262 LAND
conditions, became the principle of the tenure of land in Europe.
There are, however, some nations in which feudalism has struck no root, or at least has not succeeded in seriously modifying the original type of common possession. It will be best to advert to some of them before proceeding further with the history of feudalism in its modern development.
India.
The Indian branch of the Aryan stock has preserved with great fidelity the original notion of the possession of land. The village, consisting of detached houses and surrounded with the district belonging to it, forms still a self-regulating community. It is a legal person, to which the state looks for its rights, but which when performing them is free from internal state interference. It holds the forest and pasture ground in common property, allowing their use to each person entitled to the village rights. To each family is further apportioned a measure of arable land, but the stage is in general passed at which this portion is changed in successive years, and it is therefore the hereditary property of the family. But it is not in strictness subject either to will, to mortgage, or to sale. It is divisible on the death of the head of the family among his children, any of whom may transfer their shares to another member of the village, but not, except with its leave, to a stranger. These ancient customs have to some extent been modified by the introduction of English law, which, among other things, has subjected the villagers to the grinding exactions of the money-lenders, by giving creditors the security of an English mortgage. It cannot but be regretted that the desire to act justly which has led to the change should have been misled by the idea that whatever institution exists in England is necessarily and everywhere else equally equitable and necessary.
Slavonic peoples.
In Europe the Slav peoples, the latest arrival of Aryan stock in Europe, have preserved best the ancient charac teristics of land tenure. Checked in their advance to the south-east, they have formed a narrow borderland in Bulgaria, Servia, Croatia, and Dalmatia, between the Germans on the one side and the Turks on the other. Here, therefore, we have the case of a population growing within a restricted area, under circumstances which pre vented the development of extensive military sway, and its consequent feudalism. Accordingly we find prevailing a system midway between the ancient communism of the Germanic tribes and the institution of private property. The tribes have become broken up into families. Common lands, except where there is mountain or forest, have been partitioned into the separate ownership of families. But within the families there is still a strong sentiment of community. In the Servian and Bulgarian villages each family household consists of probably several generations, all housed under the same roof or within the same curtilage. The head of the family is judge rather than master; any member of the family may depart, but in so doing he abandons his claim to the family property, a claim, however, which in some cases may revive should he return to the paternal home. All who remain work in common at their appointed duties, and share in common the produce. The family possessions are inalienable; the share of each member is untransferable.
To the north and east the faculty of unlimited emigration to the unoccupied lands of the steppe permitted or enforced the preservation of a still earlier type of common property.
Russia.
When the Russian village found its lands inadequate to its growing population, it threw off a swarm. The emigrants travelled in a compact body till they passed beyond the limits of present cultivation, and then took up their position on such lands as pleased them. For their protection against the aboriginal hunters who still roamed over the plains they built their houses on the uniform plan
of an enclosed village, and the same reason concurred with native habit to induce them to maintain the system of common pasturage, and of united cultivation of the land apportioned to cropping. When the central government became strong enough to assert its sway over the scattered settlements, it levied its tax on the mir, or village community, and the community apportioned the amount per capita among its members. But, as land was ample in extent for all, it gave to each male, from the moment even of birth, a right to a share. When the shares became inadequate a fresh migration took place.
Serfdom took its rise in the prohibition of these migrations. Forbidden to depart to new lands, the peasants were compelled to submit to the demands for their labour either of the Government, where it held estates in the neighbourhood of a village, or of nobles to whom grants of land had been made by the czar. Generally they were thus forced to give half their time to labour for their master. But they still continued possessors of their share in the village lands, and entitled to apply the other half of their time to its cultivation.
When emancipation came, their rights were regulated on the same basis. The village was maintained as an industrial and fiscal organization. But each peasant was declared to be entitled to a certain fixed minimum of land for his own property, varying according to the district, but on an average about 12 acres. For this, in so far as being in excess of the village lands it had to be made up from the land of adjoining owners, he is required to pay either services, to the extent of forty days in the year, or rent, at an average rate of about 2s. 4d. per acre. Such provisions can only be temporary. They resemble much those which prevailed in Germany prior to the modern reforms in tenure. They subject the peasant, untaught and unaccustomed to habits of individual energy, to a tax which he is not able to meet, and the suffering and complaints which are the consequence are at present general throughout Russia.
Switzerland.
In Switzerland also there has survived a system only slightly altered from that of the original communities. For here also conquest with its attendant feudalism was stayed, and freemen and free institutions survived the wreck which war made throughout western Europe. In the forest cantons especially there still exists an essential community of land right. The inhabitants possess separately and by ordinary rules of inheritance certain portions of land. But in several cantons the bulk of the land, both arable, forest, and pastoral, forms the allmend of the state, or of the commune, – the common property, to which every descendant of the original inhabitants has a right. This common land is either partitioned out by lot to each person entitled, or is let for a rent, which is applied to the common benefit, or is made the subject of common labour, and the produce of bread and wine is devoted to common merry-makings. When the arable land is divided among cultivators, the period allowed before repartition is from five to nine years, and it is stated that so strong is the feeling of common interest that the shortness of the time does not interfere with the highest cultivation by each successive occupant. In some districts it furnishes farms of 20 acres to each family, in others it only suffices for allotments of a few perches.
France.
In France the custom of village proprietary survived in many districts down to the middle of the 17th century. But previous to the middle of the 18th century nearly the whole of the soil had passed into the hands of great landowners. The tenants and peasants were ground down with heavy exactions, not only in the form of rent, but of state taxation, and in services, or corvées, to be rendered to the lord or to the state. The artificial life of the nobles at court destroyed all sympathy between them and the
