M. de Jubainville compares the whole Gallic territory with theager publicusof Rome. I do not know whether the learned medievalist has a very clear conception of what theager publicusreally was. The subject is a very difficult one, and requires for its study a good deal of time, much minute research and great familiarity with Roman habits and customs. I do not wish to dwell on this point; and will content myself with saying that theager publicuswas not common land, but property of the State existing side by side with private property. To suppose that inGaul the State was the master of all the soil and distributed it annually amongst the citizens, is to suppose something absolutely opposed to Roman habits and to the usages of theager publicus. Moreover, it is impossible to find a single line in Cæsar which authorises such a supposition.[253]
To sum up: the attempt made by this ingenious scholar to discover community in land amongst the Gauls is supported by no original authorities. When we come to verify his quotations and test his arguments, we see that not one of his quotations bears the sense he attributes to it, and that not one of his facts fits in with a theory of common ownership in land. It is wisest to keep strictly to what Cæsar tells us.
[243]“Fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt.” It is well known that in legal language, thejudicia publicaare criminal cases; as the term implies, cases which concern crimes punished by a public authority; thejudicia privataare those which concern private interests alone, and in which the State is not involved. See on this distinction Paul,Sententiæ, I., 5, 2; Ulpian XIII., 2;Fragmenta Vaticana, 197 and 326;Digest, XLVII.,tit.1 and 2; XLVIII., I.; I., l, l § 6; XXIII., 2, 43, § 11 and 12. To translatecontroversiæ publicæin the passage from Cæsar as disputes between two peoples would run counter to the meaning of words.Publicusnever meansinter duos populos.
[244]It may be added that the social condition described by Cæsar is irreconcilable with agrarian communism, vi., 13:in omni Gallia plebs pæne serrorum habetur loco, etc. Notice the numerous clients of Orgetorix, i., 4; those of Vercingetorix, vii., 4; the many poor, not in the towns, but in the country,in agris agentes, vii., 4; the burden of thetributa, vi., 13. These traits are not those of a society where the land is common. They point rather to a system of great estates, with the soil in the hands of the magnates.
[245]This appears in theComptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1887,pp.65,et seq.
[246]M. de Jubainville has translatedcontroversiæ publicæ, as if it werecontroversiæ inter duos populos. I know of no example in Latin literature where the wordpublicushas this sense. In Suetonius,Augustus, 29, thejudicia publicaare certainly not suits between peoples: they are criminal suits. When Cicero, defending Roscius of Ameria, says he is conducting his firstcausa publica, it is clear that he is not arguing for one people against another. He is defending Roscius, who is accused of parricide: it is a criminal proceeding.
[247]Cæsar, vi. 22:Nec quisquam (apud Germanos)FINEShabet proprios.Ibidem: ne latosFINESparare studeant, potentioresque humiliores possessionibus expellant.
[248]Or else the same thing is implied by the turn of the sentence, i. 5:Helvetii a finibus suis exeunt; iv. 3:quum Suevi Ubios finibus expellere non possent; vi. 23:extra fines cujusque civitatis; v. 16:fines regni sui; v. 27:Ambiorix tutum iter per fines suos pollicetur. By a natural transition,finescomes to mean sometimes, not only the boundaries, but also the territory itself, vi. 42:ut Ambiorigis fines depopularentur.
[249]Cicero,Topica, 10:Si de finibus controversia est, fines agrorum esse videntur.
[250]D’Arbois de Jubainville, in theComptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions, 1887, reprint,pp.4-22.
[251]Gaius iii. 124:Appellatione pecuniæ omnes res in lege significantur ... fundum vel hominem....Digest, L. 16, 222:pecuniæ nomine non solum numerata pecunia, sed omnes res tam soli quam mobiles continentur. Cf. S. Augustine,De Discipl. Christ., i.:omnia quorum domini sumus pecunia vocantur; servus, ager, arbor, pecus, pecunia dicitur.
[252]Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions, session of June 8, 1886, reprint,p.6.
[253]M. de Jubainville does not translate latin texts very exactly. For example, if he sees in Cæsar that no German possesses “agri modum certum,” he immediately says that “thisagermust be theager publicus; because in Romemodus agriwas the technical expression for theager publicus.” But where has he seen that? He may read in Varro,de re rustica, i. 14, the wordsde modo agri, which incontestably mean “concerning the extent of a private property.” He will find the same expression in Varro, i. 18, where the writer says that the number of rural slaves ought to be proportionate to the extent of the domain. And again he will find the jurisconsult Paul, in theDigest, xviii., 1. 40, usingmodum agrifor the area of an estate which an individual has just bought. To prove thatagerby itself meansager publicushe cites thelex Thoria; without noticing that in that law theager publicusis mentioned eleven times, and thatagerdoes not once stand for the public land unless accompanied bypublicusorpopuli.
Are we to conclude from all that has gone before that nowhere and at no time was land held in common? By no means. To commit ourselves to so absolute a negative would be to go beyond the purpose of this work. The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community in land has not yet been historically proved. Here are scholars who have maintained that they could prove from original authorities that nations originally cultivated the soil in common; but on examining these authorities we find that they are all either incorrect, or misinterpreted, or beside the subject. M. Viollet has not brought forward a single piece of evidence which proves that the Greek cities ever practised agrarian communism. M. de Jubainville has not brought forward one which proves communism in Gaul. Maurer and Lamprecht have not produced one which shows that the mark was common land. As to the comparative method, which has been somewhat ostentatiously called into service, we are presented under its name with a strangely assorted mass of isolated facts, gathered from every quarter, and often not understood; every fact not in harmony with the theory has been left on one side. In the prosecution of what professed to be an inquiry into the domestic life of whole nations, the one thing essential has beenomitted, that is, their law. In short, an imposing structure has been erected out of a series of misunderstandings. National communism has been confused with the common ownership of the family; tenure in common has been confused with ownership in common; agrarian communism with village commons.
We do not maintain that it is inadmissible to believe in primitive communism. What we do maintain is that the attempt to base this theory on an historical foundation has been an unfortunate one; and we refuse to accept its garb of false learning.
The theory itself will always be believed in by a certain class of minds. Among the current ideas which take possession of the imaginations of men is one they have learnt from Rousseau. It is that property is contrary to nature and that communism is natural; and this idea has power even over writers who yield to it without being aware that they do so.
Minds which are under the influence of this idea will never allow that property may be a primordial fact, contemporaneous with the earliest cultivation of the soil, natural to man, produced by an instinctive recognition of his interests, and closely bound up with the primitive constitution of the family. They will always prefer to assume that there must first have been a period of communism. This will be with them an article of faith which nothing can shake; and they will always be able to find authorities which can be made tosupport it. There will, however, always be a few, endowed with a keener critical and historical sense, who will continue to doubt what has yet to be proved.
However that may be, the question, in spite of so many attempts, still remains unanswered. If any one wishes to give a scientific proof of primitive communism, these are the conditions on which he may perhaps succeed:
1. He must find definite and exact authorities; which he must translate, not approximately, but with absolute correctness, according to the literal signification of the words.
2. He must abstain from adducing facts which are comparatively modern in support of an institution which he ascribes to the beginning of things, as has been done in the case of the German mark, the island of Java and the Russianmir.
3. He must not content himself with collecting a few isolated facts which may be exceptional; but he must study phenomena which are general, normal, and far-spreading; of these he will find the evidence principally in legal records, and to a small extent in early religious customs.
4. He will be careful not to confuse agrarian communism with family ownership, which may in time become village ownership without ceasing to be a real proprietorship.
5. He will not mistake undivided tenancies on adomain belonging to a proprietor for community in land. The fact thatvillani, who were not the owners of any land at all, often cultivated the soil in common for a lord, or annually divided it amongst themselves, has no connection with agrarian communism, and is in fact directly opposed to it.
6. He will be careful not to confuse the question by introducing village commons, unless he has first of all succeeded in proving that such commons are derived from a primitive communism. This has never yet been proved, and all that has hitherto been ascertained about commons is that they are an appendage of private property.
On these conditions alone can the work be done scientifically; short of this the only result will be a confused picture of the fancy. If any one, after taking all these precautions against gross error, discovers a body of facts and evidence in support of a theory of communism, he will have settled the question historically. Till then, do not invoke history in its favour. Present your theory as an abstract idea which may be valuable, but with which history has nothing to do. Let us not have sham learning. In saying this I have at heart the interests of historical science. There is danger lest, from love of a theory, a whole series of errors should be forcibly thrust into history. What I fear is not the theory itself; it will not affect the progress of human events; but it is themethod employed to secure its acceptance. I distrust this pretended application of learning, this practice of forcing documents to say the very opposite of what they really say, this superficial habit of talking about all the nations of the world without having studied a single one. Never have “original authorities” been so much lauded as to-day; never have they been used with so much levity.
THE END.
Cowan &Co., Limited, Printers, Perth.