OWNERSHIP AND TENANCY. 121 



a treatment which we all agree now is inefficacious. Fortunately 

 in England we have generally adopted a sedative treatment for 

 such diseases as well, and however severe the official practice may 

 be the actual parties to the dispute have generally found an easier 

 way of coming to a settlement. At the end of the fourteenth 

 century, therefore, we find that the lord of the manor, instead of 

 attempting to enforce his absolute rights to labour service from 

 the villeins, agrees to commute their services for a cash payment, 

 and instead of attempting to cultivate his demesne by enforced 

 labour, semi-servile or otherwise, bargains with the bailiff or 

 reeve to take over the land and the stock on a lease for a number 

 of years. The result was, of course, highly satisfactory to both 

 parties. In a comparatively short tune the farmer, as he must 

 now be called, made sufficient profit to take over the stock en- 

 tirely and renew it at his own cost, leaving to the lord nothing 

 but his land and his interest in improving it. At the same time, 

 as he has no claim on any man's labour, he was obliged to go into 

 the market, so to speak, and hire labourers to cultivate his land 

 at a daily wage. From this date we have the elements of the 

 modern system of land tenancy, bound up, as was said before, 

 with the landlord, the farmer and the worker. Of course, the 

 organisation is still in its infancy, there were many estates, 

 especially those owned by Ecclesiastical Corporations, which 

 were cultivated by labour rents for many years afterwards, in 

 fact, till the Reformation. There were for centuries after a 

 number of small freeholders, and for a long time there were many 

 men who combined farming with other trades. Indeed, the 

 agricultural labourer is hardly yet differentiated, as the skilled 

 industrial tradesmen are, though his skill is often not less than 

 theirs. But I have only undertaken to introduce the origins 

 of land tenure in England. Its development must be left for 

 another occasion. 



Let us now recapitulate the points to which I have drawn your 

 attention, for I fear that a series of pictures, though perhaps more 

 interesting than a bare statement, is not so lucid. In the earliest 

 stages of English settlement in this country there was no such 

 thing as private ownership in land. It all belonged to the com- 

 munity. But the community was very different from the State. 

 Indeed, there was no such thing as the State in the sense that we 

 know it now. The family was the organisation for purposes of 

 land tenure, though for purposes of justice, military operations, 

 and so forth, the combination of families or hides in hundreds 

 was recognised. The village community then had no judicial 

 powers. The families were more or less loosely bound together 

 in tribes, though that word was never used by our ancestors. 

 They were the kin and the king, the head of the kin, was entitled 

 to free quarters for one or more nights a year. At a later date 



