I should like to learn, however, whether these _allmenden_ really do come down from remote times. Our author tells us so, but without bringing forward any kind of proof. He declares “that they go back to the patriarchal period” (p. 291), “that they have lasted for thousands of years” (p. 281). It is easy to say this; but on what evidence does it rest? Private property exists in Switzerland, and our author cannot point to any epoch in which it did not exist. If we examine the law of the Burgundians and of the Alamanni, by which the country was first governed, it is private property we find, not common ownership. If we examine the charters down to the 12th century, we still find private property. The _allmenden_ of to-day certainly date back some six or seven centuries. Can they be traced farther back than that? And what exactly are these _allmenden_? Do we see in them a system of non-division of land, a system, that is, under which the land, being considered the common property of the whole people, is not supposed to belong to anyone individually? By no means. Private property is in full force in Switzerland, side by side with the _allmenden_. The _allmenden_ are only a part of the land of each village and indeed the smallest part, a tenth, or, at most, a fifth. They are usually forests, mountain pastures, or marshes, and include very little land capable of cultivation. Private property is accordingly the dominant fact; common ownership only concerns accessories. The _allmenden_ are just what is to be found in every country; they are the village commons. It would be interesting and instructive if we could discover their origin, just as it is interesting to inquire into the origin of the commons in France. But village commons do not in any way prove a general system of common ownership; and no one has yet been able to prove that they are the outcome of such a system. We know that when the Romans founded a colony, they instituted private property from the very first; but at the same time they reserved a portion of the soil, which was to be the common possession of the new city. And to go farther back, we know that Rome herself, from the time she first appears in history, had an _ager publicus_ at the same time as _agri privati_, and that the Greek cities also had a γῆ δημοσία. This public land was in no way an indication that the people lived a single day without individual estates. The _allmenden_ of Switzerland are commons of the same character as we find everywhere else. Each village has its own; and they are the property of the village, which sometimes sells them, lets them to the highest bidder, or sells the wood upon them, to defray the expenses of its school or church. Frequently the commons are left for the inhabitants to use as they like; and they get wood from them, graze their cattle there, or cultivate small portions. But it is important to notice that only those who own land in the village