Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/81

 Rh The English traveller has no sooner crossed the Channel than he sees evidence of this all around him. On both sides of the line to Amiens he will see far more of open field husbandry and of the characteristic terraced strips called in England 'linces' than can be seen anywhere together in England. If he climb the tower of Amiens or Chartres Cathedral, he will recognize how each is the centre of a vast tract of open field husbandry. The Chartrain is the greatest corn-growing district of France, and Chartres is the centre of this district. Its market is the greatest corn market in France, and nearly all the corn is still grown, or was till recently, on the open field system. So intermixed and interlocked are the holdings on this vast plain that, although the power to enclose the strips was given to the holders a hundred years ago, except close by the town the enclosures are few and far between. And such is the solidarity of the system secured by the intermixture of the strips and the force of custom, and the power of the community by fair means or foul to enforce its will against individual action, that, to this day, the peasant proprietor of strips, having harvested his corn, dares not to put his own cattle to graze upon his own stubbles till the day when by custom the flocks and herds of the whole community resume the right to pasture over the whole area.

The key to the secret of the strength of the open field system wherever it is found lies in the solidarity thus secured by its two main features, viz. the intermixture of the strips, and the right of common pasture over them after the removal of the crops.

I cannot pretend in this short article to give evidence in detail of the generality and wide diffusion of survivals of these two main traits of the ancient system. I can only point to the nature of the French evidence, which is open to the economic inquirer.

1. Every commune, I believe, in France has its public map of its own territory preserved at the mairie, and generally, so far as I have had experience, dating from the early decades of this century. By examination of these maps in corn-growing districts, plenty of evidence may be found of the division into strips. And a comparison of the lists of owners accompanying the maps will soon give ample proof of the intermixture of the strips.

2. Every department and sometimes every commune has its own printed Usages Locaux, to be purchased generally at the cost of a franc or two of the local bookseller. From these may be obtained information how far the common right of pasture over the strips when not under crop has been or is still in force