Delegation of function 433 



Either the owner keeps the profit of the undertaking and bears the 

 loss, or some division of profit and loss between the owner and the 

 manager is the condition of the arrangement between the two parties. 

 Ownership is not abdicated: nor is it easy to see how, without a clear 

 recognition of ownership, any system of delegation could arise. But 

 on the first plan the owner owns not only the land but the service of 

 his delegate. Whether the man be a client bound to his patron by 

 social custom, or an agent earning a wage, or a slave the property of 

 his master, he is merely a servant in charge. He can be superseded at 

 1 any moment at the landowner's will. The free tenant on the other hand 

 is a creature of contract, and his existence presupposes a community in 

 which the sanctity of deliberate bargains is considerably developed. 

 Whether the tenant's obligation consists in the payment of a fixed rent 

 ; in money or kind, or in a share of produce varying with the season's 

 crop, does not matter. He is bound by special law, however rudimen- 

 tary; and it is the interest of the community to see that such law is 

 jkept in force: for no one would enter into such bargains if their ful- 

 filment were not reasonably assured. Whether a certain reluctance to 

 enter into such a relation may perhaps account for the rare and doubtful 

 appearance of tenancy in early Roman tradition, or whether it is to be 

 | set down simply to defects of record, I do not venture to decide. The 

 landlord's obligation is to allow his tenant the enjoyment and free use 

 of a definite piece of land on certain terms for a stipulated period. 

 Further stipulations, giving him the right to insist on proper cultivation 

 and the return of the land in good condition at the end of the tenancy,. 

 were doubtless soon added at the dictation of experience. That tenant 

 farmers with their families usually supplied labour as well as manage- 

 ment, is surely not to be doubted. That, in the times when we begin 

 to hear of this class as non-exceptional, they also employed slave 

 labour, is attested : that we do not hear of them as engaging free wage- 

 sarners, may or may not be an accidental omission. 



Labour, simply as labour, without regard to the possible profit or 



loss attending its results, was no more an object of desire, engaged in 



I ttor its own sake, in ancient times than it is now. Domestication of 



i jinimals, a step implying much attentive care and trouble, was a great 



: idvance in the direction of securing a margin of profit on which man- 



fxind could rely for sustenance and comfort. The best instance is 



oerhaps that of the ox, whose services, early exploited to the full, were 



:heaply obtained at the cost of his rearing and keep. Hence he was 



'cept. But in ages of conflict, when might was right, the difference 1 



1 E Meyer Kl Schr p 185 takes the words of Aristotle Pol I 2 5 6 yap povs O.VT 



ois vht]fflv forty as proving that even in Ar's time the small farmer had to do without a 



ilave. I think they prove that if he could not afford a slave he must do with an ox only. For 



(he additional protection of the ox see Index. Cf Maine, Early Law and Custom pp 249-51. 



H.A. 28 



