Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

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.