The Origin of Property in Land: With an introductory chapter on the English manor by W. J. AshleyFustel de Coulanges
History
The Origin of Property in Land: With an introductory chapter on the English manor by W. J. Ashley
Fustel de Coulanges
Land tenure -- Law and legislation -- History; Manors -- Great Britain; Real property -- History
3. Next comes a quotation from Justin out of Trogus Pompeius. This
Gaul, trying to describe the remotest ages of Italy, says that there
was a time “when slavery and private property were unknown, and
everything was undivided.” The quotation is correct; but what is the
time referred to? The age before Jupiter, _ante Jovem_. This is as much
as to say, the golden age, or, if you prefer it, the savage state.
4. It is the same with the quotation from Tibullus; it applies “to
the time of King Saturn,” that is, to the præ-agricultural age, the
golden age of the imagination. If M. Viollet wished to prove that
in the golden age private property did not exist, he has succeeded
pretty well. But what has this to do with the Greek cities? M. Viollet
supposes that legends of this kind represent traditions of an earlier
state. This is exceedingly doubtful; and in any case they would be
traditions of a time when agriculture was unknown, and when there were
neither organised nations nor cities. If there were long ages when
mankind did not know how to till the ground, what does that prove in
relation to the time when they did cultivate it? We must not lose sight
of the proposition our author wishes to establish; it is that men, even
after they had entered into city life, cultivated the soil in common
instead of appropriating it individually. There is a certain want of
caution in thinking that you can prove a system of common cultivation
from legends which show the absence of all cultivation.
5. M. Viollet at last comes down to historical times and quotes a
passage from Diodorus Siculus. Let us first give his translation as if
it were scrupulously exact: “Certain Cnidians and Rhodians colonised
the Lipari Isles. As they had much to endure at the hands of Tyrrhenian
pirates, they armed some barks wherewith to defend themselves, and
divided themselves into two separate _classes_; one was intrusted with
the cultivation of the islands, which they _declared common property_;
to the other was committed the care of the defence. _Having thus
thrown together all their possessions_, and eating together at public
meals, they lived in common during several years; but after a time they
divided amongst themselves the land of Lipara on which was their town;
as to the other islands they continued for some time to be cultivated
in common. At last they divided all the islands for a period of twenty
years; and at the expiration of this term, they drew lots for them
anew.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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