Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/82

 62 in each locality. I have obtained and examined a great many of these Usages Locaux from different parts of France, and have been surprised to find how widely spread and general are the traces of this common right of pasture over the arable land. It is known throughout France as le droit de vaine pâture, or, when extending beyond the limits of the commune and intercommunal between neighbouring communes from belfry to belfry, as le droit de parcours.

I am content for the purpose in hand to rest the wide prevalence of the open field system in France upon this local and irrefragable evidence, open to all inquirers.

Starting then from the wide prevalence of the open field system in France, and its close resemblance to the English system, the next point which strikes the inquirer is its historical connection, in France as in England, with the village community in serfdom, and the very close resemblance between the manorial systems of the two countries. We have in England no general surveys of estates earlier than the Domesday records. It is only by such documents as the Rectitudines, a few passages in the Saxon codes, and one or two charters of the time of King Alfred, that we get a direct and distinct view of the manorial system in England during the Saxon period. The evidence contained in the boundaries appended to Saxon charters and in the Laws of Ine is much more plentiful for the existence of the open field system in England than for the details of Saxon manorial management and serfdom. But in France the case is reversed. As regards the serfdom and manorial management the evidence goes back in great detail to the ninth century. The surveys of monastic estates of the ninth century are nearly as full and complete as those for the eleventh century in England. The evidence of the Polyptique of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés at Paris, and that of St. Bertin near St. Omer, might be described as nearly as full for the great corn-growing district of France in the ninth century as we should possess for the central counties of England if the surveys of manors contained in the Hundred Rolls had belonged to the time of King Alfred's father. King Alfred on his way to Rome lodged at the Abbey of St. Bertin, and the survey of the estates of the abbey which has been preserved belongs to about that period. The Polyptique of the estates of the Abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés at Paris, so ably edited by M. Guérard, was compiled by the Abbot Irminon early in the ninth century, and completed by another hand later in the same century.