I. There was a great diversity in the conditions of property. In our days, the condition of property is uniform and everywhere the same; whoever the proprietor may be, he possesses his property, whatever may be its character, on the same tenure of right, and subject to the same laws as any other. Between properties which are the most distinct in character, there is thus far an identity. This is one of the most unequivocal symptoms and safest guarantees of the progress of legal equality. During the times of which we have been speaking, the diversified conditions under which property was held would necessarily lead to the formation of several classes in society, between which existed great, factitious, and permanent inequality. Men were not merely proprietors to a greater or less extent; besides the inequality in the amount of wealth, there was also an inequality in the nature of the wealth possessed, than which it is impossible to conceive of a more powerful instrument for oppression. Even this, however, was a step in advance out of the slavery existing among the ancients. The slave could possess nothing,—was essentially incapable of owning property. In the times of which I am speaking, the mass of the population had not become full and absolute possessors of property, but was attaining to a possession that was more or less imperfect and precarious, by which it had gained the means of yet loftier ascents.
Isolation Of Proprietors.
II. Landed property was then submitted to the restraints of dependence on individuals. At present, all property is free, and is at the disposal only of its owner. General society has been formed,—the State has been organized,—every proprietor is united to his fellow-citizens by a multitude of ties and relations, and to the state by the protection which he receives from it, and the taxes to which he is subject in return: there is, thus, independence without isolation. From the sixth to the eleventh century, independence was necessarily accompanied by isolation: the proprietor of an allod lived upon his lands almost without buying or selling anything. He owed scarcely anything to a State which hardly existed, and which could not assure him of an efficient protection. The condition, therefore, of the allods and their proprietors was at that time a con that was to a considerable extent anti-social. In more ancient times, in the forests of Germany, men without landed properties lived at least in common. When they became proprietors, if the allodial system had succeeded in becoming prevalent, the chiefs and their associates would have been separated, without ever being summoned to meet and recognize one another as citizens. Society would not have been at all constituted. It exists in those relations which unite men together, and in the ties out of which these relations arise. It necessarily demands a law, a condition of dependence. And when it is not so far advanced as that a sufficient number of these relations and ties have been established between the State and the individual, then individuals become dependent one upon another; and it was to this state of things that the seventh century had arrived. It was the imperfection of society which caused the allodial system in regard to landed property to perish, and the beneficiary or tributary system to prevail. The independence of allods could only exist in connexion with their isolation, and isolation is anti-social. The hierarchical dependence of benefices became the tie to unite properties with one another, and society within itself.
Stationary Condition Of Wealth.
III. Out of this distribution and this character of landed property, a very important fact has resulted; namely, that during several centuries scarcely any means existed by which either the state or individuals could increase their wealth. Most proprietors of any importance did not cultivate the land at all; it was for them merely a capital, the revenues of which they gathered without troubling themselves to augment it, or to render it more productive. On the other side, most of those who cultivated the land were not proprietors, or were only so in a precarious and imperfect manner; they did not seek from the earth more than means of subsistence, and did not look to it as a means of enriching or elevating them. Agricultural labour was almost unknown to the rich, and to the poor it yielded nothing beyond the bare necessities of existence. 'Hence, resulted the continual impoverishment of the larger proprietors, which forced them incessantly to have recourse to violence, in order to preserve their fortune and their rank. Hence, resulted also, at the same time, that stationary condition of the population of the country districts which was prolonged for so long a period. Landed property tended always to become concentrated, from the very circumstance that its products did not increase. Accordingly, it is not in the country districts and in agricultural labour, but in the towns, in their commerce and industry, that we shall find the earliest germs of the accumulation of public wealth, and of the progress of civilization. The indolence of the upper classes, and the misery of the lower classes, in the middle ages, proceeded chiefly from the nature and distribution of territorial property.
IV. Beneficiary property was one of the most influential principles in the formation of large societies. In the absence of public assemblies and of a central despotism, it nevertheless established a bond, and formed relations between men dispersed over a vast tract of country, and thereby rendered possible a federative hierarchy, which should embrace a still wider circle. Among the nations of antiquity, the extension of the State was incompatible with the progress of civilization; either the State must be dislocated, or despotism would prevail. Modern States have presented a different spectacle, and to this result the character of beneficiary property has powerfully contributed.
Lecture XVI.
Of the state of persons, from the fifth to the tenth century.
Impossibility of determining this, according to any fixed and general principle.
The condition of lands not always correspondent with that of persons.
Variable and unsettled character of social conditions.
Slavery.
Attempt to determine the condition of persons according to the Wehrgeld.
Table of twenty-one principal cases of Wehrgeld.
Uncertainty of this principle.
The true method of ascertaining the condition of persons.