7 8 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of enlarging their borders. But, to begin with, the inequality 

 was the result, not of militarism, but of industrialism. Clearing 

 a piece of land for the purpose of cultivating it and reaping the 

 crops for one's own advantage is surely an industrial operation, if 

 ever there was one. 



Secondly, M. de Laveleye points out that the Church was a 

 great devourer of commune lands : 



" We know that a member of the commune could only dispose 

 of his share with the consent of his associates, who had a right of 

 resumption; but this right could not be exercised against the 

 Church. Accordingly, in these days of religious fervor, the faith- 

 ful frequently left to the Church all that they possessed, not only 

 their house and its inclosure, but the undivided share in the mark 

 attached to it " (p. 225). Thus an abbot, or a bishop, became co- 

 proprietor with the peasants of a commune; and, with such a 

 cuckoo in the nest, one can conceive that the hedge-sparrows 

 might have a bad time. " Already by the end of the ninth cent- 

 ury one third of the whole soil of Gaul belonged to the clergy " 

 (p. 225). But, if the men who left their property to the Church 

 believed that they got their quid pro quo in the shape of masses 

 for their souls, as they certainly did ; and if the churchmen be- 

 lieved as sincerely (and they certainly did) that they gave valua- 

 ble consideration for the property left them, where does fraud 

 come in ? Is it not again a truly industrial operation ? Indeed, 

 a keen-witted and eminent Scotch judge once called a huge be- 

 quest to a church " fire insurance," so emphatically commercial 

 did the transaction appear to him. 



Thirdly, personal several property was carved out of the cor- 

 porate communal property in another fashion, to which no objec- 

 tion can be taken by industrialism. Plots of arable land were 

 granted to members of the commune who were skilled artificers, 

 as a salary for their services. The craft transmitting itself from 

 father to son, the land went with it and grew into an hereditary 

 benefice. 



Fourthly, Sir Henry Maine * has proved in a very striking 

 manner, from the collection of the Brehon laws of ancient Ire- 

 land, how the original communal land-ownership of the sept, with 

 the allotment of an extra allowance of pasture to the chief, as the 

 honorarium for his services of all kinds, became modified, in con- 

 sequence of the power of keeping more cattle than the rest of the 

 sept, thus conferred on the chief. He became a lender of cattle 

 at a high rate of interest to his more needy sept fellows, who when 

 they borrowed became bound to do him service in other ways and 

 lost status by falling into the position of his debtors. Hence the 

 chief gradually acquired the characteristics of what naturalists 



* Sec " Early History of Institutions," epecially Lecture vi. 



