Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

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.