356 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 32. 



plan bj' planes of successivelj" steeper inclina- 

 tion. 



The plates which accompanj^ the book are 

 as thoughtfully and ingeniouslj^ composed as 

 the text. We commend the whole treatise as 

 the most complete, so far as we know, and the 

 most interesting and instructive for practical 

 nse, that has been published in this country. 



SEEBOHM'S VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 



The English village community, examined in its rela- 

 tions to the manorial and tribal systems, and to the 

 common or open field system of husbandry : an 

 essay in economic history. By Frederic See- 

 BOHM. London, Longmans, Green, If Co., 1883. 

 464 p., 13 maps and plates. 8°. 



It is now many years since G. L. von 

 Maurer wrote his Introduction to the history 

 of marks and manors. Since then the subject 

 has attracted manj' students, and has been much 

 looked into and talked about. Many books 

 have been written npon it ; those of Nasse, 

 de Lavelej-e, and Maine being the best known 

 to American readers. The impression con- 

 veyed bj' these writings is, that the mark 

 or village community, though almost always 

 found upon a manor, under manorial overlord- 

 ship, was in its origin independent. Manorial 

 orerlordship arose, we are told, in later times. 

 The village community was drawn under it, 

 and became subject to it. It has been the 

 work of modern times to restore it to its 

 ancient independence. This is the theorj' of 

 von Maurer and his followers, which we have 

 gathered from their books. Objections to this 

 theorj- are from time to time raised. It is 

 urged that the village communitj- is usually 

 found under manorial landlordsbip ; that it is, 

 therefore, an open question whether the village 

 community, or the landlordship over it, is the 

 earlier institution. In Mr. Seebohm's book, 

 which now lies before us, it is maintained that 

 landlordship is more ancient than the village 

 community, that the village community arose 

 under landlordship, as a communitj' of slaves 

 or serfs, that it has been slowly emancipated 

 from slavery- and from serfdom in the course 

 of centuries. Our economic history, we are 

 told, begins with the serfdom of the masses un- 

 der manorial landlordship. Looking through 

 the records, back to the earliest period, we find 

 no free village communities, onlj- manors with 

 village communities in villenage upon them. 

 The argument upon this point is almost con- 

 clusive. The existence of a manorial system 

 during the Saxon period of our history is 

 established beyond doubt. 



But there were parts of Britain which were 

 not manorial, where village communities (the 

 village community being considered a part of 

 the manor) did not exist. What was there in the 

 parts of Britain where there were no manors? 

 By the side of the manorial system was a tribal 

 system more ancient, perhaps, than the mano- 

 rial S3'stem. Then follows an account of the 

 tribal system of the Welsh and Irish, which is 

 extremely interesting. It is not clear at first, 

 whj', in a work upon English economic history, 

 so much space should be given to the institu- 

 tions of the Welsh and Irish ; but we find out • 

 directly : it is that we may the more clearlj- 

 understand the statements of Caesar and Taci- 

 tus regarding the Germans. It is well known 

 that the statements of Caesar and Tacitus are 

 ver^' vague ; that thej- become intelligible only 

 in the light of extraneous evidence. We 

 ourselves should not have presumed to draw 

 this evidence from the Welsh laws, nor from 

 the Brehon tracts. It has always seemed to us 

 best to keep the records of different peoples 

 quite distinct. We should, therefore, have 

 turned from Caesar and Tacitus to the German 

 folk-laws, formulae, and documents. The tri- 

 bal system of the Germans is very well de- 

 scribed in the German records. It happens, 

 however, that the tribal system of the Germans 

 resembles verj' closely that of the Welsh and 

 Irish : so, though we do not follow all the steps 

 of Mr. Seebohm's argument, we come, at last, 

 to verj' nearly the same conclusion. AVhat we 

 have in the time of Caesar and Tacitus, and 

 afterwards in manj' places where the manorial 

 system has not been developed, are tribal 

 households (to use Mr. Seebohm's phrase), — • 

 isolated farmsteads, occupied bj- groups of de- 

 scendants and heirs ; the land being held bj' 

 them as an undivided inheritance for two or 

 three generations, and then divided, several 

 households arising where there was but one 

 before. Mr. Seebohm finds a vestige of this 

 system in the custom of Gavelkind in Kent, 

 where we have divisions among male heirs, 

 with traces of the right of the youngest to the 

 original homestead. Almost everywhere else 

 in England the tribal sj'stem has quite passed 

 away. 



Already, however, in the time of Tacitus, 

 the manorial sj'stem was germinating. The 

 free tribesmen who lived in the tribal house- 

 holds here and there — ut fons \tt campus ut 

 nemus placuit — had slaves who cultivated 

 the land for them. These slaves were dis- 

 tributed by the tribesmen in village com- 

 munities, in regard to which they were very 

 much in the position of the later manorial 



