POLITICAL DIFFERENTIATION. 437 



Franks, there was little displacement of the actual cultivators of the 

 soil, but these simply fell into lower positions : certainly lower politi- 

 cal positions, and M. Guizot thinks lower industrial positions. Our 

 own country, too, furnishes good illustrations. In ancient British 

 times, writes Pearson, " it is probable that, in parts at least, there were 

 servile villages, occupied by a kindred but conquered race, the first 

 occupants of the soil." More trustworthy, but to the like effect, is the 

 evidence which comes to us from old English days and Norman days. 

 Professor Stubbs says : " The ceorl had his right in the common land 

 of his township ; his Latin name, villanus, had been a symbol of free- 

 dom, but his privileges were bound to the land, and when the Norman 

 lord took the land he took the villein with it. Still the villein retained 

 his customary rights, his house and land and rights of wood and hay ; 

 his lord's demesne depended for cultivation on his services, and he had 

 in his lord's sense of self-interest the sort of protection that was shared 

 by the horse and the ox." And of kindred import is the following 

 passage from Innes : " I have said that, of the inhabitants of the 

 Grange, the lowest in the scale was the ceorl, bond, serf, or villein, 

 who was transferred like the land on which he labored, and who might 

 be caught and brought back if he attempted to escape, like a stray ox 

 or sheep. Their legal name of nativus, or neyf, which I have not 

 found but in Britain, seems to point to their origin in the native race, 

 the original possessors of the soil. ... In the register of Dunfermline 

 are numerous 'genealogies,' or stud-books, for enabling the lord to 

 trace and reclaim his stock of serfs by descent. It is observable that 

 most of them are of Celtic names." 



Clearly, a subjugated territory, useless without cultivators, was left 

 in the hands of the original cultivators because nothing was to be 

 gained by putting others in their places, even could an adequate num- 

 ber of others be had. Hence, while it became the conqueror's interest 

 to tie each original cultivator to the soil, it also became his interest to 

 let him have such an amount of produce as to maintain him and en- 

 able him to rear offspring, and also to protect him against injuries 

 which would incapacitate him for work. 



To show how fundamental is the distinction between bondage of 

 the primitive type and the bondage of serfdom, it needs but to add 

 that, while the one can and does exist among savages and pastoral 

 tribes, the other becomes possible only after the agricultural stage is 

 reached ; for only then can there occur the bodily annexation of one 

 society by another, and only then can there be any tying to the soil. 



Associated men, who live by hunting, and to whom the area occu- 

 pied is of value only as a habitat for game, can not well have anything 

 more than a common participation in the use of this occupied area : 

 such ownership of it as they have must be joint ownership. Naturally, 

 then, at the outset, all the adult males, who are at once hunters and 



