2 Of) POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



region involves wide dispersion, there is no definite pro 

 prietorship of the tract wandered over ; yet, as is shown us in 

 the strife between the herdsmen of Abraham and those of Lot 

 respecting feeding grounds, some claims to exclusive use tend 

 to arise; and at a later half-pastoral stage, as among the 

 ancient Germans, the wanderings of each division fall within 

 prescribed limits. 



I refer to these facts by way of showing the identity esta 

 blished at the outset between the militant class and the land 

 owning class. For whether the group is one which lives by 

 hunting or one which lives by feeding cattle, any slaves its 

 members possess are excluded from land-ownership : the free 

 men, who are all fighting men, become, as a matter of course, 

 the proprietors of their territory. This connexion in variously 

 modified forms, long continues ; and could scarcely do other 

 wise. Land being, in early settled communities, the almost 

 exclusive source of wealth, it happens inevitably that during 

 times in which the principle that might is right remains 

 unqualified, personal power and ownership of the soil go 

 together. Hence the fact that where, instead of being held 

 by the whole society, land comes to be parcelled out among 

 component village-communities, or among families, or among 

 individuals, possession of it habitually goes along with the 

 bearing of arms. In ancient Egypt &quot; every soldier was a land 

 owner &quot; &quot; had an allotment of land of about six acres.&quot; In 

 Greece the invading Hellenes, wresting the country from its 

 original holders, joined military service with territorial endow 

 ment. In Rome, too, &quot; every freeholder from the seventeenth 

 to the sixtieth year of his age, was under obligation of 

 service ... so that even the emancipated slave had to 

 serve who, in an exceptional case, had come into possession 

 of landed property.&quot; The like happened in the early Teutonic 

 community. Joined with professional warriors, its army 

 included &quot; the mass of freemen arranged in families fighting 

 for their homesteads and hearths :&quot; such freemen, or markmen, 

 owning land partly in common and partly as individual pro- 



