Greek and German customs were quoted at the outset. Among the Celts the
laws of ancient Ireland show a transitional stage. "The land of the
tribe consisted of two distinct allotments, the 'fechfine' or tribeland,
and the 'orta' or inheritance land. This latter belonged as individual
property to the men of the chieftain groups."[10] The Hindoo
joint-family and the house-community of the Southern Slavonians are
present examples of group ownership. They are joint in food, worship,
and estate. They have a common home, a common table. Maxims of the Slavs
express their appreciation of community life: "The common household
waxes rich"; "The more bees in the hive, the heavier it weighs." One
difficulty in the English administration of Ireland has been this
radical difference between the modern Englishman's individualistic
conception of property and the Irishman's more primitive conception of
group or clan ownership. Whether rightly or not, the Irish tenant
refuses to regard himself as merely a tenant. He considers himself as a
member of a family or group which formerly owned the land, and he does
not admit the justice, even though he cannot disprove the legality, of
an alienation of the group possession. For such a clan or household as
we have described is not merely equivalent to the persons who compose it
at a given time. Its property belongs to the ancestors and to the
posterity as well as to the present possessors; and hence in some groups
which admit an individual possession or use during life, no right of
devise or inheritance is permitted. The property reverts at death to the
whole gens or clan. In other cases a child may inherit, but in default
of such an heir the property passes to the common possession. The right
to bequeath property to the church was long a point on which civil law
and canon law were at variance. The relations of the primitive clan or
household group to land were therefore decidedly adapted to keep the
individual's good bound up with the good of the group.
=2. Movable Goods.=--In the case of movable goods, such as tools,
weapons, cattle, the practice is not uniform. When the goods are the
product of the individual's own skill or prowess they are usually his.
Tools, weapons, slaves or women captured, products of some special craft
or skill, are thus usually private. But when the group acts as a unit
the product is usually shared. The buffalo and salmon and large game
were thus for the whole Indian group which hunted or fished together;
and in like manner the maize which was tended by the women belonged to
the household in common. Slavic and Indian house communities at the
present day have a common interest in the household property. Even women
and children among some tribes are regarded as the property of the
group.
§ 4. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS WERE POLITICAL BODIES
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