a better, and a higher world. The identity of principle, and the differences of application, are analogous to those that exist between the caterpillar and the butterfly. In both life, with its imperative requirements of food, air, light, warmth, &c., and its essential principles of assimilation, circulation, &c., is the same. But in the caterpillar this life has to be maintained by, and spent upon a leaf. Everything therefore is adapted to this condition. Its powerful jaws, its vigorous stomach, its restricted powers of locomotion, the tenacious hold of its feet, its sluggish disposition, its dull colours, are all referable to the leaf, that is to say, to its habitat and means of living. So with the butterfly. Its life is to be spent in the air, and among the flowers, and upon the honey distilled from the flowers. Hence its large powers of locomotion, its beautiful colours, its lively temperament, its sensitive antennæ, its fastidious stomach, its flexible proboscis. Everything in it has been readapted to the new conditions. So, too, with the Swiss. While they were in the earlier stage of their national existence, what was needed for each was a little bit of land, a cow or two, a spade, a manure basket, and a wife to carry it. This was their caterpillar stage. They are now passing into the butterfly stage. All their arrangements and provisions therefore have now to be reaccommodated to the new conditions in the required fashion. They must now be endowed with the capacity for collecting and turning to account capital, the distilled essence of all property, without which even the land cannot be made much of now. This life does not require the tough hide, the strong sinews, the gross stomach, the adstriction to a single spot, of the old life; but on the contrary, a vastly enlarged mobility both of body and mind, a readiness for turning anything to account, and for entering on any opening. They must be quick in thought and quick in action. If they cannot find what they want at home, they must be able and disposed to go to seek it elsewhere—here, there, anywhere. They must have scientific and technical knowledge; must be capable of appreciating new facts, and of taking large views; must be patient and painstaking; must have the power of working mentally for distant objects; must have an instinct of submission to law, both to the laws of society, which aim at justice to all, and at order, and to the laws of nature, submission to which enables a man to use effectually his own powers, and to turn to account the powers of nature. These are moral and intellectual qualities. And it is with these that the Swiss school system, like that of their North German neighbours, would fain endow the whole people.