But though the cultivators already at work were probably left as they were, it is very likely that they were joined by many new-comers. We can hardly suppose that free English warriors would have settled down at once as tillers of the soil, toiling half the days of the week on land not their own. But Tacitus describes a class of persons among the Germans whom he repeatedly calls slaves, and speaks of as subject to the arbitrary authority of their masters. They were not, he expressly says, employed in gangs, as on a Roman villa; but each man had his own house and family, and rendered to his master no other service than the periodical payment of a certain quantity of corn, or cattle, or cloth. He goes so far as to compare this class with the Roman coloni, though they differed from them in not being legally free. He calls our attention further to the presence of a number of freedmen, occupying a position but little above that of slaves. There is no reason at all to suppose that Tacitus regarded these slaves and freedmen as few in number. And if there were slaves and freedmen in the same position among the invading English, they would readily fall into the ranks of the servile cultivators.[40]
On the whole, we may conclude that the main features of the later manorial system were of Roman origin, and that a large part—how large we are unable to say—of the working population was of Provincial blood. But it does not follow that every later manor represents a Roman villa, or that all the Roman estates had the extent of the manors which now represent them. In both of these directions there was opportunity for much later development: many new manors were doubtless created on new clearings, and many old manors were enlarged. It would be easy enough to create fresh servile tenancies if there was a large body of slaves; and such there certainly was even in the early centuries of the English occupation. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the mark theory has been to create a vague impression that any condition lower than absolute freedom was altogether exceptional in early English society. But we can hardly turn over the old English laws without seeing that this could not have been the case. Not only is there frequent reference to slaves, but manumission occupies as prominent a position as in the Continental codes, was accomplished by ceremonies of a similar character, and brought with it the same consequence in the abiding subjection of the freedman to his former master.[41] As on the Continent also, the Church interfered for the slave’s protection, and endeavoured to secure for him a property in the fruits of his labour.[42] It is not necessary to revert to the discussion as whence this class came. It is enough to point to it as explaining the extension of the manorial system. It will, however, be noticed that every fresh proof that the conditions of society in England were similar to those on the Continent strengthens the argument of the preceding pages.
There is one further element in the problem which must not be overlooked. Mr. Seebohm’s doctrine that the later villeins were descended from servile dependants has perhaps led some to suppose that the only alternative to the mark theory is the supposition that the villeins of the Middle Ages were all the descendants of slaves. But here the analogy of Continental conditions is again of use. Though there is no trace of the free village community, at any rate in historical times, and the villa with its slaves was the germ of the later seigneury; yet the servile tenants of subsequent centuries were to no small extent the descendants of coloni, who, though bound to the soil, were still technically free, centuries after the Roman rule had passed away.[43] And so in the early English laws we find men technically free, whom, none the less, it can scarcely be exaggeration to describe as serfs. Such, for instance, is the freeman who works on the Sabbath “by his lord’s command,”[44] or who kills a man “by his lord’s command;”[45] who pays a fine if he goes from his lord without leave;[46] or who receives from his lord a dwelling as well as land, and so becomes bound not only to the payment of rent, but also to the performance of labour services.[47] Yet, the colonus of pre-English days and his descendants might long retain a position superior to that of a slave with an allotment. In obscure differences of this kind may possibly be found the origin of the distinction between the “privileged” and “unprivileged” villeins of later centuries.[48]
It must be allowed that there is still very much that is obscure in the early history of villeinage. This obscurity may be expected to disappear as social antiquities come to be studied by scholars who are economists as well as historians. It was on the economic side, if the criticism may be ventured, that M. Fustel de Coulanges was weak. He never seemed to grasp the difference between what we may call the joint-husbandry of the mediæval village group, and the liberty of the modern farmer to make of his land what he pleases. While pointing out that M. de Laveleye does not prove common ownership, he fails to realise that, even if this is so, the joint-husbandry, with its appurtenant common rights, is a phenomenon of the utmost interest, and deserves careful attention. He seems to think that it explains itself; although, the more complex and the more widespread it proves to be, the less likely does it seem that it originated in the miscellaneous promptings of individual self-interest.
We may perhaps state the problem thus. In the mediæval manor there were two elements, the seigneurial—the relations of the tenants to the lord; and the communal—the relations of the tenants to one another. The mark theory taught that the seigneurial was grafted on to the communal. The value of the work of M. Fustel de Coulanges and of Mr. Seebohm is in showing that we cannot find a time when the seigneurial element was absent; and also in pointing to reasons, in my opinion conclusive, for connecting that element with the Roman villa. But the communal element is still an unsolved mystery. Among the difficulties which lie on the surface in M. Fustel’s treatment of the question, it may be worth while to mention two. He insists that the villa itself, from the earliest time at which it appears, has a unity which it retains throughout.[49] This seems to suggest some earlier economic formation out of which it arose; for if the villas were originally nothing more than private estates, like the estates formed in a new country in our own day, they would hardly have had such a fixity of outline. Then, again, nothing is more characteristic of the later manor than the week-works, the labour performed by each villein for two or three days every week on the lord’s demesne. But such week-works do not appear in mediæval documents until A.D. 622.[50] M. Fustel hardly realises that a fact like this requires explanation; or, indeed, that such services were far more onerous than any he describes in the case of the earlier coloni.
Difficulties such as these can only be satisfactorily overcome by taking into account both sides of the subject—the economic as well as the constitutional or legal. Side by side with a development which combined together gangs of slaves and the households of dependent coloni into the homogeneous class of serfs, and then went on to make out of the mediæval serf the modern freeman, another series of changes was going on of which M. Fustel de Coulanges says nothing. It was the development from a “wild field grass husbandry,” where a different part of the area in occupation was broken up for cultivation from time to time, to the “three-field system” with its permanent arable land pasture, and then again from that to the “convertible husbandry” and the “rotation of crops” of more recent times. The task for the economic historian is to put these two developments into their due relation the one to the other.
The study of economic history is altogether indispensable, if we are ever to have anything more than a superficial conception of the evolution of society. But it must be thorough; and we must not be over-hasty in proclaiming large results. And although a principal motive for such inquiry will be the hope of obtaining some light on the direction in which change is likely to take place in the future, it will be wise for some time to come for students resolutely to turn away their eyes from current controversies. There is a sufficient lesson in the topic we have been considering. The history of the mark has served Mr. George as a basis for the contention that the common ownership of land is the only natural condition of things; to Sir Henry Maine it has suggested the precisely opposite conclusion that the whole movement of civilisation has been from common ownership to private. Such arguments are alike worthless, if the mark never existed.
NOTE A.—ON THE VILLAGE IN INDIA.
It has been remarked above that the history of land-tenure in India calls for fresh examination, unbiased by any theory as to its development in Europe. It may, however, be added that, so far as may be judged from the material already accessible to us, India supports the mark-hypothesis as little as England. The negative argument may be thus drawn out:—1. The village-groups under the Mogul empire were bodies of cultivators with a customary right of occupation. The proprietor of the soil, in theory and in practice, was the Great Mogul. The dispute between the two schools of English officials early in the present century as to whether the ryot could properly be regarded as an owner or not, arose from an attempt to make Indian facts harmonise with English conceptions. The ryot had, indeed, a fixity of tenure greater than that of an ordinary English tenant; on the other hand, the share of the produce which he was bound to pay to the emperor or his delegate “amounted to a customary rent, raised to the highest point to which it could be raised without causing the people to emigrate or rebel” (Sir George Campbell, in Systems of Land Tenure). The French traveller, Bernier, who resided in India twelve years, and acted as physician to Aurungzebe, describes in 1670 the oppression to which the “peasantry” were subjected, and discusses the question “whether it would not be more advantageous for the king as well as for the people, if the former ceased to be sole possessor of the land, and the right of private property were recognised in India as it is with us” (Travels, tr. Brock, i., p. 255).
2. Can we get behind the period of Mogul rule, and discover whether it was super-imposed directly on a number of free cultivating groups, or whether it swept away a class of landlords? Such an opportunity seems to be presented by the institutions of Rajputana, which are described by Sir Alfred Lyall as “the only ancient political institutions now surviving upon any considerable scale in India,” and as having suffered little essential change between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries (Asiatic Studies, pp. 185, 193). “In the Western Rajput States the conquering clans are still very much in the position which they took up on first entry upon the lands. They have not driven out, slain, or absolutely enslaved the anterior occupants, or divided off the soil among groups of their own cultivating families.... Their system of settlement was rather that of the Gothic tribes after their invasion of the Danubian provinces of the Roman empire, who, according to Finlay, ‘never formed the bulk of the population in the lands which they occupied, but were only lords of the soil, principally occupied in war and hunting.’ In a Rajput State of the best preserved original type, we still find all the territory ... partitioned out among the Rajputs, in whose hands is the whole political and military organisation.... Under the Rajputs are the cultivating classes ... who now pay land rent to the lords or their families, living in village communities with very few rights and privileges, and being too often no more than rack-rented peasantry” (Ibid., p. 197). Here, it is true, we have a case of conquest by an invading race; but if this be compared with the description given by Sir William Hunter of the constitution of Orissa under its native princes, before the period of Mahometan rule, it will be seen that the condition of the cultivators was much the same, whoever might be their masters. Orissa would seem to have been divided into two parts, the royal domain “treated as a private estate and vigilantly administered by means of land-bailiffs,” and the estates of the “feudal nobility,” known as Fort-holders (Orissa, pp. 214-219). In the petty Tributary States in the neighbourhood of British Orissa, there are said to be now no intermediary holders between the husbandman and the Rajah, “in whom rests the abstract ownership, while the right of occupancy remains with the actual cultivator.” The condition of things reproduces, therefore, on a small scale and subject to British control, what was to be found on an immensely larger scale under the Mogul emperors. Whether there ever were in these districts lords of land between the prince and the peasant is not clear.