For the same reason bequest was prohibited among the Greeks, Italians, Germans, and Slavs in the early period of their law. The land must pass to the son or the nearest relations. For the same reason, again, the daughter did not inherit; because by her marriage she would have carried the land out of the family. All these facts, which it is now impossible not to admit, are unmistakable signs of a condition in which property belonged to the family. They are all directly contrary to a condition of communism.
M. de Laveleye also lays great stress upon Sparta; only he omits to mention that private property was established there from the first beginning of the city, and that every κλῆρος remained attached to the same family down to the revolution of Cleomenes, i.e., for eight centuries.[237] To make up for that, he tells us of certain imaginary brotherhoods, “which must have played an important part in the social body;” a statement for which there is no authority. He adds that Sparta “had a wide extent of common land;” for which also there is no evidence: and that “this common land was used to provide for the public meals;” which is directly opposed to the definite evidence we do possess.
He accumulates quotations, but they are inexact. He refers to Aristotle (Polit. vii., 10); but all Aristotle says is that men began by being hunters and shepherds; does that imply that when they became agriculturists they held the soil in common? He quotes Virgil, who in the Æneid (xi. 315) says that “the Aurunci tilled the land in common;” turn to the passage; the expression “in common” is not there; M. de Laveleye has unconsciously added it himself. Every writer does this who is under the influence of a fixed idea.[238] Speaking of Rome, he declares “that he sees a proof of primitive community in the common meals of the curiæ;” and he does not notice that these repasts of the curia only took place on certain festivals, and that they were sacred feasts, as we are expressly told by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who witnessed them. “The curiæ,” he says, “with their priests, perform sacrifices and eat together on feast days.” This is not an agrarian community; it is a religious communion. Suppose that a stranger, seeing a number of good Christians communicating in our churches, declared that he saw in this a proof that the French held their land in common! A little farther we read: “The law of the Twelve Tables preserves a trace of common ownership; for in default of the proximus agnatus the gens is preferred to the other agnates.” There is nothing resembling this in what we have of the law of the Twelve Tables; the gens was never preferred to the agnates. Our author quotes, it is true, the following sentence, which he attributes to Gaius: in legitimis hereditatibus successio non est: gentiles familiam habento, which is said to be in Gaius iii., 12; but look in Gaius for this extraordinary sentence, and you certainly will not find it. Thus, alike for Greece and for Rome, M. de Laveleye has got together a number of authorities; but there is not a single quotation that is exact, or that has the meaning he attributes to it.
7. We now come to the Southern Slavs, i.e., the Bosnians, Servians, and Bulgarians, who, in their turn, have to furnish arguments in support of the theory.[239] This chapter of M. de Laveleye’s is the most interesting in the book, the most curious, and, in my opinion, the most exact. Only I do not see how it bears upon the problem with which we are occupied. It is very true that the Servian or Bosnian village often cultivates its land in common. But this village is composed of a small group of from twenty to sixty persons, who dwell in four or five houses built within a single enclosure; and the land belonging to it seldom exceeds sixty acres. Look at it closely, and you will see that this little village is nothing more than a family. M. de Laveleye recognises this (p. 204). The brothers as a rule keeping together and the family continuing to form one undivided body, the property remains united like the family. The land is cultivated in common and the produce is consumed in common, under the direction of the head of the family. This is described by M. de Laveleye with zest and ability; but it is not community in land; it is the common ownership of the family. We have seen it amongst the ancient Greeks; in the most ancient Roman law; amongst the Germans; and now we find it amongst the Servians. The family forms a small village; it keeps to itself on its own land; and this land is a common possession which has belonged to it from time immemorial. It must be added that all the characteristics which accompany family ownership amongst the Greeks and Germans are to be found here. The custom of bequest does not exist, nor does that of gift or sale. All the members of a family are common owners of the soil, and consequently they alone are the heirs. Anyone leaving the family loses his rights over the land; anyone entering it by adoption has the same rights as those who were born into it. Except that the chief is no longer the eldest member or the son of the eldest, but the one whom the rest elect—a change which naturally came about in the course of time—this family resembles in every other respect the ancient Greek family. But that the soil belongs to the nation or the tribe there is not the slightest evidence.
8. M. de Laveleye now comes to the allmenden of Switzerland. He tells us “that never was there a more radical democracy than that which was to be found in primitive Switzerland,” and he describes the landgemeinde, “which goes back to the earliest times” (pages 270 et seq). “The Allmend,” he says again, “presents the ancient type of true justice, which ought to serve as the basis for the society of the future” (p. 282).
I should like to learn, however, whether these allmenden really do come down from remote times. Our author tells us so, but without bringing forward any kind of proof. He declares “that they go back to the patriarchal period” (p. 291), “that they have lasted for thousands of years” (p. 281). It is easy to say this; but on what evidence does it rest? Private property exists in Switzerland, and our author cannot point to any epoch in which it did not exist. If we examine the law of the Burgundians and of the Alamanni, by which the country was first governed, it is private property we find, not common ownership. If we examine the charters down to the 12th century, we still find private property. The allmenden of to-day certainly date back some six or seven centuries. Can they be traced farther back than that?
And what exactly are these allmenden? Do we see in them a system of non-division of land, a system, that is, under which the land, being considered the common property of the whole people, is not supposed to belong to anyone individually? By no means. Private property is in full force in Switzerland, side by side with the allmenden. The allmenden are only a part of the land of each village and indeed the smallest part, a tenth, or, at most, a fifth. They are usually forests, mountain pastures, or marshes, and include very little land capable of cultivation. Private property is accordingly the dominant fact; common ownership only concerns accessories.
The allmenden are just what is to be found in every country; they are the village commons. It would be interesting and instructive if we could discover their origin, just as it is interesting to inquire into the origin of the commons in France. But village commons do not in any way prove a general system of common ownership; and no one has yet been able to prove that they are the outcome of such a system. We know that when the Romans founded a colony, they instituted private property from the very first; but at the same time they reserved a portion of the soil, which was to be the common possession of the new city. And to go farther back, we know that Rome herself, from the time she first appears in history, had an ager publicus at the same time as agri privati, and that the Greek cities also had a γῆ δημοσία. This public land was in no way an indication that the people lived a single day without individual estates. The allmenden of Switzerland are commons of the same character as we find everywhere else. Each village has its own; and they are the property of the village, which sometimes sells them, lets them to the highest bidder, or sells the wood upon them, to defray the expenses of its school or church. Frequently the commons are left for the inhabitants to use as they like; and they get wood from them, graze their cattle there, or cultivate small portions. But it is important to notice that only those who own land in the village have any rights of enjoyment over the allmend. I refer chiefly to the condition of things before the last forty years; for only quite recently have such rights been extended to mere residents and the inhabitants generally. In essential characteristics the allmend is not common property; it does not belong to all; it is held in common by people who are already owners of land. It is an appendage of private property.
M. de Laveleye has written some beautiful passages on the usefulness of these commons, on the mistake which has been made in France in their general alienation, and on the happy results produced by them in Switzerland, both in almost entirely preventing the growth of absolute destitution and in attaching the poorest peasant to his native soil. These considerations are just, profound, and inspired by generous feeling, although but little applicable to modern society. But we are now considering them in relation to the supposed common ownership of land; with that the allmenden have nothing to do, and they prove nothing as to its earlier existence.
9. M. de Laveleye finally refers to the Scotch townships as a proof of primitive community.[240] In the more distant parts of Scotland, especially in certain islands lying to the north-west, we find groups of people who hold the land of a village in common and divide it amongst themselves in separate lots every year. Is this a system of land communism, or, as it is called, collective ownership? At the first glance one would think so. But if you are not satisfied with a first glance and look further, you will observe that the village belongs to a single person, the landlord. The peasants are nothing more than the cultivators. M. de Laveleye cannot help recognising this: “The land of the village,” he says, “is let to them by the owner.” Again: “The land does not belong to them; it is the property of a landlord to whom they pay rent for it.” The cultivators act together as an association “with the consent of the landlord;” and there are villages in which the landlord does not allow this collective system of occupation. “They have a head who is generally appointed by the landlord.” The rent is paid collectively. We have a description of the township in a work published recently. The house of the lord, the domus dominica of our charters, stands in the centre of the village, by the side of the church.[241] It is built of stone; and around it, at a little distance, stand the dwellings of the “villeins,” built of mud and thatched with straw. The villeins owe their lord rent and certain personal services.