36 Wisconsin Academij of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



those that had them that formed Dorfgenossenscliaften or 

 village communities proper; and they hold that this was the 

 prevalent form of the occupation of land in the countries oc- 

 cupied by Germanic nations in the early middle ages. The 

 land being owned in common, all members of the commun- 

 ity were, originally at least, equal partners; a democratic 

 structure of society is therefore necessarily taken for granted 

 by the theory. 



As time went on, individual property in land came into 

 existence. The lands were divided up — the lots occupied 

 by individual marksmen became their property; first the 

 house-lot, then the strip of arable land, became the subject 

 of individual ownership, and when this had taken place, the 

 entire aggregate belonging to one member of the commu- 

 nity — house-lot. share of arable land , and right to the pas- 

 ture, forest, etc. — was called in English, hide. Every 

 member, therefore, of the primitive democracy, had an equal 

 property at the outset. The irregularities in wealth and 

 station were the outgrowth of the natural workings of com- 

 petitive relations in the more advanced state of society. 



The question of village communities is essentially a question 

 of the occupation of land, and its theory stands in the closest 

 connection with the history of the origin of the feudal tenure 

 of land. It necessarily involves, moreover, the discussion of 

 another subject, which may be treated independently in 

 other historical epochs, but which in the early history of in- 

 stitutions is inextricably connected with that of land — the 

 structure of society. The reason of this is that, whereas in 

 modern society the state, or political organization, starts with 

 a given territory, and embraces all occupants of that terri- 

 tory; in ancient society it was exactly the reverse. The tribe 

 or nation was the starting point, a given body of persons; and 

 the state — if we may use this expression for this period — 

 comprised whatever territory was occupied by these persons. 

 We see survivals of this primitive condition of things in the 

 tribal organization of our North American Indians. Although 

 occupants of part of the territory comprised within the 

 limits of the United States, they are, nevertheless, not recog- 

 nized as belonging to that nation, for the reason that they 



