With regard to the expression, de finibus, M. de Jubainville will have it mean “frontiers between nations.” In this he is doubly wrong, both historically and philologically. To begin with the historical error, Cæsar tells us of numerous quarrels amongst Gallic tribes; and these quarrels are never carried before the Druids. Are we to think that Cæsar said that the Druids settled disputes about frontiers, when he knew perfectly well that Druids did not decide them? It is absolutely incorrect to say that the Druids had the right of judging between tribes.[246] Moreover, when Cæsar enumerates the principal matters which had to be tried, he mentions murder as well as inheritance and boundaries; and it is impossible to doubt that he is thinking of the murder of a single person, the inheritance of a single owner, the boundaries of a single estate.
Philologically, M. de Jubainville maintains that the word fines may be used for the boundaries of a nation as well as for those of an estate. No doubt. The word is even used in a philosophical sense, and Cicero wrote a treatise, De finibus bonorum et malorum. In every language there are words of wide application; but the student is not misled by this. In philosophy he understands fines in a philosophical sense. If a general at the head of an army is crossing the territory of several nations, he understands fines in the sense of frontiers. If it is a question of private law, he will not doubt that fines is connected with individual rights; that it means the boundaries of an estate or a field. Now the passage in which Cæsar speaks of “suits concerning inheritance and boundaries” is one which deals entirely with law and justice.
M. de Jubainville has taken the trouble to count the number of times that fines occurs in the De Bello Gallico as applied to national or tribal frontiers, and finds they are seventy-seven. This is one of those arguments based on statistics which impress most people by an appearance of matter-of-fact appropriateness. But look at it more closely. Is the De Bello Gallico a book of private law? It is a history of military campaigns, and of negotiations between nations; and it is very natural that the author should frequently speak of the frontiers or the territory of these nations. If he had written a work on law, of which he was quite capable, he would have spoken throughout of the boundaries of private estates. Ought one to be surprised at this? Read Thiers’ thirty volumes; make the same calculation that M. de Jubainville did for the De Bello Gallico; and, if you follow the same method of reasoning, you will come to the conclusion that the French are unacquainted with boundaries to private property.
What is more important to remark is, that in the whole work, in the midst of the history of wars, there occur only seven paragraphs on the customs of the Gauls and their institutions in times of peace (VI., 11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22). Now, in these seven chapters you will find the word fines used three times in the unmistakable sense of boundaries of fields.[247] And so we see that, when Cæsar is speaking of wars, he uses fines in the sense of the frontiers of a country, and, when he is speaking of law, he uses it in the sense of the boundaries of private property. And, if we are partial to figures, we may notice that while M. de Jubainville has counted up seventy-seven fines in three hundred and forty chapters, I have counted three in seven chapters. The proportion is well kept.
But instead of making this calculation it would have been better to have noticed something which is of far more importance; in every instance where the word signifies a frontier, its meaning is unmistakably indicated by the addition of the name of the people in question. Thus Cæsar says, fines Helvetiorum, fines Sequanorum, fines Santonum, fines Æduorum, fines Lingonum, fines Ambianorum, and so on without exception.[248] Take the seventy-seven examples collected by M. de Jubainville, and you will see that the word fines, when it means frontiers, is always followed by the word “people,” or by the name of a people. If Cæsar had wished to speak of trials about national boundaries, he would have said controversiæ de finibus populorum. If he did not so express himself, it was because he was speaking of boundaries in the most restricted sense of the word.
M. de Jubainville might have found this very same phrase, which he has twisted so strangely, si de finibus controversia est, in Cicero. We have it there word for word; si de finibus controversia est in Chapter X. of the Topics. Let us see whether in this case it can apply to the frontiers of a people. Cicero, giving an example of a definition, writes: “When you say si de finibus controversia est, the boundaries of private estates are clearly meant.”[249]
And so the passage from Cæsar cannot be explained away as M. de Jubainville would wish. He cannot get rid of the fact that Cæsar records in so many words that inheritance and boundaries were to be found amongst the Gauls; the very opposite, that is, of community in land. He gets together from other sources a variety of arguments which appear to him to show that the Gauls held their land in common. They are as follows: 1, Polybius says (II. 17) that the Gauls of Italy did not cultivate the land; 2, in Cæsar’s time the Helvetii wished to leave their country in order to settle in a more fruitful one; 3, the Ædui admitted into their country ten thousand Boii and gave them land; 4, there was in Gallic law a custom according to which a husband and wife threw into a common stock an equal portion of the possessions of each, and allowed the income arising from this property to accumulate, so that the whole, principal and interest, might belong to the survivor. These four circumstances are supposed to prove that private property in land did not exist.[250]
Not one of the four appears to me to bear with it this consequence. Examine them one by one. I. The passage from Polybius refers, not to the Gauls of his own time, but to the Gauls who invaded Italy five centuries before, and who drove out the Etruscans from the district of the Po. The historian says that these invaders, being inclined to pursue their conquests, did not at first settle down and cultivate the soil, but lived on the produce of their herds. His information bears upon the Gauls at one particular moment in their history, at the time when they were planning an attack upon central Italy. It proves nothing at all about the Gauls in general, and certainly nothing about the Gauls of the time of Cæsar.
II. That the Helvetii wished to emigrate does not imply that they lived under a system of community in land. It merely implies that they preferred the soft climate and fertile plains of the south-west of Gaul to their own rugged and mountainous country. Is it an unknown thing for peasant proprietors to emigrate for the sake of seeking a more productive soil elsewhere?
III. Because the Ædui invited ten thousand Boii to settle in their country, does that prove that private property was unknown to them? Not at all. The civitas Æduorum, which covered a considerable area and included five of our departments, might very probably have had so large an extent of public domain, or been able to find enough unoccupied land, to admit ten thousand new cultivators. Such a circumstance, following, as it does, immediately after the ravages of Ariovistus, can easily be explained, and is not the slightest evidence of communism in land.