308 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



XIX. 



ON THE CAPITALIZATION OF LAND IN EARLY 

 SOCIETY. 



By Denman W. Ross, Ph. D. 



Communicated January 13, 188G. 



Several years ago, when I published my book upou the "Early His- 

 tory of Land-holding among the Germans," * I said, in my Preface, 

 that I hoped before long to rewrite the book. I said this because I 

 felt that the theory which I had to offer, while it exj^lained the facts 

 very well, did not, somehow, explain itself. 



My theory was, to describe it very briefly, this : that the holding 

 of land among the early Germans was a holding in common, but not 

 a communistic holding; that the ownership of the land, in so far as 

 there was any ownership of it, was vested, not in communities, but in 

 individuals ; that there was no such thing as ownership by commu- 

 nities. I believe that this theory sums up the facts correctly. I 

 believe that it is a true theory ; but it needs an explanation. The 

 question may very well be raised, How did the ownership of the land 

 come to be vested in individuals before the land was divided among 

 them, while it was held in common ? How, while the holding of the 

 land was a holding in common, did it occur to individuals that they 

 were proprietors ? Is not a holding in severalties necessarily ante- 

 cedent to the idea of individual proprietorship ? 



I believe that a holding of land in severalties is not necessarily 

 antecedent to the idea of individual proprietorship ; and I think that I 

 can show you how, among our ancestors, the early Germans, individ- 

 ual proprietorship existed before — in many cases long before — there 

 was any division of the land into severalties. Unless I am mistaken, 

 individual proprietorship was, among the early Germans, the result, 

 not of divisions of the land, but of what we may call capitalizations- 

 Let me explain to you what I mean by this statement. 



* Soule and Bugbee, Boston ; Triibner & Co., London. 1883. 



