PROPERTY. 545 



every cottage, according to the number of people each contains. Then 

 all the women together till and sow the land for a new harvest.&quot; 



In Europe an allied arrangement is exhibited by the southern 

 Slavs. &quot; The fruits of agricultural labour are consumed in 

 common, or divided equally among the married couples ; but 

 the produce of each man s industrial labour belongs to him 

 individually.&quot; Further, seme of the Swiss allmends show 

 us a partial survival of this system ; for besides lands which 

 have become in large measure private, there are &quot; communal 

 vineyards cultivated in common/ and &quot;there are also cornlands 

 cultivated in the same manner,&quot; and &quot;the fruit of their joint 

 labour forms the basis of the banquets, a^ which all the 

 members of the commune take part.&quot; 



Thus we see that communal ownership and family owner 

 ship at first arose and long continued because, in respect of land, 

 no other could well be established. Records of the civilized 

 show that with them in the far past, as at present with the 

 uncivilized, private possession, beginning with movables, 

 extends itself to immovables only under certain conditions. 

 We have evidence of this in the fact named by Mayer, that 

 &quot; the Hebrew language has no expression for landed pro 

 perty ; &quot; and again in the fact alleged by Mommsen of the 

 Romans, that &quot; the idea of property was primarily associated 

 not with immovable estate, but with estate in slaves and 

 cattle. &quot; And if, recalling the circumstances of pastoral life, 

 as carried on alike by Semites and Ayrans, we remember that, 

 as before shown, the patriarchal group is a result of it ; we 

 may understand how, in passing into the settled state, there 

 would be produced such forms of land-tenure by the clan and 

 the family as, with minor variations, characterized primitive 

 European societies. It becomes eoiiprehensible why among 

 the Romans &quot; in the earliest times, the arable land was cul 

 tivated in common, probably by the several clans ; each of 

 these tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the pro 

 duce among the several households belonging to it.&quot; We are 

 shown that there naturally arose such arrangements as those 



