"Full to the utmost measure of what things

Human desires can seek and apprehend ;" not supposing that to them, too, the law applies, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat"; not even suspecting that their wealth has any other use than that of ministering to their own gratification, that they are called to fulfil any social function beyond that of absorbing dividends and rents. Such is the progress and poverty in which the rampant individualism of the age has issued. It is the natural, the inevitable outcome of the debased Utilitarianism which proclaims pleasure as the end of life; self-interest as the rule of life, and money payment as the bond of life; which loses sight of the cardinal truth that society is an organism-a rational organism; that the law of the human race is solidarity governed by the eternal and immutable principles of ethics.

"When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to property namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of commensurate duties?" asked Coleridge Certainly it is high time that we should return. No society can long endure which is dominated by what Professor Marshall describes as "the cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition and the licentious use of wealth." We must say of it as the wise Duke of Weimar said of the First Napoleon in the noontide of his glory, "It is unjust it cannot last." The moral law is supreme over nations as over the individuals of whom nations are composed, and can no more be violated by nations than by individuals without incurring the penalty which is "the other half of crime." To me the gravest sign of the times is the widespread disbelief in the existence of that law-the desire to set up in the place thereof the laws of biology, the laws of physiology, the laws of comfort. I count it atheism of the worst kind, for it is not the rejection of this or that formula wherewith profession is made, more or less intelligently, of faith in the Absolute and Eternal; no, it is the rejection of that conception, of that fact of ethical obligation in which the Theistic idea is rooted; "which carries with it the implied relations of an

moyens possibles, améliorer dans cette vie le sort matériel de ceux qui souffrent; mais la première de améliorations, c'est de leur donner l'espérance. Combien s'amoindrissent nos misères finies quand il s'y mêle une espérance infinie! Notre devoir à tous, qui que nous soyons, les législateurs comme les écri vains, c'est de répandre, c'est de dépenser, c'est de prodiguer, sous toutes les formes, toute l'énergie sociale pour combattre et détruire la misère, et en même temps de faire lever toutes les têtes vers le ciel, de diriger toutes les âmes, de tourner toutes les attentes vers une vie ultérieure, où justice sera faite et où justice sera rendue. Disons le bien haut, personne n'aura injustement ni inutile

ment souffert. La mort est une restitution. La loi du monde matériel, c'est l'équilibre;. la loi du monde moral, c'est l'équité. Dieu se retrouve à la fin de tout. Ne l'oublions pas, et enseignons-le à tous; il n'y aurait aucune dignité à vivre, et cela n'en vaudrait pas la peine, si nous devions mourir tout entiers. Ce qui allège le labeur, ce qui sanctifie le travail, ce qui rend l'homme fort, bon, sage, patient, bienveillant, juste, à la fois humble et grand, digne de l'intelligence, digne de la liberté, c'est d'avoir devant soi la perpétuelle vision d'un monde meilleur rayonnant à travers les ténèbres de cette vie."*

-New Review.

It is by the comparative method only that we are enabled fully and clearly to trace the development of the human race from its infancy to the present times. It is the examination of customs and institutions of existing primitive societies which explains the survivals, otherwise inexplicable, of past civilizations, survivals even now deeply imbedded in our national life. It is by the comparison of these survivals of various civilizations with each other, together with actual historical knowledge, that we can reconstruct the past and comprehend the present, and by the knowledge thus acquired to some extent forecast the future, and at any rate avoid rushing blindfold into retrograde measures. In the study of primitive man we must dismiss from our minds all our preconceived orthodox ideas. Man is not the fallen creature we have been taught to believe. Neither is he the descendant of an ideal past, a "state of Nature" assumed by Rousseau to support his theories of what a perfect society ought to be: a "state of Nature" the very opposite of what we now know it to be. Primitive man is not the personage described by Blackstone, a man merely stripped of his eighteenth century clothes, retaining all the feelings and ideas of that period. On the contrary, there is absolute proof that the primitive progenitors of our race differed little in their habits or thoughts from the nineteenth century cannibals

of the Pacific Ocean. In dealing then with early man we must reverse all our modern ideas of mankind. In primitive societies, the tribe, the clan, or the family is the social or political unit and not the individual, who, as we now know him, is a comparatively modern conception. The individual as such is not recognized, his identity is merged in his tribe, clan, or family.

The evolution of property in land is from tribal possession to that of possession by the joint family and from possession by the joint family to individual possession ex jure Quiritium-i.e., exclusive ownership, after passing through feudalism, a modified form of individual ownership.

Thus, as we might expect, and notwithstanding the views of some recent writers to the contrary, even goods and chattels are at first communistic property, and under these are included women, children, and slaves. In England even as late as the fourteenth century groups of peasants and sometimes whole villages owned such chattels as horses, oxen, ploughs, and boats in

common.

If an Esquimau owns more than two canoes he must lend the others to some member of his clan, if required, who is not responsible for their loss, and since all property is to a great extent in com

mon to steal from a fellow-clansman is to steal from one's self; although to steal from a stranger is praiseworthy; and detection is alone disgraceful. These conceptions, then, were applied to property in land. Primitive man loves not isolation. To him isolation means death by starvation. Thus, when we first find traces of man, it is as a member of a tribe, clan, or family. The evolution of property in land has been the same in all countries and at all times, allowing for external interferences, thus showing that societies are subject to the same universal law. I propose, then, to take such illustrations as may best serve my purpose, premising that each society has passed or in the act of passing through the same general course of development.

It has been generally supposed that primitive societies have passed through the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages successively, but though this may be true of some few, it is not universally the case. Many tribes have carried on hunting and pastoral pursuits concurrently, and some from the nature of the country have omitted the pastoral altogether.

It has been asserted by Coulanges that the idea of property in land did not arise until the tribe was in the agricultural stage, but that this is incorrect is clear from numerous proofs to the contrary.

The claims to hunting grounds are always well defined, though not always recognized, and thus lead to constant quarrels. The Australian bushman, for instance, is so punctilious that he will not even pursue a wounded enemy across his boundary, and the Tasmanians had well-defined hunting grounds from which any stranger was expelled by force, or, if necessary, killed. Among tribes then in any of those stages it may confidently be asserted that the land is always and every where regarded as the joint property of the tribe. Now the first dwellings of primitive societies are communal. These communal houses have been discovered in Polynesia; in Mexico, among the Pueblo Indians; further north are the famous "long-houses" of the Iroquois 100 feet long, 30 broad, and 20 high, partitioned off into dormitories for the women, and

with common store and a common table. The houses of the Dyaks of Borneo raised on poles recall the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and the hill-forts recently discovered in this country, no doubt, belong to this period.

In its infancy agriculture is left to the women, and hence we find as the family emerges that it does so in the matriarchal form, the matron becomes the head of the clan or family, and the land is transmitted through her and the husbands, generally brothers (for this is the period of polyandryism) are received like strangers on a visit, since they are usually members of another clan. The property passes to the eldest daughter. who, in her turn, becomes manageress for the matriarchal clan, and the children taking the mother's name, are provided for by their sister.

The husband, says a Basque proverb, is his wife's head-servant.

But as methods of agriculture improved and became profitable, women were deposed from their place of trust and condemned to the rude labor of the fields, from which they were only relieved by slave labor. With the introduction of the patriarchal system all is reversed. The property is vested in the father; as the head of the clan or family, he transmits it to his eldest son or nephew, and his name to his children, and manages the estate for the benefit of the clan.

This is the village community which existed in this country for centuries up to quite modern times, as it has in every other country of the world.

Now, the village community, like the tribe, was in fact or in theory composed of kinsmen descended from a common ancestor. Kinship is the basis.

With the formation of the family, whether matriarchal or patriarchal, the communal dwelling disappears. Each family has its homestead, standing in its own plot of ground, the remainder of the land being divided into three parts-the arable, the pasture, and the waste. To each homestead is allotted a plot of arable, usually 30 acres, a share in the pasture, and specified rights over the waste-e.g., cutting wood or turf, feeding so many head of cattle, swine, geese, etc. To preserve equality, however, a periodical redistribution

took place. At Malmesbury this took place annually, among the Jews every fifty years, and was known as the Jubilee. But the family, says Marshall, is not allowed to cultivate its lot at pleasure. "They must sow their fields with the same grain as that of the other families of the community." In fact they are subject to the most stringent customs. The system of cultivation is usually triennial rotation (1) corn or rye, (2) spring crops (barley, oats, beans, peas), (3) fallow. Haxthausen, speaking of the Russian Mir, remarks that "the most perfect order, resembling a military discipline, presides over the labors of the field. On the same day at the same hour peasants repair to the fields, some to plough, others to harrow, etc., and they all return in company."

How then was this order and security maintained?

Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the Indian Village Community, says: "The council of village elders does not command anything: it merely declares what has always been. Nor does it generally declare that which it believes some higher power to have commanded; those most entitled to speak on the subject deny that the natives of India nec. essarily require divine or political authority as the basis of their usages; their antiquity is by itself assumed to be a sufficient reason for obeying them."

The pómoch (help) of the Russian Mir is a curious survival of tribal communism. By this custom any householder of the Mir may invite his neighbors to assist him in any unusually heavy piece of work. In return for this collective work, different kinds of refreshments are offered to the guest workers. No one is compelled to obey the summons, but, on the other hand, the party benefited is bound to attend the call of all those who have participated in the pómoch.

As the homestead became the exclusive property of the family, so the arable, upon the introduction of improved methods of agriculture, ceased to be reallotted, and became the exclusive property of the family, although the pasture and waste still remained the property of the entire community, and with the

cessation of redistribution there arose at once inequality.

The

It is at this stage that we might expect feudalism, and, strange as it may appear, feudalism succeeded the village community not only throughout Europe but in China and the East, either in the due course of evolution or by conquest. In England the feudal manor had commenced to supersede the village community before the Conquest, which merely accelerated the change. The elected village chiefs became the hereditary feudal barons. Now, so long as petty wars were the rule, the feudal system was a necessity. duties of the baron and the villagers were reciprocal, but when society settled down the Baronial protection was no longer required and feudalism became an anachronism. But the feudal burdens did not disappear with the feudal barons, and with the exception of a few rights of common, the landowners stepped into the shoes of the Village Communities and declared that such rights as did exist existed only on sufferance. In the course pursued by the Norman Kings, a curious parallel is found in Scotland and India. For the purpose of controlling the Highlanders after the Jacobite insurrections the English Government of the day determined to hold responsible the Highland chiefs. Now, those chiefs were merely the elected managers of the clan, and owned nothing beyond their own homestead and shares in the common land, and this action on the part of the Government created them absolute owners of the whole estate, hitherto the property of the clan. The same policy was pursued in India, the elected villagechiefs were treated as absolute owners of the soil and the common rights of the village communities utterly disregarded.

As already pointed out the Norman conquest did not create but only accentuated feudalism in England. Previous to this the feudal system existed in a modified form. The tenants of a manor had still very considerable rights in the waste, in addition to their homesteads and lots in the pasture and arable. Now the first Norman kings were, in fact and in theory, the seigneurs of the whole country. The barons were