Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/358

320 set of rights and duties, is not amongst the properties of the Indian stage in the confused drama of the eighteenth century.

Guizot resolves the feudal system into certain elements which may, I think, be thus stated. First there is the fief, or feudal lordship or manor, considered as property in land; secondly, there is the fief considered as a semi-sovereign state; and thirdly, there are the rules and principles which regulated the relations of these semi-sovereign states to each other and to the central power or suzerain. The first of these elements would be illustrated by the comparison of the English manor, the French fief, and the Indian raj or principality; and the third by an analysis of the distribution of pohtical power in all the great empires established in India during historical times, in the empires of the Moghals, the Marhattas, the Sikhs, and the British. It is, however, on the second element, or the fusion of sovereignty and property, that I have still a few words to say before I conclude. To a man educated in our own time and country there is an exceedingly sharp contrast between political power and power over private property. In England no one could be in danger of confusing a tax with a rental; while we have given to individuals a very extensive power of disposing of land, we have entirely separated that power from all territorial dominion. In India, before British rule, the combination of rights of sovereignty with rights over the land and its produce is a very familiar fact. We see it everywhere in the ruler's share of the crop; it is clearly evident in the description of the Punjab Hill Principality; the jagirdars, often in the old days exercising the functions of petty chieftains, held assignments of the ruler's share; the great zamindars of Bengal were some of them Rajas, and some might have regained or established their independence had not Clive and the Company struck in. To students of the history of institutions it is well known that ideas which are separated as society advances are intimately intermingled in early times. We suppose that mankind only gradually learns to distinguish a rule of law from a rule of religion. The law of property when we first perceive traces of it is blended with the law of personal status; the separate enjoyment of property in land is evolved from its joint enjoyment; primitive folk do not discriminate crimes from civil wrongs, or the substantive criminal law from criminal procedure. May not the separation of the ideas of property and sovereignty, fused