have any rights of enjoyment over the _allmend_. I refer chiefly to the condition of things before the last forty years; for only quite recently have such rights been extended to mere residents and the inhabitants generally. In essential characteristics the _allmend_ is not common property; it does not belong to all; it is held in common by people who are already owners of land. It is an appendage of private property. M. de Laveleye has written some beautiful passages on the usefulness of these commons, on the mistake which has been made in France in their general alienation, and on the happy results produced by them in Switzerland, both in almost entirely preventing the growth of absolute destitution and in attaching the poorest peasant to his native soil. These considerations are just, profound, and inspired by generous feeling, although but little applicable to modern society. But we are now considering them in relation to the supposed common ownership of land; with that the _allmenden_ have nothing to do, and they prove nothing as to its earlier existence. 9. M. de Laveleye finally refers to the Scotch townships as a proof of primitive community.[240] In the more distant parts of Scotland, especially in certain islands lying to the north-west, we find groups of people who hold the land of a village in common and divide it amongst themselves in separate lots every year. Is this a system of land communism, or, as it is called, collective ownership? At the first glance one would think so. But if you are not satisfied with a first glance and look further, you will observe that the village belongs to a single person, the landlord. The peasants are nothing more than the cultivators. M. de Laveleye cannot help recognising this: “The land of the village,” he says, “is let to them by the owner.” Again: “The land does not belong to them; it is the property of a landlord to whom they pay rent for it.” The cultivators act together as an association “with the consent of the landlord;” and there are villages in which the landlord does not allow this collective system of occupation. “They have a head who is generally appointed by the landlord.” The rent is paid collectively. We have a description of the _township_ in a work published recently. The house of the lord, the _domus dominica_ of our charters, stands in the centre of the village, by the side of the church.[241] It is built of stone; and around it, at a little distance, stand the dwellings of the “villeins,” built of mud and thatched with straw. The villeins owe their lord rent and certain personal services.