Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/104

 92 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

working of their lands to serfs, were confronted by new men who, by clearing and inclosure, sometimes by marriage, had become owners of landed estates. The assault of these upstarts on the political monopoly of the old territorial nobility began the move- ment which ended at last in democracy. Thucydides declares that the increase in the number of people of means brought about an irresistible demand for a larger participation in government, and that this triumph of property over birth occurred usually in states where property was most diffused, and where maritime com- merce, industry, and financial speculation were most developed. Caius Gracchus carried his reforms and broke down the govern- ing aristocracy of Rome by turning over to the rich speculator and merchant class, that had grown up outside the old senatorial nobility, the farming of all the Asiatic provinces and the control of the jury courts.

In the Middle Ages highly prosperous commercial or mining towns bought of their lords the grant of special rights and immunities, and thus virtually ransomed themselves out of the feudal system. In France the first extra-feudal fortunes origin- ated in the farming of taxes. Later, commerce and manufactur- ing created a wealthy class upon which the monarch constantly leaned when extending his authority at the expense of the feudal seigneurs. About the beginning of the seventeenth century the proud Duke of Sully laments that "at this day .... when everything is rated by the money which it brings, this generous body of nobility is brought into comparison with the managers of the revenue, the officers of justice, and the drudges of business." Finally, can anyone doubt that the strong tendency in the new extra-European societies toward popular government and the democratic spirit finds at least one of its ultimate roots in the diffusion of opportunities to accumulate property brought about by the presence of free land?

III. Migration to a new environment. Here again we hav^ two cases: (a) when the new environment is similar to the old; (&) when it is essentially different. The first is presented when colonies are established on the same parallel or, better yet, the same isotherm with the mother-country. Here the chief cause why the new society varies from the aid is the fact that in the