102 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
was at the same time the measure and token as well as the substance 
of their wealth. 
It is in Ireland that we must seek both the origin of our Gaelic 
tenure and the only reliable records of its early growth, while the 
original features of our Saxon system must be sought in the records 
that survive of the systems of our German ancestry. One important 
element in differentiating the Gaelic and the Saxon systems was 
the earlier Christianity of the Irish and Scottish Gaels, an element— 
that early Gaelic Christianity of ours — so thoroughly distinctive and 
so full of special influence, which has left deeper and more frequent 
traces on our national character and habits than those who distinguish 
only the catastrophes that signalise abrupt revolution can recognise 
or are likely to acknowledge. 
Giving therefore its due precedence to the more ancient system, 
the land which the Gaelic tribe held when first we can throw any 
real light upon it had ceased to be the mere grazing ground of the 
cattle : agriculture of a rude type had begun to be practised, and the 
land over which the tribe asserted its sway was of four classes — the 
land appropriated to the dwelling and its immediate surroundings, 
the land appropriated to cultivation, the land appropriated to pasture, 
and the land left free for the chase or otherwise unappropriated. 
This is the pristine and rudimentary form of land tenure and of 
society based thereon, which must be accepted as the uniform and 
invariable type which has prevailed over every part of the world in 
which man has risen above the level of the savage. ISTot only in 
Aryan communities of every variety and of all circumstances, but- 
in communities of Mongolian, African, and Polynesian descent. 
Modified it was of course by climate, and by soil, and by the innate 
habits of the people j but wherever men have begun to assert their 
supremacy over the earth and its products we find these four distinct 
stages of tenure : — first, the homestead with its yard, the only private 
or separate property of the tribesman j second, the cultivated zone 
round the aggregated homesteads, the ‘‘ field ” of the robust inhabit- 
ant of temperate climes, or the garden of those more bounteous 
climates where vegetables more than grains are the food of the 
people ; third, in races of a pastoral type the common pasture land ; 
and lastly, in all, the waste or unappropriated — the hunting grounds 
