166 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
son of Salmon in the same sense as the Duke of Argyll is 
MacCallum More.” 
This farming in family groups is the key to the com- 
munism in land, which, as we have seen, still survives. It 
had its origin in the idea of possessing things in common 
which, more or less, characterises all family hfe. The divi- 
sion made each year afresh of every rod of the soil, for the 
purposes of cultivation, was amongst persons who were all 
related by blood, and who lived under a local hereditary 
chieftain, the father as well as the head of the clan. 
Here the reflection forces itself upon us, that the scattering 
of our modern families in all directions is the measure of the 
impracticability of our returning now, in these lands of the 
North-West under our present circumstances, to the holding 
of broad acres in common. How utterly impossible this 
would be in connection with a communism of that monstrous 
modern type, which would hold al/, even women, in common, 
and so strike at the very root of family life, which alone gave 
birth to this primitive tenure, and which alone can maintain 
its existence and ensure its smooth working! 
The cultivation of the soil in Village-Communities consist- 
ing almost entirely of bluod-relations, drawn and kept closely 
together by the intermarriage of cousins, which appears to 
have been universal in early times, just as it is to-day, adds 
greatly to the weight of the sacrifice made by Abraham, 
when, in words which the reader will now perceive have a 
peculiarily pointed and poignant meaning, Jehovah said to 
His faithful servant, ‘Get thee out of thy land, and from thy 
kindred [or birthplace], and from thy Father's House, to the 
land that I will show thee.”* To leave the Gens, or Sept, the 
closely inter-related Village-Community—the dearly loved 
family group, which held, so to speak, in a ring fence, all 
one’s living kith and kin, at least from an agnatic standpoint, 
without any break or exception, bound together, not only by 
natural affection, but also, and even more indissolubly, by an 
all-prevailing and inexorable custom which forbade them to 
separate, while it made it very dangerous to do so—must 
have been indeed a terrible trial ! 
It is important to observe that the few learned writers who 
have diligently searched into the nature of land tenure in 
ancient times have come to the conclusion, that holding in 
common by related Village-Communities, with a periodical 
redistribution of the land by lot, prevailed in almost all 
* Genesis xii. 1. 
