Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/858

 LAND-TENURE

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LAND-TENURE

attach to it are called (in the terminology of this academic theory) "survivals from an original com- munism in land ".

Now, before any examination of the true history of land-tenure can be attempted, it is of the first conse- quence to rid the mind of all such vagaries. There is not a shadow of proof in support of such an hypoth- esis: it is but one out of many which might be framed. It corresponds to the temper, if not of our own day, at any rate of yesterday in the intellectual circle of Eu- rope; it would, were it true, powerfully support one part of their general philosophy and of their general attitude towards human development. But, as there is no proof, the historian must content himself with ignoring it.

Lest this statement should seem too aljrupt in the ears of those who are accustomed to hear this hypoth- esis dogmatically affirmed as historical truth, it is but just to notice in passing the type of arguments upon which it reposes.

Records are produced and contemporary evidence is given of an absolute communism. These records, as they are commonly legendary or at the best extremely vague, are more relied upon than con- temporary evidence, which is in this department very rare and never quite above suspicion. Even ad- mitting that legendary evidence or contemporary ob- servation of isolated instances establishes the possi- bility of men's tolerating a communism in land, it in no way establishes a progress from communism to- wards private property. To attempt to do so is to argue in a circle. To call communism wherever it appears, even in a very imperfect form, "primitive", and to call the private property where it appears "a later development", is merely to beg the whole ques- tion. It is a process against which the student must be warned, because it is, or has been, of the greatest possible popularity in every department of modern intellectualism. It is logically vicious and often de- monstrably insincere. There is no single case de- terminable in history of a regular progression from communism in land to private property. There are cases innumerable of the domain of private property encroaching, as the years pass, upon the domain of public or communal property. And there are num- erous, though less numerous, cases of communal prop- erty extending after an earlier restriction and growing at the expense of private properties. But to pretend that a regular scheme of dcvelojjment is ascertainable or observable is simply to affirm as an historical truth something for which we find that no historical evidence exists.

With this preface, which, if lengthy, is necessary to any just conception of the business, let us turn to the evidence before us.

The limits of the Christian Era form not only the natural limits for an article in such an encyclopedia as this, but also an excellent historical limit wherein to frame our inquiry. For the birth of Christ was, roughly, contemporaneous with the expansion of the art of writing over the tribal civilizations of Northern and Western Europe, and roughly contemporaneous also with that organization of all the known world, and especially of the ancient Oriental states and cities under the united and simple scheme of Roman rule. In other words, one medium in which ancient records could be preserved upon the one hand and new rec- ords established on the other, such a medium, co- extensive with the whole of our civilization, is roughly contemporaneous with the beginning of the Christian Era. A generation before that era opened saw Gaul occupiiMl by Roman arms, the last limits reached by the same forces, the last independence of the North African littoral extinguished in Chcrchel to the West, in the Valley of the Nile to the fvist; the generation af(er the founding of the Catholic Church saw th(' occupation of Britain at one extreme of the Roman

boundaries and the complete absorption of Judea at the other.

We have, therefore, from the first century of the Christian Era, clear records, and upon the basis of such records we can establish our judgment. What we discover is roughly as foUows: —

The actual tenure of land throughout the whole of this area, to which apply the Roman scheme of law and the Roman appetite for record, regards private property in land as a scheme native and necessary to man. But the absolute quality of this right and the extent of the area over which it is exercised differ very much with the differing sections of the world. The civilization which Rome had superseded in Gaul and was in process of superseding in Britain, the civiliza- tion of which she took note, though she did not super- sede it, in the Germanics, and which her religion was later to develop in Ireland, was not municipal, but tribal.

It is generally assumed that tribal civilization is necessarily nomadic or at any rate so far nomadic as the chase and continual warfare connote. The as- sumption has in it something of truth, but in its ab- solute form may be very much exaggerated. Thus we can be certain that the Gaulish clan called the Senones, in spite of their distant expeditions and the colonies which they threw out to the utmost limits of their world, had a fi.xed seat upon the Yonne, a seat which still remains in the shape of a cathedral city. We can be equally certain that the Avernians were a population rooted in and conditioned by the old vol- canic region of central France. Negative argu- ments too long to detain us here suffice to prove that the boundaries of the Basque people on the north of the Pyrenees have been much the same throughout the whole period of recorded knowledge and remain within a few miles to-day what they were during the Civil Wars of the Romans. And in general the no- madic character of a tribal system is indefinitely elas- tic. The tribe may be wholly nomad or it may have settled, while yet preserving its tribal organization and morals, into a fixed set of agricultural villages. This much is certain: that wherever men build, and do not depend for shelter upon tents, the nomadic character of their communities is qualified.

Now the importance of such a consideration lies in this: that a community wholly nomad is necessarily — quite apart from any fundamental conceptions of property — communistic in regard to land. Men pass- ing from place to place without a fi.xed abode can never conceive of land otherwise than as a mere space over which they progress, or a mere area of soil from which they draw the sustenance of themselves and their cattle. But the converse question immediately proposes itself: Where the tribal system was not wholly nomadic, how far did settled habitation accom- pany the establishment of private property in land? — The answer to this question is of capital importance, and we shall return to it after dealing with the other half of the Roman scheme.

That other half, the ancient civilization of the Medi- terranean, was municipal; that is, the organization of men was in the main an organization of city states. Agriculture and village settlements existed, the one as a handmaiden to, the other as satellites of, city states which summed up the life of each society. From immemori.al time, beyond all record and even beyond the misty horizon of credible legend, men had so lived round the shores of the Mediterranean. Cer- tain picturrs(|ue exceptions, numerically insignificant, by their very contrast lent relief to this fundamental ehanictcr of MeditiTranean life. Rare and sparse Semitic tribes wandered in the deserts beyond its south-eastern corner; Berber horsemen harrietl the steppes which lay behind the cities of Nortliern Africa. But the whole .scheme of life was numicipal. In that scheme we discover at the opening of the Christian