their social relations; it is only by way of exception individual property; cattle and other stock are their only "capital,” their chief substance and wealth. It is true that they cultivate, by their women, children, weaklings, and slaves, some fields of corn, as much for beer as for bread (c. 15). The ownership of land by the family in the smaller sense must have come as soon as the head of it had enough slaves or freemen to cultivate more than the share allotted to him in appointment of conquered territory.

The fighting men would not degrade themselves to work in the fields so long as there was hunting or fighting to be done, or cattle to be attended to; the actual work of tillage was done, as such work is generally done, by women, children, captives, and slaves.

But agriculture is no part of their wealth; it is a necessity, like clothing or firing, to be delegated to inferiors, and to be dealt with carelessly and lightly.

As a consequence, while their cattle are, as we should say, personal" property held in severalty by individuals, the land is common to all the stock of the community, without as yet reserve or stint, except that the use of the land set apart and fenced or watched for corn cultivation is regulated as an exception to the common ownership; it is, as I read Tacitus, allotted out in tracts to each group family according to their numbers, and by them subdivided among the heads of families by the council of the community according to the rank and condition of the persons. See quotations from Sir John Davis' Reports, p. 154 infra, and his account of the new partition made by the chief of the sept of all the lands belonging to that sept in his Discovery.11

The process is very similar to the account of the division in the Mir in Wallace's Russia, vol. i. This particular custom of early societies varies as to time and unit of division according to the amount of arable cultivation compared with pastoral pursuits. Arable cultivation leads to individual ownership.

Rank and condition were in the tribal system the elements which present the chief opportunity for disturbance in the social life of a community united by common interests, and

organised on an assumption of the equality of freemen. War brought with it multitudes of slaves, for whom the captor had to provide a living out of the soil which the slave cultivated for his master.

Although freedmen are mentioned (c. 25), slaves are at present practically the only class contrasting with the freemen. There is little sign of the large class dependent on the consent of others for their use of the common land of the nation : the daer debtors, steel-bow tenants, aillts, villeins, with whom we meet later in British agriculture, a class to which, as the tribal system breaks up, the poor free tribesmen, who have lost their common pasturage, tend to descend. But the slave class tends to increase, and with it the inequality of the freemen.

With the increase of slaves and cattle the great men want and obtain the use of more land; land is of no value and easily granted; wealth in cattle, and with it increased usufruct of land-giving power to reward followers, becomes, equally with or even more than birth, the test of the fitness for chieftainship; throughout the Irish records, for instance, wealth is shown as making fitness for freemen and for chieftainship; throughout the Song of Dermot and the Earl,12 Dermot is spoken of as "the wealthy king." Money is given only to chiefs. The increased demand for land gives it an increased value, especially as men turn from meat and milk to beer and bread for food; and in the end land becomes in place of cattle the basis of the social frame.

When Henry goes into Ireland, bringing with him a system of agricultural land-ownership, influenced largely by Roman law and by the fitness of Eastern England for corn-growing, it is effectively contrasted with a pastoral system under which cattle are still the chief wealth, and the pasture land common to all. The same contrast is effected probably in a lesser degree when Edward conquers Wales, and when and as the king of the corn-growing south and east of Scotland in each succeeding reign down into the eighteenth century extends his authority over the north and west.

2 A.L. Irel., i. 157. 4 E.g. Olaf Trygvasson Saga,

NOTES.-1 Tacitus, Germania, cc. 1-28. 3 Folkmoots, see Appendix A.

Laing, cc. 88-90. 5 In Glanvil (VI. i. 8; VII. 1), Dower in the sense in which it is commonly used means that which any freeman at the time of his being affianced gives to his bride at the church door. The woman demands her dower in the words, "I demand such land, etc., of which my husband endowed me at the door of the church the day he espoused me." Dower in the Roman law means the portion given to a man with a woman. See Cæsar, D.B.G., vi. 18. 6 Cæsar, D.B.G., vi. 22. 7 Sir John Davis, Reports, p. 49 et seq. 8 Observations on the State of the Highlands, 1806. 9 And see Cæsar, D.B.G., vi. 23. 10 As to the want of distinction in early times between murder and manslaughter, justifiable homicide and accidental slaying, see my Tort, Crime, and Police in Mediæval Britain, pp. 29–35. 11 P. 136, edit. 1788. 12 A contemporary account by a Frenchman of the Geraldine invasion of Ireland, edited by G. H. Orpen, 1892.

CHAPTER IV

THE EARLY TRANSITION STAGES

HITHERTO We have dealt for the most part with the political and social structure of these tribal communities in a pastoral state, either nomadic or when the permanent settlement on the soil had lately taken place. We may now turn to one of the greatest agencies of social change which preceded the revolutionary influences of commerce, namely, the cultivation of the soil.

The Beginnings of Agriculture.-As the vast hordes of horsemen, whether the Huns of the fifth or the Moguls of the thirteenth century, poured over from the East into Europe, the woods and the plains in which they found forage for their horses were of far more importance for their advance than the small enclosures of corn. When, for instance, the descendants of Genghis Khan attacked Poland and Hungary in the thirteenth century, they must have been checked as much by the difficulties of finding forage as by any resistance of the Europeans. The Goths who took possession of the Ukraine were satisfied with a very fertile country, with abundant pasturage, fine timber, large rivers, and plenty of game and fish.

When, however, the advancing horde was checked by the disciplined power of Rome in front, or ceased to be driven on by fresh emigrations from behind, or was tempted by some specially fertile soil, or was settled by Rome as an outguard on some block of land on the frontier, agriculture became of greater importance. The woods were still of prime necessity, not only for forage, mast, and fuel, but for building material and fencing for the enclosed ground, yet at the same time the grain crop both for beer and for bread became a larger factor in the life of the community. When once the tents of a marching army were exchanged for permanent huts, it could not have been long before common sense taught them the necessity of some system for cropping land.1

Those who lived on the edge of the Roman authority and in touch with it undoubtedly moulded their farming on Rome, a State which, passing beyond the tribal stage of society, dealt with land by reference to the status of the individuals; others followed a system of common cultivation of the soil by the group family on the basis of equal division among freemen. This last is the picture given to us by Tacitus in his Germania.

Division of the Land.-Equitable division of the plough land was no easy thing. The weak point of Domesday is that, being a financial and not a historical document, it gives no hint as to how this equitable division has been reached or varied, but for taxation treats the acre as an acre without any notice of its value for farming. Given two pieces of land of equal size, one sloping to the north-east, another to the south-west; one with a heavy clay subsoil, the other on gravel; one lying level, the other on a sharp slope; one warm and clear of water, the other boggy and ill-drained; one a deep loam, the other shallow soil, the possibility of equal division would be only in the long-drawn arguments and pleadings of the interested parties. All apportionment of land among the different families and clans must have been hammered out, as it was until very recently in Russia, by the Mir, the general assembly of the community, meeting under the presidency of its elder, each family trying to get as much of the good land as possible, and to throw the poor

part on others, the powerful man getting the best and no more than he wants of the best land, and the poor widow with young sons being forced to make her contributions to the chief from a greater amount of poor soil than her family could cultivate.2

To obtain equitable division the portions allotted were scattered about in the common field under one fence. The assignment of portions did not convey to any member of the family, or to any family, property in the land, but a usufruct only, and even that was subject to the rules for cultivation laid down by the community. There could be no need for any redistribution of land so long as land was plentiful enough to change yearly to a fresh common field. Redistribution came as the population increased.

That the cultivation and fencing of the crop was done by a community, and not by individuals or by families, goes without saying for economic reasons: the combined use of stock and of such tools as were in use and of the labour of the different families was necessary under the conditions if the work was to be done at all; moreover, the land tilled must be protected from cattle and from wild animals by fencing or by watching-an impossible task if each family, whose first duty was to defend its borders from outside enemies, made and fenced its own clearing. It is clear that the whole cultivation of each unit of the horde was comprised in a common field.

Meadows. -Tacitus tells us that they did not enclose meadows; Domesday Book shows a very small proportion indeed of land enclosed in grass, other than wild pasture. A meadow in the Welsh laws is defined as land appropriated for hay only and enclosed by a fence.3 It would be odd if it were otherwise. The seeding down of land with tame grasses, though very likely well known to the Romans, is a very modern art indeed, and meadows to be cut with the sickle must have been pieces of wild growth chosen for their heavy yield.

The Waste or Forest.-All beyond the tiny fenced or watched portions was a common hunting ground and pasture for the whole community. This was by very far the most important