Tlie Primitive Democracij of the Germans. 41 



yet established in permanent homes, but probably changing 

 their residences at intervals of some years, although always 

 within a definite territorial district. This district was, as we 

 learn from the same authority, a permanent political insti- 

 tution. It follows as a matter of course that at this period 

 there was not only no private property in land, but no 

 common property in land, that is, no property in land at all. 

 Neither the community nor the family owned the land or 

 occupied it personally, any more than the individual. It 

 might perhaps be urged that the district owned the territory 

 within which the shifting occupation took place, but it 

 may be doubted whether even this would be a cort-ect 

 statement of the facts. Property in land was probably a 

 conception which lay wholly outside of their imagination 

 as well as their experience. The land, like the air, was a free 

 .gift of nature, to be used in common, but with no thought 

 of ownership. 



As the theory of the village community implies not merely 

 permanent occupation, but ownership of the land, on the 

 part of the group of occupants, our conclusion must be that 

 the village community did not exist in the time of Tacitus. 

 Nevertheless, it must be admitted, on the other hand, that 

 the condition of things here described is one out of which 

 the village community could very easily have arisen. In 

 the fact tiiat the distribution was periodical instead of an- 

 nual, we see a movement towards permanence of occupa- 

 tion, and therefore towards ownership, on the part of the 

 community. The time would very soon come, in the progress 

 of society, when the community would have accumulated 

 so much fixed wealth in the course of its occupation, that it 

 would be a hardship and an injustice to force it to change 

 its habitation. The next change therefore — hardly a greater 

 change than that from annual to periodical re-distribution 

 — would be to convert the temporary occupancy into perma- 

 nent occupancy, which means property. If this stage was 

 reached — and it is hard to conceive of its not being reached, 

 at least as a temporary condition of things — there resulted 

 to village community: that is, the ownership in common of 



