Chapter VI: Part 6

If you wished to employ the comparative method it would first of all be needful to study each nation in itself, to study it throughout its history, and above all in its law. Should you wish to know if the ancient Greek cities held their land in common, you must study Greek law. For the Romans, you must go over the whole history of Rome; for the Germans, you must take German law. M. Viollet and M. de Laveleye make frequent references to ancient India; why do they not mention that in all the ancient Hindoo law that has come down to us the rights of private property are sanctioned, although, of course, the holding of property in common by co-heirs is also recognised? Why has no one quoted the old maxim: “The land belongs to the man who first clears it, as the deer belongs to the man who first wounds it”? They prefer to quote certain customs, whose importance they enormously exaggerate, rather than present to us the rules which were constant and normal. The comparative method does not consist in discovering amongst fifteen different nations fifteen little facts, which, if interpreted in a certain manner, unite in the construction of a system; it consists in studying a number of nations in regard to their law, their ideas, all the circumstances of their social life, and in discovering what they have in common and wherein they differ. I greatly fear that this comparative method, when it shall be seriously applied, will give very different results than those that MM. Viollet and de Laveleye believe they have obtained from the comparative method as they understand it.

[227] M. de Laveleye, _De la propriété collective du sol_, in the _Revue de Belgique_, 1886, p. 50 of the reprint.

[228] _Ibidem_, p. 49.

[229] _Ibidem_, p. 65.

[230] Strabo, xv., 1., 66, edit. Didot, p. 610: παρ’ ἄλλοις δὲ κατὰ συγγένειαν κοινῇ τοὺς καρποὺς ὲργασαμένονς, ἐπὰν συγκομίσωσιν, αἴρεσθαι ἔκαστον εἰς διατροφὴν τοῦ ἔτους. If one reads the whole chapter, one sees that Nearchus, who distinguishes between general and exceptional institutions, νόμους, τούς μὲν κοινοὺς, τούς δὲ ἰδίους, includes this among the exceptional.

[231] See the work of M. Eug. Robe, _Origines de la propriété immobilière en Algérie_, 1883--a volume which is full of facts.

[232] Em. de Laveleye, _De la propriété_, p. 105.

[233] _Id._, _La propriété collective_, in the _Revue de Belgique_, 1886, pp. 2-24 of the reprint.

[234] Em. de Laveleye, _De la propriété_, p. 152.

[235] _Ibidem_, p. 161.

[236] Save in the exceptional case described by Diodorus in the Lipari islands.

[237] This is shewn by Heraclides of Pontus in the _Fragmenta hist. græc._, of Didot, vol. II., p. 211; and by Plutarch, _Life of Agis_, 5. To this can be added the other texts cited in my _Étude sur la propriété à Sparte_, 1880. See also the work of M. Claudio Jannet.

[238] In the same way he cites Ælian, V. 9, as saying that the inhabitants of Locri and Rhegium cultivated the land in common. What Ælian says is that “the cities of Locri and Rhegium have made a treaty which permits the inhabitants of the one town to settle on the territory of the other.” Of common cultivation there is not a word. These authorities are given in the article by M. de Laveleye, in _Revue de Belgique_, 1886, pp. 9 _et seq._ of the reprint.

[239] _De la propriété et de ses formes primitives_, p. 201.

[240] _La propriété collective du sol_, in the _Revue de Belgique_, 1886. He repeats the argument in the _Revue socialiste_, 1888, p. 452, and in the _Revue d’économie politique_, July, 1888.

[241] Isaac Taylor, in the _Contemporary Review_, Dec., 1886, referred to by M. de Laveleye.

[242] _E.g._, M. P. Viollet in all the latter part of the article already referred to.

V.

_On community of land amongst the Gauls._

It would be indeed surprising had the supporters of this theory not applied it to the ancient Gauls. So little is known about them, that it is very tempting and not very difficult to introduce community in land into their history.

One single fact, however, ought to stand in the way; it is that Cæsar, whose book is the only authority which has historical value, nowhere tells us that land was common amongst the Gauls. His silence on this point is not a thing which can be passed over. It is, indeed, in the eyes of every one accustomed to historical research, a very significant fact. It is true that Cæsar does not expressly state that private property was the custom amongst the Gauls. For a writer who is only speaking in passing of Gallic institutions, to omit to call attention to a law of property which was in conformity with what he was accustomed to, is not the same thing as to omit to mention a communism which would be the opposite of what he was accustomed to, and which would strike him by its very strangeness. It must be noticed that Cæsar is not describing the entire social condition of the Gauls; he contents himself with mentioning those customs which have struck him as being very different from those he saw in Italy. We have only to read the ten paragraphs which he devotes to this subject, to recognise this. After describing in three paragraphs what was peculiar in their political organisation, and in three more what was peculiar in their religion, he passes on to what was peculiar in their private life, and he begins as follows--“As to the institutions of private life, the following are those wherein they differ from other nations.” By “other nations” Cæsar clearly means the nations that he knew that is, primarily, the Italians and Greeks. This opening sentence makes it plain that Cæsar intended only to tell us of characteristics which were peculiar to the Gauls. He is going to mention differences, not resemblances. If private property is the custom there as it is in Rome, it will not be necessary to say so; but if it is not the custom, he will say so. His absolute silence on this point is a proof that the Gauls did not sensibly differ from the Italians in the matter; his silence implies that they were not ignorant of private property. We must remember that the entire absence of private property would have appeared so strange to a Roman that it could not have escaped Cæsar’s notice. He observed it in Germany where he passed only eighteen days; he would certainly have discovered it in Gaul where he passed eight summers. If he does not mention community in land, it is obviously because it did not exist.

But we have evidence even more convincing. Going on to speak of the Germans, he remarks that he will explain “in what they differ from the Gauls, _quo differant hae nationes inter sese_” (vi., 11); and further on: “The Germans differ much from this manner of life of the Gauls, _Germani multum ab hac consuetudine differunt_.” He then draws the following contrast between the two nations: 1, the Germans have no Druids; 2, the Germans have not the same gods as the Gauls; 3, and lastly, the Germans have not private property. Is not this remark as to the difference between the two nations almost the same thing as if Cæsar had said that the Gauls recognised private property and held their land in individual ownership?

This is not all. Cæsar uses an expression in which he indirectly and almost unconsciously bears witness to the existence of property in land amongst the Gauls. In Book VI., Chapter 13, he says that the Druids act as judges in almost all suits, criminal as well as civil.[243] He then gives a list of the disputes brought before them, and amongst criminal offences he instances murder; amongst civil suits he mentions “those concerning inheritance or boundaries,” _si de hereditate, si de finibus controversia est_. If there were in Gaul suits concerning inheritance or boundaries, it must have meant that the Gauls had a system of inheritance and made use of boundaries; _i.e._, that land was private and hereditary property. Cæsar says elsewhere that the Germans have no _fines_; he says here that the Gauls have them.

We cannot say whether the institution of private property in Gaul was exactly similar to that of private property in Rome; whether it had the same legal guarantees; whether its boundaries had the same inviolable character. We do not even know if property still belonged to the family or was already in the hands of individual owners. Cæsar only tells us one thing, and that is, that it existed; for “inheritance and boundaries” are unmistakable signs of private ownership, and as clearly disprove a system of corporate land-holding.[244]

This is the conclusion to which we are brought by a simple and unbiased perusal of Cæsar’s account. But preconceptions have great force; and if a writer starts with the idea that community in land was once universal, the result will be that, in the face of all evidence, and yet in perfect good faith, he will think he finds it amongst the Gauls. One of the first scholars of the day, M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, whose works on the Middle Ages and on Irish literature have been so highly appreciated, thinks that the Gauls of the time of Cæsar were not far enough advanced in civilisation to hold private property; and setting out with this idea, the offspring of imagination, he supposes that he can see evidence of undivided tenure. The fact that Cæsar never mentions this troubles him very little. That Cæsar does mention, as a point of difference between the Germans and Gauls, that the former do not hold private property, he omits to notice. And lastly, when Cæsar refers in so many words to inheritance and boundaries amongst the Gauls, he disposes of this somewhat embarrassing statement by interpreting it in a most unexpected fashion.

In his opinion, when Cæsar mentions suits concerning inheritance, _de hereditate_, it is impossible that the inheritances of private persons should be in question, as the custom of inheritance did not exist. Then what was the inheritance referred to by Cæsar? According to M. de Jubainville, he was speaking of succession to the crown. Sovereignty existed; the sons of kings wished to succeed their fathers; and if a dispute arose, the Druids acted as judges. M. de Jubainville has omitted to notice that Cæsar gives at least ten instances of sons who wished to be kings like their fathers; and that in not one of these instances was the dispute carried before the Druids. It is a grave error to suppose that the Druids were accustomed to meddle in affairs of State; we have not a single example of their doing so. And yet M. de Jubainville maintains that in Cæsar _de hereditate_ means the succession to the throne; and for this he gives the following reason,--that in another book, speaking of the Egyptians, Cæsar uses the expression _hereditas regni_.[245] The argument is a strange one. I reply that if Cæsar elsewhere wrote _hereditas regni_, it was because the word _hereditas_ could not, when used alone, bear the meaning of the inheritance of sovereignty. It is quite certain that if Cæsar had meant to say that the Gauls brought before the Druids their disputes as to succession to the crown, he would have said _de hereditate regnum_.

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.

IV. As to the custom by which a husband and wife contributed equal shares to a common stock and allowed the income arising from it to accumulate, I cannot understand in what way this proves that there was no landed property. M. de Jubainville ingeniously explains that what was contributed could not have consisted of land “because its produce cannot be hoarded,” and that it must have consisted of herds of cattle, because cattle can much more easily be set aside for a particular object. In his long argument there is only one thing that he overlooks, and this is that it is possible to sell the crops and set aside the produce of the sale. Moreover, he gives an incorrect rendering of Cæsar, VI. 19: _hujus omnia pecuniæ fructus servantur_. _Pecunia_, in legal phraseology, is used not only of money, of not only personal property, but also of property of every kind, including land;[251] and _fructus_ does not simply mean produce in the literal sense of the word, but revenues of every description. Cæsar, then, is speaking of possessions of every sort, of which the income may be set aside. These possessions may be an estate under cultivation, or a herd of cattle, or a stock in trade, or a sum of money placed out at interest (for this was not unknown to the Gauls); the income might be the produce of the sale of the crops, or the increase of the herd, or the profits of trade, or the interest on the loan. Whichever it may have been, Cæsar did not intend to imply that the Gauls were unacquainted with landed property.

I am anxious not to pass over a single argument brought forward by this learned and able writer. He observes that the names of private domains, such as we find them in the Roman and Merovingian periods, are all derived from Roman proper names. This is quite true, and I had myself made the same observation in an earlier essay; but what I had carefully abstained from saying, and what is maintained by M. de Jubainville, is that these Latin names of the Roman period prove the non-existence of domains in the Gallic period. The most they could prove is that, after the conquest, the names of domains were latinised as well as the names of individuals. Just as Gallic landowners adopted Roman names for themselves, they bestowed the same names on their estates; and consequently domains were called Pauliacus, Floriacus, Latiniacus, Avitacus, Victoriacus, etc. To conclude from this that there were no private estates before the conquest would indeed be a rash argument.

M. de Jubainville also alleges that Cæsar does not make use of the terms _villæ_ and _fundus_ in speaking of the Gauls; and he concludes from this that neither country estates, _fundi_, nor farms, _villæ_, were to be found in Gaul. “Before the conquest there were neither _fundi_ nor _villæ_, and the land was in common.”[252] This is another surprising statement. M. de Jubainville should not have overlooked the fact that even if these two words do not occur in Cæsar, we find terms which are precisely synonymous. The Romans had more than one word to designate a country estate, _fundus_, or a farm, _villa_. Instead of _fundus_ they sometimes said _ager_; and _ager_ always bears this sense in Cato, Varro, and Columella, and frequently in Cicero and Pliny. Instead of _villa_ they said _ædificium_. When Varro or Columella are speaking of the buildings standing in the midst of an estate, they use _ædificium_ as often as _villa_. Turn to the _Digest_ (Bk. L. Section XVI.) and compare the three fragments 27, 60, and 211; and you will recognise that the Romans were in the habit of calling a domain _ager_ and the buildings on it _ædificium_. Now Cæsar, in speaking of the Gauls, often uses the word _agri_ and still more often _ædificia_. Here are the domains and the _villæ_ which M. de Jubainville was looking for. These _ædificia_ were farms, not huts. They contained as a rule a somewhat numerous rural population; for Cæsar notes in one instance as something exceptional “that he found in the _ædificia_ of the Bellovaci only a small number of men, as almost all had set out for the war” (viii. 7). They also included barns for the storing of crops; for the historian mentions “that the Tencteri, having invaded the country of the Menapii, supported themselves for several months on the corn that they found in the _ædificia_” (iv. 4). The Roman general was well aware that if he wished to find forage for his cavalry he must look for it in these farms, _pabulum ex ædificiis petere_ (vii. 4, and viii. 10). What Cæsar says about the _ædificium_ of Ambiorix shows that it was a large enough building to lodge a numerous body of followers. And so the words _ager_ and _ædificium_ take the place in Cæsar of the words _fundus_ and _villa_, and disprove the assertion that “the Gauls had neither domains nor farms before the conquest.”

M. de Jubainville compares the whole Gallic territory with the _ager publicus_ of Rome. I do not know whether the learned medievalist has a very clear conception of what the _ager publicus_ really was. The subject is a very difficult one, and requires for its study a good deal of time, much minute research and great familiarity with Roman habits and customs. I do not wish to dwell on this point; and will content myself with saying that the _ager publicus_ was not common land, but property of the State existing side by side with private property. To suppose that in Gaul the State was the master of all the soil and distributed it annually amongst the citizens, is to suppose something absolutely opposed to Roman habits and to the usages of the _ager publicus_. Moreover, it is impossible to find a single line in Cæsar which authorises such a supposition.[253]

To sum up: the attempt made by this ingenious scholar to discover community in land amongst the Gauls is supported by no original authorities. When we come to verify his quotations and test his arguments, we see that not one of his quotations bears the sense he attributes to it, and that not one of his facts fits in with a theory of common ownership in land. It is wisest to keep strictly to what Cæsar tells us.

[243] “Fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt.” It is well known that in legal language, the _judicia publica_ are criminal cases; as the term implies, cases which concern crimes punished by a public authority; the _judicia privata_ are those which concern private interests alone, and in which the State is not involved. See on this distinction Paul, _Sententiæ_, I., 5, 2; Ulpian XIII., 2; _Fragmenta Vaticana_, 197 and 326; _Digest_, XLVII., tit. 1 and 2; XLVIII., I.; I., l, l § 6; XXIII., 2, 43, § 11 and 12. To translate _controversiæ publicæ_ in the passage from Cæsar as disputes between two peoples would run counter to the meaning of words. _Publicus_ never means _inter duos populos_.

[244] It may be added that the social condition described by Cæsar is irreconcilable with agrarian communism, vi., 13: _in omni Gallia plebs pæne serrorum habetur loco_, etc. Notice the numerous clients of Orgetorix, i., 4; those of Vercingetorix, vii., 4; the many poor, not in the towns, but in the country, _in agris agentes_, vii., 4; the burden of the _tributa_, vi., 13. These traits are not those of a society where the land is common. They point rather to a system of great estates, with the soil in the hands of the magnates.

[245] This appears in the _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres_, 1887, pp. 65, _et seq._

[246] M. de Jubainville has translated _controversiæ publicæ_, as if it were _controversiæ inter duos populos_. I know of no example in Latin literature where the word _publicus_ has this sense. In Suetonius, _Augustus_, 29, the _judicia publica_ are certainly not suits between peoples: they are criminal suits. When Cicero, defending Roscius of Ameria, says he is conducting his first _causa publica_, it is clear that he is not arguing for one people against another. He is defending Roscius, who is accused of parricide: it is a criminal proceeding.

[247] Cæsar, vi. 22: _Nec quisquam (apud Germanos)_ FINES habet proprios. _Ibidem: ne latos_ FINES _parare studeant, potentioresque humiliores possessionibus expellant_.

[248] Or else the same thing is implied by the turn of the sentence, i. 5: _Helvetii a finibus suis exeunt_; iv. 3: _quum Suevi Ubios finibus expellere non possent_; vi. 23: _extra fines cujusque civitatis_; v. 16: _fines regni sui_; v. 27: _Ambiorix tutum iter per fines suos pollicetur_. By a natural transition, _fines_ comes to mean sometimes, not only the boundaries, but also the territory itself, vi. 42: _ut Ambiorigis fines depopularentur_.

[249] Cicero, _Topica_, 10: _Si de finibus controversia est, fines agrorum esse videntur_.

[250] D’Arbois de Jubainville, in the _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions_, 1887, reprint, pp. 4-22.

[251] Gaius iii. 124: _Appellatione pecuniæ omnes res in lege significantur ... fundum vel hominem._... _Digest_, L. 16, 222: _pecuniæ nomine non solum numerata pecunia, sed omnes res tam soli quam mobiles continentur_. Cf. S. Augustine, _De Discipl. Christ._, i.: _omnia quorum domini sumus pecunia vocantur; servus, ager, arbor, pecus, pecunia dicitur_.

[252] _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions_, session of June 8, 1886, reprint, p. 6.

[253] M. de Jubainville does not translate latin texts very exactly. For example, if he sees in Cæsar that no German possesses “agri modum certum,” he immediately says that “this _ager_ must be the _ager publicus_; because in Rome _modus agri_ was the technical expression for the _ager publicus_.” But where has he seen that? He may read in Varro, _de re rustica_, i. 14, the words _de modo agri_, which incontestably mean “concerning the extent of a private property.” He will find the same expression in Varro, i. 18, where the writer says that the number of rural slaves ought to be proportionate to the extent of the domain. And again he will find the jurisconsult Paul, in the _Digest_, xviii., 1. 40, using _modum agri_ for the area of an estate which an individual has just bought. To prove that _ager_ by itself means _ager publicus_ he cites the _lex Thoria_; without noticing that in that law the _ager publicus_ is mentioned eleven times, and that _ager_ does not once stand for the public land unless accompanied by _publicus_ or _populi_.

_Conclusion._

Are we to conclude from all that has gone before that nowhere and at no time was land held in common? By no means. To commit ourselves to so absolute a negative would be to go beyond the purpose of this work. The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community in land has not yet been historically proved. Here are scholars who have maintained that they could prove from original authorities that nations originally cultivated the soil in common; but on examining these authorities we find that they are all either incorrect, or misinterpreted, or beside the subject. M. Viollet has not brought forward a single piece of evidence which proves that the Greek cities ever practised agrarian communism. M. de Jubainville has not brought forward one which proves communism in Gaul. Maurer and Lamprecht have not produced one which shows that the mark was common land. As to the comparative method, which has been somewhat ostentatiously called into service, we are presented under its name with a strangely assorted mass of isolated facts, gathered from every quarter, and often not understood; every fact not in harmony with the theory has been left on one side. In the prosecution of what professed to be an inquiry into the domestic life of whole nations, the one thing essential has been omitted, that is, their law. In short, an imposing structure has been erected out of a series of misunderstandings. National communism has been confused with the common ownership of the family; tenure in common has been confused with ownership in common; agrarian communism with village commons.

We do not maintain that it is inadmissible to believe in primitive communism. What we do maintain is that the attempt to base this theory on an historical foundation has been an unfortunate one; and we refuse to accept its garb of false learning.

The theory itself will always be believed in by a certain class of minds. Among the current ideas which take possession of the imaginations of men is one they have learnt from Rousseau. It is that property is contrary to nature and that communism is natural; and this idea has power even over writers who yield to it without being aware that they do so.

Minds which are under the influence of this idea will never allow that property may be a primordial fact, contemporaneous with the earliest cultivation of the soil, natural to man, produced by an instinctive recognition of his interests, and closely bound up with the primitive constitution of the family. They will always prefer to assume that there must first have been a period of communism. This will be with them an article of faith which nothing can shake; and they will always be able to find authorities which can be made to support it. There will, however, always be a few, endowed with a keener critical and historical sense, who will continue to doubt what has yet to be proved.

However that may be, the question, in spite of so many attempts, still remains unanswered. If any one wishes to give a scientific proof of primitive communism, these are the conditions on which he may perhaps succeed:

1. He must find definite and exact authorities; which he must translate, not approximately, but with absolute correctness, according to the literal signification of the words.

2. He must abstain from adducing facts which are comparatively modern in support of an institution which he ascribes to the beginning of things, as has been done in the case of the German mark, the island of Java and the Russian _mir_.

3. He must not content himself with collecting a few isolated facts which may be exceptional; but he must study phenomena which are general, normal, and far-spreading; of these he will find the evidence principally in legal records, and to a small extent in early religious customs.

4. He will be careful not to confuse agrarian communism with family ownership, which may in time become village ownership without ceasing to be a real proprietorship.

5. He will not mistake undivided tenancies on a domain belonging to a proprietor for community in land. The fact that _villani_, who were not the owners of any land at all, often cultivated the soil in common for a lord, or annually divided it amongst themselves, has no connection with agrarian communism, and is in fact directly opposed to it.

6. He will be careful not to confuse the question by introducing village commons, unless he has first of all succeeded in proving that such commons are derived from a primitive communism. This has never yet been proved, and all that has hitherto been ascertained about commons is that they are an appendage of private property.

On these conditions alone can the work be done scientifically; short of this the only result will be a confused picture of the fancy. If any one, after taking all these precautions against gross error, discovers a body of facts and evidence in support of a theory of communism, he will have settled the question historically. Till then, do not invoke history in its favour. Present your theory as an abstract idea which may be valuable, but with which history has nothing to do. Let us not have sham learning. In saying this I have at heart the interests of historical science. There is danger lest, from love of a theory, a whole series of errors should be forcibly thrust into history. What I fear is not the theory itself; it will not affect the progress of human events; but it is the method employed to secure its acceptance. I distrust this pretended application of learning, this practice of forcing documents to say the very opposite of what they really say, this superficial habit of talking about all the nations of the world without having studied a single one. Never have “original authorities” been so much lauded as to-day; never have they been used with so much levity.

THE END.

_Cowan & Co., Limited, Printers, Perth._

Transcriber’s Notes

In a few cases, obvious errors in punctuation and accentuation were corrected.

A couple of words with inconsistent hyphenization were standardized.

“villien for two or three days” changed to “villein for two or three days”

“unbiassed by any theory” changed to “unbiased by any theory”

“à priori” changed to “a priori”

“Archiv fur Geschichte Westphalens” changed to “Archiv für Geschichte Westphalens”.

“Zeitschrift fur die Geschichte des Oberrheins” changed to “Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins”.

“miltelrheinischen Territorien” changed to “mittelrheinischen Territorien”

“Rheinganische Alterthümer” changed to “Rheingauische Alterthümer”

“Zeitsch. f.d. gesante Staatswissenschaft” changed to “Zeitsch. f.d. gesamte Staatswissenschaft”

“Let us see at anyrate” changed to “Let us see at any rate”

“that in ano her” changed to “that in another”