The Birth of the English Land System. 9 



to Roman and Teuton origins, as he has already shaken them 

 with regard to British. 



From the earliest times there was a principle common to 

 most nations, namely, that the land of the State,^ when not 

 reserved for public usage, should be divided in parts amongst 

 its families. Take, for example, one of the oldest Land systems 

 about which we have any evidence, and examine the Israelitish 

 laws. To each head of a family was assigned a certain portion 

 of the land which became his inalienable property, so that at 

 the recurrence of the jubilee year all his debts, sales, alienations 

 and mortgages lapsed, and the land reverted to its original 

 owners. 



A communal form of Land Tenure was especially character- 

 istic of tribal nationalities, and certainly the three - races about 

 which we are now interested, existed some time or other in a 

 tribal condition. " They held their lands in common," is a 

 phrase appropriate to any one of them, so long as it be applied 

 in each separate case to the proper era of their national exist- 

 ence. 



Had Republican Rome conquered this island, we might have 

 jumped at the conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon Folcland was 

 but a continuation of the earlier Roman polity connected with 

 the Ager Publicus. Had Mr. Seebohm ^ and Sir Henry Maine 

 been silent, we should have naturally concluded that the open 

 field system of agriculture, with its peculiarities of land tenure 

 and seignorial jurisdiction, was but a development of the Teu- 

 tonic Mark. Had we never become intimate with Lidian'* 

 village communities, and studied the incipient growth of their 

 overlords, we should have traced the manorial system to the 

 Anglo-Saxon war chiefs or the Norman feudal dignitaries. 



The whole difficulty lies in the fact that nationalities at similar 

 periods of their existence or under similar circumstances adopt 



^ Fustel do Coulanges, Origin of Fropzrty in Land (Aslile3''s trans.) 

 p. 89. 



- Mommsen, Hist, of Some, vol. i. pp. 38, 72, and ch. xiii. Seebohm, 

 English Village Conwiicnity, cli. vi. Stubbs, Const, Hist., p. 53. 



^ Seebohm, English Village Community ^ p. 410. 



•* Maine, Ancient Laiu. 



