PART IX

THE DECAY OF THE COMMUNAL

SOCIETY. ECONOMIC CAUSES

(See EXPLANATION OF TECHNICAL WORDS, supra, p. xxvi)

CHAPTER XXXV

THE CHIEF INFLUENCES OF CHANGE. THE INTERFERENCE OF POLITICS

SIDE by side with the results of the changes, frequently violent, caused in any locality by political action, and working independently, there always exist natural causes of change which act for the decay and dissolution of institutions, producing effects which are often attributed to the righteous or foolish or wicked action of some prominent man. Many scenes in history attributed to the actions of men's minds are in reality effected by elementary causes utterly beyond men's powers, which they would gladly control.

Even where the more far-seeing minds discern the directions of natural movements, there is very little chance of any united action being taken by any society to offset or to affect them with sufficient promptitude. If the society is controlled by a popular government and free discussion discloses the true direction of effort, too much time will be taken up in persuading the non-thinkers to consent to the necessary steps; if by an autocratic government, it will be an offchance whether the few who control lead in the right direction; and in addition there will always be the difficulty that other competing societies, not feeling the natural movement in the same degree, put pressure in some direction which impedes action. Is not the present world war the result of just such a conflict of ideas?

As these economic causes, operations of nature, are always at work in various forms and directions, it is not possible for any historical writer to put any period to them, but only to give illustrations of their action, always of course warning the reader that the deductions of cause and effect which he draws from the facts must be matter of opinion only.

By far the most important of these natural causes of change is the movement of population. In fact, all the operations of nature which affect social life may be said to be summed up as dependent on this one cause.

No man, as Dr Johnson said, loves labour for itself; we are all lotus eaters so far as we dare be; except for the last infirmity of noble minds, and the social instinct of self-sacrifice infused into us by religion, we all will do as little work as may be required to supply ourselves with present necessities, or with their increase rendered necessary by vanity and emulation, and we will always put the work on somebody else if

we can.

Increase of population, which has no bounds of empire, but unless dammed by policy or folly finds its own level like water whether at home or abroad, disturbs complacency by diminishing our little supply, as men who may be more patient or wiser than ourselves compete with us in the production or sale of the articles on which we depend for support. A greater effort has to be made, an extension of the circle of toil, a remodelling of its conditions; somehow the competition from beyond must be met and surmounted.

The easiest solution of the problem, one which presents itself to all ages, is by conquering the interfering worker and regulating his industry in the interests of the conqueror,1 an influence very strong in every direction in our own commercial times.

The representatives of what is called the "working" man, while proposing to give self-government in the name of Freedom and the People to vast, unsurveyed names such as Armenia and Mesopotamia, forbid under all the penalties of sabotage, which can be imposed by united tyranny, the freedom to British workers to obtain market value for their labour in contravention of trade-union regulations; the combinations

of united capital crush out the smaller man, employing him when they have ruined him as a branch manager of their syndicate; the German apologist, who has seized the competing looms and furnaces of Belgium, France, and Luxemburg, excuses their annexation on the ground of Germany's economic development, and calls wholesale murder of unarmed seamen and merchants, women and children, freedom of the seas, since they interfere with his commerce.

In the Middle Ages, in like manner, each community safeguarded by conquest or by regulation of the efforts of others its means of life from a progressive and prosperous neighbour.

So long as each little society independently rested on unwritten custom representing the sense of convenience of the community, such efforts to counter the course of nature had little harmful effect. But as the communal society decays, written legislation attempts to override nature, which is to be subdued if it will not give way. The statute book, whether mediæval or modern, will well repay study to those who are interested in the effort to make water run uphill.

I do not deny but that this instinct has been successful occasionally, when the process of obstruction of nature has been carried on persistently and over a great period of time by one nation over another, as in the case of Ireland, or as the result of commercial jealousy, without any opportunity for the regulation of natural causes which results from the competition of other societies.

So we see the splendid harbours of the South and West of Ireland lying idle, the Cunard steamers taken from Queenstown, Milford Haven deserted in the interests of Liverpool and Manchester; or, if you care to go further afield, the neglect of the finest harbour of the Mediterranean, Port Mahon.

But to this instinct of idleness now and in the Middle Ages there is an exception. Local selfishness is, and was, offset by the moral instinct imposed by the Church impressing that the benefit to your neighbour is a benefit to yourself. That is what all human society in all time is unwilling to admit, and what all religions for all time are teaching. But this teaching only affects society as a whole as increase of population induces a wider trade.

The Effect of Increase of Population.-When population increases, its effect on social development operates not in one but in many directions.2

In the first instance, to go back to pastoral society, a larger number of cattle or sheep will be bred upon the common pasture, and as the chief will possess the greater part of these, his power will grow in proportion to his possessions. As agriculture increasing breaks in on the communal life, the increase of population calls for more bread and more beer, and the common pasture is invaded to make new fields for grain. As soon as this takes place, the resulting developments are speedy and revolutionary in their effects.

Very soon, indeed, the members of the society who are strong and have strong work oxen produce more from the cultivated land than is necessary for their own consumption. They seek a market, and it is likely that the sept is not a sufficient market. They will seek one outside, and that means that, instead of farming being merely a means of supplying the wants of the members of the society and no more than that (except for indispensable things from without such as salt and iron), farming for profit breaks in upon the society of kinship. Then the great solvent of commerce breaks up the communal society. I believe it is M. de Lavergne who says: there is one law only which admits of no exception, and which everywhere produces the same results-the law of markets.

When this occurs, one of two things happens. Either the expectant trader holds his surplus for a future market when he may obtain a price or a better price at home, a practice much objected to by the society, or he takes in exchange the means of trading elsewhere instead of accepting some goods of which he has already sufficient. In other words, instead of corn or cattle he wants money.

To this day, the genuine trader, especially the man who deals with needy and uncertain people, and in small amounts, prepares to turn over his material-his live stock or crops or other matters-at a further profit again and again rather than rest on his money, unless he can loan it at a high rate of interest at once for a short time. It is only among the idle rich, or among professional people who make a living by

their brains, that so-called investments, money loaned for a long period at a low rate of interest, prevails.

The trader, the man whose capital is too tiny to supply necessity, the man who lives by manual work, has to turn over the capital of his cow or his strong arm or his bit of cash just as often as he can find a man who will give him a little more than he gave for the dry cow when she was in full milk, more wages than he now receives, or a higher interest or better security for the short loan.

This lies at the root of the objection of the manual worker to become a profit sharer (or, as he spells it, a profiteer) in the business for which he works. The returns received by the capitalist, the money lender, would not for him be a sufficiently quick or high return on his small capital. The smaller the capital, the higher the interest, the quicker it must be turned over, the more relentless the creditor. He takes his fellow-servant by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.

Farming for external profit is accompanied by two other solvents of the communal society, both largely dependent on population. The very frequent gifts of the waste land by the king or chief, acting no doubt in the first instance for the society, to the Church, to great men, to strangers of all kinds, gifts not based on kinship, not founded on community of user of the land, bring into play two great forces, leases, and a very powerful agent-the competition rent.

Leases. Though no stress is laid upon it, the hiring of land both for pasture and agriculture is mentioned in the Irish laws. Hiring would be a very natural course where land was apportioned by families, and a family was unable to cultivate all the allotted land and unable to sell. Hiring probably occupied a larger space in land economy than appears from the Tracts. The same might be said of our Law Reports at the present day.

Yet the leasing of land for a term breaks into the very core of communal landholding. When an increase of popula tion leads to encroachment on the waste forest, especially when a weakened sept encourages strangers to protect it against alien domination, the chief puts his dependants upon the freeman's common pasture-land on terms of clearance and