LAND-TENURE
777
LAND-TENURE
Era a. cprtain attitude towards the tenure of land
iieitluT (•(iTn|ilii-alcd iiiir ditficult to dcliiic. Land was
everywhere lield as private properly; it was bought
anil sold, the most absolute rights eoneeivablo were
granted over it by the Roman State. But this does
not mean that the system was simple or that it con-
tained no vestiges of institutions less absolute. Though
private property was absolutely established (and that
with every appearance of being of immemorial usage),
and though it was permitted, in a mianner in which
most modern states would regard as a peril, to accu-
mulate in vast estates, yet, first, there was always a very
large reserve maintained of land belonging to the City
and to the imperial Government, and, secondly, not
hypothesis, but existing records showed how, in the
past, society throughout the Mediterranean, though
it could not so much as conceive of communism, had
made continual efforts to prevent the growth of a
class of free men who should be dispossessed of land.
The efforts to attain this ideal, now taking the form
of popular outbreaks, now of aristocratic legislation,
were directed, however, for the most part, towards the
proper subdivision of the remaining public lands or to
the establishiuent of a freeholding population upon
lands which had been acquired bj' conquest from an
enemy.
The institution of slavery must, as the reader need hardly be reminded, be constantly kept in view in con- nexion with such a scheme of society. The State in the Metliterranean, at the time of which we speak, nor- mally, though not everywhere, consisted of a minority of free men, citizens as we should call them, for whom laboured a majority of men not possessed of civic rights and technically no portion of the State at all. Even under such conditions a class was growing up which, though free, was dispossessed of any property in land. It had appeared very early in the history of Rome, and from the early Roman name for it we draw our modern technical term "the proletariat". But there was a constant instinct in favour of increasing the security of the State by the establishment of such land- less men as freeholders and proprietors of the dimin- ishing public lands. This, the object of the Gracchi and the achievement of Julius Csesar, though never finally successful, proved the strong tendency of the Roman State to repose upon citizens who should be owners and freeholders. Whether we inherit that conception from the Roman polity alone, or whether it be something native to the European blood as a whole, this much is certain, that from the Roman Civil Wars to our own day, the idea of a large number of absolute owners of land forming the best and most natural basis for a state, has endured unbroken and may be called normal to the political mind of Eu- rope.
A number of exceptions indefinitely large might be proposed to so simple a scheme. Local custom varied infinitely, and the learned can discover many a ves- tige of ancient tenure, but, regarding our starting- point as a whole — regarding as a whole, that is, the civilization of the Mediterranean in the first century of our era — it was a civilization of freeholders, owners who could buy and sell, balanced by the retention of great areas in the hands of the community for dis- tribution, not for common tillage.
To this conception of land tenure (which is almost identical with that of the French Repub- lican tradition which has imposed itself to-day over the greater part of Western Europe) there was added in the succeeding seven centuries a slow process of modification which is as difficult to estimate in its nature and origins as it is essential to grasp if one is to understand the problem of land in Europe. The al> solute ownership of Roman law and of Roman idea remained unchanged in men's minds, in the terminol- ogy of their laws, in the phrases of their conversa- tion, and even in the major facts of their society.
But there was superimposed upon .so simple a conccp
tion a novel relationship between the larger aii<l the
smaller owners, b<tw(in the owner and the non-owner
who had merely contracted a term of tenure at a rent
— nay, even between the owner and the class that
were once his slaves to be bought and sold at will —
which transformed the society of Europe. I say this
novel relationship arose most gradually during the
first seven centuries; it is widely discoverable in law
in the eighth century. The darkness of the ninth
century, with its violent Barliarian assault, throws so-
ciety into a crucible; when the chaotic mass recrystal-
lizes, we find established and henceforward dominat-
ing all the Middle Ages, from the later tenth <'entury
to modern times, that conception of land tenure to
which is roughly, though somewhat inaccurately,
given the title Feudalism.
It is at this point of moment to return to the thread of tribal organization in order that we may discover how far this change in the habit of the Roman mind between the absolute ownership of the early Empire and the conception of tenure in the Middle Ages pro- ceeded from that exterior and barbarous tribal sys- tem, and how far it proeeedetl from some organic internal change within the structure of Roman society.
We have seen that the tribal system was not neces- sarily nomadic and therefore not necessarily commun- istic in the matter of land. Its nomadic character varied in intensity, from the purely nomadic hordes who seem to have occupied the great plains of the East of Europe to the more or less fixed clans of the Gauls, with their established central cities or strong- holds, and their local ascriptions of areas and boun- daries.
Upon the tribes to the east of the Roman Empire, we have very little evidence indeed. It is customary to give to this vague group of Barbarians the name Teutonic; and certainly many of its component tribes (though not all) appear to have certain religious cus- toms, and even the names of certain gods, in common at the opening of the Christian Era. As to the homo- geneity of this race, we have evidence quite as contra- dictory as it is slight. Tacitus, whose main object was the production of a polished literary satire, paints an ideal community, all of one highly distinguishable blood, and exactly possessed of every virtue which he desired, but failed, to find in the Roman State of his time. In his "Germania", however, this writer ad- mits, to strengthen his work, a very consideral ile num- ber of notes which seem to bear the stamj} of actual observation, undertaken, not of course by the writer, but by merchants or soldiers whom he may have in- terrogated. In the preceding century Julius Caesar, a military writer possessing a very different aim and concerned with accuracy rather than with effect, gives a picture far less favourable. Neither writer, it must be remembered, had any way of appreciating the Germanics and their mixed and floating population within any great distance from the Roman lines. But it is remarkable that both insisted upon the nomadic character of these Barbarians. In Ca-sar's account, paucity of agriculture and the importance of pasture is emphasized; the land is described as held in com- mon by a body which moves from year to year. Their habitations are but temporarj- huts. The account of Tacitus does not form a consistent whole, and the most important sentence in it for our purpose is .so cor- rupt in the text that no scholar can voucli for it; but it is generally understood to mean that land (whether pasture or arable we cannot tell) was re-allotted year by year; and it is certain that, as with most Barlia- rians, very large areas of waste were maintained rouiul the settlement of each tribe. There is practically no other testimony with regard to the tribal .system east of the Roman Empire. An enormous mass of gues.s- work has been erected upon the frail basis of obscure
