In 1799 the Swiss republic forbade all partition of communal land, declaring, “these lands are the inheritance of your fathers, the fruit of many years of toil and care, and belong not to you alone, but also to your descendants.” There are, however, indications of a tendency in Switzerland--which stands alone in the world as a land that has maintained both the free political institutions and the communal system of property, of the times before feudalism--towards a disintegration of the _Allmend_. Thus, in the Canton of Glarus, the commonable Alps are let by auction for a number of years, and, in complete opposition to the ancient principles, strangers may obtain them. A project was recently submitted to the Grand Council of Bern, to facilitate the dissolution of the Communes, and to allow of the realization of their property by the members. It received little support, but was significant of the existence of a sentiment that may some day become formidable and aggressive. Common property still plays a very important part in the economic life of the Alpine Cantons, but private property is spreading considerably. Facilities for transportation, the substitution of machinery for manual labor, the accumulation of capital, and all the marvellous revolution and progress of industrial life, have brought about conditions which render the system of commonable lands no longer the best. Families can be supported without this common use, and, in most cases, better without it than with it. It might be shown that, when capital exists in abundance, this common use is a hinderance to the greatest possible production of food for the people. No system that has been assailed by such conditions has ever been able to maintain itself. It will be no defence of it, to say that it has hitherto been a good and workable system, and that the long ages of its existence have proved it to be so. This is what might have been said, and doubtless was said with truth, but without effect, of every system, not only of agronomy, but of everything else that was ever established in the world. This is the logic of sentiment, of habit, of custom, of tradition, and of those who think that they have interests distinct from and superior to the interests of the rest of the community, and of those who cannot understand what is understood by the rest of the world. It is, however, no match for the logic of facts, and of the general interest, the public good. That must ever be the strongest logic, as well as the highest law. If, then, this common use of land should be overturned by capital, notwithstanding its long history and all that may be said on its behalf, we may infer that it was the absence of capital which brought it into being and maintained it. The abolition of common lands, or _Allmends_, the disappearance of communal property into private ownership, would not involve the existence of the Commune or impair the value of its most salient features.