OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 317 



In conclusion, it is hardly necessary for me to remind you, that a 

 holding of land in capitalized shares cannot be properly described as 

 a communistic holding. The holding of land among the early Ger- 

 mans was in no respect communistic. 



Caesar tells us, and it is no doubt true, that the German freeman had 

 at first no separate or private property in the land, no defined or lim- 

 ited share of it ; but we cannot infer from this statement any equality 

 of rights in the land. Thei'e was plenty of land — more than enough 

 for everybody — at that time ; so there was no raison d'etre for any 

 rights in it, equal or unequal. The question is, not what rights men 

 had in the land, but how they occupied it, how they made ht productive. 

 Caesar tells us that there were among the Germans rich men and poor 

 men. At the same time he tells us that wealth consisted chiefly of 

 cattle, — live stock. Of course, the animals must have been turned 

 out upon the land to pasture. The rich men turned out many, the 

 poor men a few. They profited accordingly ; the rich men grew richer 

 fast, the poor men slowly. Agriculture was not much resorted to in 

 the time of Ctesar, nor in the time of Tacitus, by freemen. Tacitus 

 tells us, in his Germania, that the freemen avoided aCTicultural labor 

 as much as possible. They spent most of their time in eating, drink- 

 ing, and sleeping, in hunting and other amusements, and in fighting 

 with their neighbors. Feeble old men and the women looked after 

 the household and the cultivation of the land. They had slaves or 

 serfs, who took charge of the cattle and labored in the fields. In the 

 very next paragraph, after describing the condition of these slaves or 

 serfs, Tacitus says that arable lots {agri) were occupied according to 

 the number of cultivators {pro numero cultorum). Shall we not infer 

 that the cultivators who took the arable lots were the slaves or serfs? 

 The slaves or serfs must at any rate be counted among them ; and we 

 can infer that the freeman who had ten serfs took ten lots of arable 

 land, while he who had only five serfs took only half as many. This 

 inference, which seems very fairly indicated by the woi'ds of Tacitus, 

 is sustained by the concurrent testimony of the later records, — laws, 

 formulas, and documents. The mode of taking up shares of ara- 

 ble land according to the number of cultivators corresponds with the 

 mode of taking up shares of pasture land according to the number of 

 animals. "We find no end of examples and illustrations of these prac- 

 tices in the later records. As I have given innumerable extracts and 

 references to establish this statement in my book, already referred to, 

 I need not repeat them. 



I wish now to call your attention to the applicability of the phrase 



