VTT ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN .'Jl'.", 



dwellings ; while pasture and uncleared forest 

 land lay outside all. Each commune was as 

 jealous of its rights of ownership as the touchiest 

 of squires ; but, so long as the population was as 

 scanty in proportion to the occupied territory, as 

 was usually the case in ancient times, the com- 

 munities got along pretty peaceably with one 

 another. Any notion that all the communities 

 which made up the nation had a sort of corporate 

 overlordship over any one, still more that all the 

 rest of the world had any right to complain of 

 their " appropriation of the means of subsistence," 

 most assuredly never entered the heads of our 

 forefathers. But, alongside this corporate several 

 ownership, there is strong ground for the belief 

 that individual ownership was recognised, to a 

 certain extent, even in these early times. The 

 inclosure around each dwelling was understood to 

 belong to the family inhabiting the dwelling ; 

 and, for all practical purposes, must have been as 

 much owned by the head of it as a modern 

 entailed estate is owned by the possessor for the 

 time being. Moreover, if any member of the 

 community chose to go outside and clear and 

 cultivate some of the waste, the reclaimed land 

 was thenceforth recognised as his, that is to say, 

 the right of ownership, in virtue of labour spent, 

 was admitted. 1 



1 Rousseau himself not only admits, but insists on the 

 validity of this claim in the Gontrab Social, liv. i. chap. ix. 



