All contemporary authors, who have treated of these communities, assert that they secured to the peasants competence andhappiness. (13) It appears that at the close of the middle ages, when a definite order was established in feudal society,agricultural production and the well-being of the rural classes had attained a far higher level than under the centralizedmonarchy of the seventeenth century. (14) Writers on customary law affirm that when the dissolution of these associationscame to pass, it was actual ruin for people who had before lived in abundance. What shews that they must have been inharmony with the social requirements of the time, is that we find them in every province, in Normandy, Brittany, Anjou,Poitou, Angoumois, Saintonge, Touraine, Marche, Nivernais, Bourbonnais, both Burgundies, Orléanais; in the Chartraindistrict, in Champagne, Picardy, Dauphiné, Guienne; alike in the east and the west; the centre and the south. (15) "Theassociation of all the members of the family under one roof, on one property, with a view to joint labour and joint profits,"says M. Troplong, "is a general and characteristic fact from the south of France to its opposite extremities." ( Commentairessur les société. civiles , Préface). We may, then, affirm that under the old system agricultural labour was carried on in allparts of France by cooperative associations of peasants, exactly as it is at the present time among the southern Slays. Thus inthe middle ages, work in all its forms was executed by associations, by religious communities, by peasant communities, or bycraft communities. Laferrière has succeeded in putting this fact in a strong light: "The spirit of association, revived byChristianity, extended its salutary activity over the customs of the middle ages. It was under the protection of associations ofevery kind, by community of labour and habitation, by corporations, by societies for public and private profit, and under theinfluence of the spirit of social and Christian fraternity inculcated by them, that the serfs, the poor labourers, the artisans andcraftsmen, the commercial classes, the people of the towns and country alike, improved and developed their condition of life.
Isolation would have been their death; association made them live and grow for better times." (16)As to the time and manner of these family communities disappearing we have no information. Profound change in the socialorganism of the rural districts has always been effected gradually, without attracting the attention of historians. Up to theseventeenth century, terriers , and other titles, make frequent mention of societies of persons "with associated jointproperty." From the sixteenth century, jurists shew themselves less favourable, and, as time goes on, even hostile to thesystem of indivisibility. As soon as the spirit of fraternity, on which it was based, grew weak, this system gave rise to manydifficulties and disputes, because it rested on custom and not on any written code. It had to encounter two sources of ruin:
one in the spirit of individuality characteristic of modern times; another in the passion for clearness and precision in juridicalmatters, which the jurist imbibed from the study of the Roman law. Moreover, the successive disappearance of serfage andmortmain took away from these associations one of the most powerful reasons for their existence. So long as the serfs and gens de mainmorte had no right of succession except in the family community, they could not escape from the system ofcollective property; but, when once the rights of the lord were confined to receiving, under the form of various payments,the equivalent of the rent-service, the peasants could yield to the spirit of individuality which urged them to makeindependent properties for themselves by means of partition. The progress of industry, the improvement of roads and theextension of commerce also led the rural population to rouse itself and cast its eyes upward. New aspirations were sure to befatal to institutions formed for the protection of cultivators subjected to the invariable rules of ancient customs.
Family communities survived from the earliest days of civilization up to a modern date. When the desire for change andimprovement in everything took possession of men, they gradually disappeared with other traditions of earlier ages. Yet, inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there still existed many of these rural associations: (17) terriers and acts of partitionmake frequent mention of them; but we find them exciting an almost universal hostility. A report presented to the provincialassembly of Berry in 1783, and analyzed by M. Dareste de la Chavanne, (18) proves clearly how the sentiments of egotism andindividuality were to bring about the destruction of an institution, which could only last by mutual confidence and fraternalunderstanding. It is only in the most remote provinces, such as Nivernais, Auvergue, and Bourbonnais, that any trace of thesystem has been preserved to recent days.
The elder Dupin has described one of these communities, which he visited about 1840, in the department of Nièvre. Thedetails which he gives are so characteristic that it may be well to quote them.
"The group of buildings composing the village of the Gaults is situated on a small hill, at the bead of a beautiful valley ofmeadowland. The principal dwelling-house has nothing remarkable in its exterior; in the interior, on the ground-floor, is avast bail with a large fireplace at each end, the mantelpiece being as much as nine feet across; hut these dimensions are nonetoo large to allow room for so numerous a family. The existence of this community dates from time immemorial. The titles,which the `master' keeps in a vault, go back beyond 1500, and they speak of the community as already an ancient institution.
