M. Fustel begins with the ironical announcement that he does not intend to criticise the theory of the mark in itself, but only to examine the documentary evidence alleged in its favour, and to determine whether such evidence can fairly be given the construction that Maurer puts upon it. But here M. Fustel does some injustice to himself; for in following a detailed criticism of this character the reader is apt to overlook or forget the really important points which the writer succeeds in establishing. It may be well to state these points in our own way and order, as follows: (1) That the mark theory derives no direct support from the language of Cæsar and Tacitus; (2) That the word _mark_ in early German law means primarily a boundary, usually the boundary of a private property; and then, in a derivative sense, the property itself, a domain such as in Gaul was called a _villa_; (3) That early German law is throughout based on the assumption of private property in land, and never upon that of common ownership, whether by a whole people or by a village group; and that whatever traces there may be of earlier conditions point to rights possessed by the _family_ and not by any larger body; (4) That the one direct proof of a custom of periodical redistribution of the village lands is derived from an evident blunder on the part of a copyist; and that the rest of the evidence has nothing at all to do with periodical divisions; (5) That the term _common_ as applied to fields and woods in early German law means common to, or shared by two or more individual owners; (6) That the _commons_, _allmende_, _common of wood_ and similar phrases, which occur frequently in documents of the ninth and succeeding centuries, point to a customary right of use enjoyed by tenants over land belonging to a lord; and that there is no evidence that the tenants were once joint _owners_ of the land over which they enjoyed such rights; (7) That there is no evidence in the early Middle Ages of mark assemblies or mark courts; and finally, the most important point of all, (8) That to judge from the earliest German codes, great states cultivated by slaves or by various grades of semi-servile tenants were the rule rather than the exception even at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Professor Lamprecht, whom M. Fustel treats as a mere follower of Maurer, is naturally sore at the treatment he here receives; and indeed his great work on German economic history is of the utmost utility as a collection of facts relative to later centuries, even though he does start with the assumption of the mark. But it is scarcely an answer to M. Fustel to argue, as Professor Lamprecht does,[7] that nothing depends on the _word_ “mark;” and that the chance absence of a modern technical term from our meagre evidence does not prove the non-existence of the thing it is used to designate. For our evidence is not meagre; and M. Fustel proves not only the absence of the name, but