[1161] Let us open the Cod. Dipl. at the beginning of Edmund’s reign (ii. 218). The number of manses given in twenty-five consecutive charters is as follows: 10, 20, 10, 10, 9, 10, 15, 7, 8, 20, 10, 3, 5, 20, 30, 3, 6, 5, 3, 7, 20, 20, 5, 8, 5.
[1162] It seems almost necessary to protest that to-day our landowners are not semi-servile occupants of the soil, though they pay land taxes, house taxes, income taxes and rates innumerable.
[1163] I can not but think that Fustel de Coulanges knew his business thoroughly well, and that if the German is to be taught his proper and insignificant place, the less that is said of intermixed ‘strip-holding’ the better, though to ignore it utterly was, even in France, a bold course.
[1164] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 431–41.
[1166] This seems to me the net outcome of the long and interesting controversy which has divided the Germanists as to the nature of the German Genossenschaft.
[1167] This is no extravagant hypothesis. See e.g. Stat. 7 Hen. VIII. c. 1 Thacte advoidyng pullyng downe of townes.
[1168] See Army Act, 1881, 44 and 45 Vic. c. 58, sec. 115.
[1169] Flach, Les origines de l’ancienne France, ii. 45, referring to the classical passages in Cæsar and Tacitus, says: ‘Ce serait un abus de mots de dire que la tribu ou que le clan sont propriétaires. La tribu (civitas) a la souveraineté du territoire, les clans de leurs subdivisions ont l’usage des parts qui leur sont assignées. La conception même de la propriété est exclue par la nature des terres: étendue de friches toujours renaissantes et en surabondance toujours: superest ager.’ See also Dargun, Ursprung des Eigenthums, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, v. 55.
[1170] Dargun, Ursprung des Eigenthums, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, v. 1 (1884). See also Hildebrand, Recht und Sitte, Jena, 1896.