CHAPTER IV. LANDED POSSESSION. THE EÐEL, HÍD OR ALOD. Possession of a certain amount of land in the district was the indispensable condition of enjoying the privileges and exercising the rights of a freeman[145]. There is no trace of such a qualification as constituted citizenship at Athens or Rome: among our forefathers, the exclusive idea of the _city_ had indeed no sway. They formed voluntary associations upon the land, for mutual benefit; the qualification by birth, as far as it could be of any importance, was inferred from the fact of admission among the community; and _gelondan_, or those who occupied the same land, were taken to be connected in blood[146]. An inquiry into the pedigree of a man who presented himself to share in the perils of the conquest or the settlement, would assuredly have appeared superfluous; nor was it more likely to be made, when secure enjoyment came to reward the labours of invasion. In fact the Germanic settlements, whether in their origin isolated or collective, are based throughout upon the idea of common property in land. It is not the city, but the country, that regulates their form of life and social institutions: as Tacitus knew them, they bore in general the character of disliking cities: “It is well enough known,” he says, “that none of the German populations dwell in cities; nay that they will not even suffer continuous building, and house joined to house. They live apart, each by himself, as the woodside, the plain or the fresh spring attracted him”[147]. Thus the Germanic community is in some sense _adstricta glebae_, bound to the soil: its members are sharers in the arable, the forest and the marsh, the waters and the pastures: their bond of union is a partnership in the advantages to be derived from possession of the land, an individual interest in a common benefit. ----- Footnote 145: Even till the latest period, personal property was not reckoned in the distinction of ranks, although land was. No amount of mere chattels, gold, silver, or goods, could give the Saxon franchise. See the ordinance Be Wergyldum, § 10. Be Geþincðum, § 2. Thorpe, i. 189, 191. This is a fundamental principle of Teutonic law: “Ut nullum liberum sine mortali crimine liceat inservire, nec de haereditate sua expellere; sed liberi, qui iustis legibus deserviunt, sine impedimento haereditates suas possideant. Quamvis pauper sit, tamen libertatem suam non perdat, nec haereditatem suam, nisi ex spontanea voluntate, se alicui tradere voluerit, hoc potestatem habeat faciendi.” Lex Alam. Tit. I. cap. 1. Lex Baiovar. Tit. 6. cap. 3. § 1. Eichhorn, i. 328, note _d_. Loss of land entailed loss of condition in England, long after the establishment of our present social system. A beautiful passage to this effect occurs in the play of “A Woman killed with kindness”: a gentleman refuses to part with his last plot of ground, on this account: