Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/776

 754 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL for Greece and for Rome M. de Laveleye has got together a number of authorities; but there is not a single quotation that is exact, or that has the meaning he attributes to it' (p. 1fll). Nor do the instances of agrarian communism collected by M. de Laveleye from countries less civilised and less well known than ancient Greece or Italy pass unchallenged by M. de Coulanges. Of the Russian mir he observes, first, that it was until a few years ago an association, not of own6rs, but of serfs labcuring on the land of a lord, and secondly, that the antiquity of the mir is disputable, some authorities placing its origin in the sixteenth century. Agrarian communism is found by M. de Laveleye in the island of Java. but there it seems to have arisen either out of the cultivation of indigo, sugar, and coffee for the benefit of the Dutch Government, or out of the necessities of rice growing. In some provinces of the island it is unknown, and in the rest it exists alongside of private property in lanai. The agrarian communism of the southern Slavs turns out to be merely the proprietorship of the joint undivided family. The Swiss' all- mend' is merely the village common which is found in many countries, but usually side by side with private estates, and has never been proved to be more ancient than they. On the citations from travellers, respecting the agrarian communism of various rude peoples, M. de Coulanges makes some remarks worthy to be treasured up by all students. ' Nothing is rarer or more difficult than an accurate observation .... A traveller makes the general statement that amongst the Caribbeans or the Yoloffs, he has seen a partition of land or has been told that such a thing was customary. But has he observed between whom the partition took place ? Was it amongst the members of the same family, or amongst all the inhabitants of the same village, or between the villages and all the various parts of the tribe or nation ? These are shades of difference that a hasty traveller cannot notice and that a historian, equally hasty, refrains from enquiring into. And yet the character and consequences of the partition depend altogether upon the answer to this question' (p. 115). But as a refutation of the theory of primitive agrarian communism, this essay is obviously incomplete in two important particulars. The upholders of that theory have laid great stress upon those vestiges o! the free village community which they profess to have discovered in the mediaeval manor. They have also laid great stress upon the evi- dence afforded by the village communities of modern India. On these topics M. de Coulanges says little. He disavows the doctrine that the feudal manor replaced the free village, but does not develop any other theory of its origin. lIe refers to India in the course of his argument against M. de Laveleye, but does not examine the modern evidence afforded by India. These deficiencies Professor Ashley seeks to supply in his able and interesting preface. He gives us the key to his theory of the manor in the statement that Mr. Seebohm's English Village