PRIMITIVE PROPERTY AND MODERN SOCIALISM. 



435 



began to bark. ' Do not be afraid,' said the mas- 

 ter ; ' they only bark to give me warning. They 

 are not dangerous. "We train them not to bite.' 

 ' Why shoidd they not bite ? ' I asked. ' Surely 

 your safety depends on their doing so.' ' Oh ! a 

 beggar often comes to us in the night-time. At 

 the voice of the dogs we rise to take him in ; and 

 we would not have them do him any harm, or pre- 

 veut his entering ' " (page 206). 



But, alas ! when family communities had suc- 

 ceeded to village communities, the lapse thence 

 into individual ownership which M. de Laveleye 

 laments was general and rapid. The law that a 

 member of a commune could not dispose of his 

 share without the consent of his associates, did 

 not operate against the church. The church, 

 therefore, obtained by various means a large 

 quantity of land once held in common. But the 

 development of feudalism, and either the violence 

 of individual barons, or the desire to earn a sei- 

 gneur's protection against other seigneurs, made 

 yet greater inroads. A theory was introduced 

 that the holding of land in common was an ex- 

 ception to the general law, and the subdivision 

 of the large primitive marks left what remained 

 too weak to withstand encroachment by the sov- 

 ereign and the nobles. The contempt which be- 

 gan to be felt for agriculture, from the reason 

 that many farmers introduced by the nobles for 

 the cultivation of their estates were serfs, con- 

 tributed to weaken the power of free husband- 

 men to maintain their independence. This and 

 other causes facilitated the process by which 

 chiefs of septs and clans claimed as their prop- 

 erty land of which they were only trustees for 

 their people. Even the lawyers threw their 

 weight into the scale against communal property, 

 by protesting against a form of ownership which 

 was not the form recognized by the Code and 

 the Institutes. But the last blow was dealt, we 

 are told in the volume before us, by the emanci- 

 pator of society, by the French Revolution, " which 

 committed the error, every day more apparent, 

 of endeavoring to found democracy by crushing 

 the only institutions which can make it possible. 

 It set up abstract man, the isolated individual, 

 and theoretically recognized in him all his nat- 

 ural rights, but at the same time annihilated 

 everything that could attach him to preceding 

 generations or to his existing fellow-citizens." 

 The result M. de Laveleye, in a strain of melan- 

 choly which could scarcely be surpassed in " Con- 

 ingsby " or " Sybil," deplores and denounces : 



" The province with its traditional liberties, 

 the commune with its unaivided property, and the 



crafts and corporations which united in a bond of 

 brotherhood workmen of the same trade — these 

 associations, the national extension of the family, 

 had sheltered the individual ; though, perhaps, 

 sometimes a fetter, they were always a support ; 

 while binding men down they also strengthened 

 them ; they were the hive in which individual life 

 was carried on. In times of adversity there was a 

 guarantee of assistance ; in ordinary times, a su- 

 pervision which kept men in the right path; a 

 power of defense when their rights were attacked, 

 and a tradition for new generations. The present 

 was connected with the past by the privileges and 

 advantages derived from the institution. In mod- 

 ern days the individual is lost within the nation, 

 an abstract idea which is only realized for most of 

 us under the form of the receiver who demands 

 the taxes, or the conscription which imposes mili- 

 tary service. The commune has lost all local au- 

 tonomy, and is become a mere wheel in the ma- 

 chinery of local administration, obedient to a 

 central power. Communal property, in almost 

 every case, has been sold or diminished. Man 

 coming into the world with wants to be satisfied, 

 and with hands to labor, can claim no share in the 

 soil for the exercise of his energy. Industrial 

 crafts are no more ; the joint-stock companies 

 which have taken their place are a means of as- 

 sociating capital, not men. Eeligion, a powerful 

 bond of union, has lost most of its fraternal power ; 

 and the family, shaken to its foundation, is little 

 more than a system of succession. Man is a social 

 creature, and the institutions have been destroyed 

 or weakened in which his sociability should ex- 

 press itself and form a solid basis for the state " 

 (page 63). 



M. de Laveleya can perceive only one remedy 

 for this lamentable condition of things. "At 

 the risk of being thought reactionary," he de- 

 rives the evils of the present day from the down- 

 fall of communal autonomy and communal prop- 

 erty. Politicians, we are told, have striven with 

 considerable success to destroy the former, and 

 economists to banish the latter. M. de Laveleye 

 would have them see the error of their ways and 

 retrace their steps. Before, however, they start 

 on this retrograde course, they would be wise to 

 observe certain shades in M. de Laveleye's own 

 flattering picture of these two institutions, so far 

 as they have survived to modern times, or have 

 left memorials of themselves. We have to con- 

 sider both whether it would be possible to revive 

 them, and, if possible, whether it would be worth 

 while. M. de Laveleye himself admits that the 

 Russian communal system is showing signs of 

 decay : 



" In spite of the periodic partition, inequality 

 has been introduced into the mir, and many peas- 



