"The people of Ditmarsch," says a chronicle of the fourteenth century, "live without lord and without chief, and act as theylike." (11) Niebuhr, who belonged to this country, was fond of mentioning these ancient liberties. Between Drenthe and Ems,the country of Westerwold had also preserved complete independence. It had its seal, a sign of its autonomy: it nominatedits councillors and its judge. It was only in 1316 that it began to recognize the suzerainty of the bishop of Munster, byrendering him every year a smoked fowl from each household.
The forest cantons of Switzerland afford an example even more curious, because they have preserved to the present day theprimitive organization of the mark . The whole Schwitz valley formed one district, in which different village communities hadfrom time to time established themselves. Each inhabitant owned his house and the adjacent plot as private property: the restof the territory was collective property. The Hapsburgs were suzerains of the country, but they treated the inhabitants "asfreemen." When the population increased, the country was divided into four districts, each of which elected its Amman ,governed itself independently, and had judicial power. But the whole valley still formed a community possessing all theirlands in common ( Allmenden ), and having its general assembly ( Landesgemeinde ). This assembly superintended the use ofthe forest and common pasture, determined how many head of cattle each man might send to it, and framed all necessaryregulations. No one could sell his house or his land to a stranger. Uri and Unterwalden were also independent districts. Atfirst the Empire, and subsequently the Counts of Hapsburg, exercised, it is true, a right of suzerainty over these smallindependent societies; but, when they wanted to extend this right and convert it into an effective sovereignty, the cantonsrevolted and gained their complete independence. They thus escaped the tyranny of feudalism as well as the power ofroyalty, and succeeded in preserving to our times the primitive liberties of the mark.
To form an idea of the social organization of these rural democracies, which originally existed throughout Europe andamong all races, we have but to transport ourselves to one of the forest cantons of Switzerland or the Andorre valley, wherewe can see, in the midst of the Pyrenees, institutions precisely similar to those of Ditmarsch or Delbrück. Time has respectedthe ancient organization: the property of the arable land has ceased to be collective; that of the pasturage and forest hasremained so. Elsewhere, as in Russia, though the agrarian community has been maintained, liberty has perished, because thesovereigns have created on all sides a privileged aristocracy. In England, on the contrary, landed property has accumulatedin a few hands, and the rustic labourer has been deprived of it; but the direct government in the vestry and the township, andthe free institutions, have been maintained.
Servia is perhaps the country in Europe, which has best preserved the features of primitive societies, because the Turkishdominion has been sufficiently heavy to hinder the birth of an aristocracy, without being so severe and mischievous as toannihilate local independence. If the development of European nations had proceeded normally, it would have been similarto that of the Swiss cantons. Direct government and local autonomy would have been maintained in small, independent ruraldemocracies; and these would have been united by a federal bond, so as to constitute, on the basis of identity of languageand ethnographic origin, organized nations, such as the United States in the present day. Feudalism, a privileged aristocracy,monarchic despotism, and the administrative centralization inaugurated in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, have all beendisturbing elements. At present, the organization, to which the tendencies and aspirations of European societies are directed,is manifestly that of the American township and the Swiss canton, which is no other than that of Ditmarsch or the valley ofAndorre;that is to say, that which free populations spontaneously establish at the commencement of civilization, and whichmay thus be called natural. A federation of autonomic and land-owning communes should compose the state; and thefederation of states ought eventually to form the organization of universal human society.
1. Dareste de la Chavanne, Histoires des classes agricoles en France , chap. III. He also quotes a plea of 852, in which, on aquestion of property, one of the parties expresses himself thus: Manifestum est quod ipsas res (the property in dispute) retineo sed lion injuste, quia de eremo eas traxi in aprisionem .
2. Nullus novum terminum sine consortis praesentia aut sine inspectore constituat . Lex Burg. tit. III, 1, v. De terminis etlimitibus .
3. See Roth, Geschichte des Beneficialivesen , pp. 248253. It is hard to imagine with what rapidity property accumulated inthe hands of the Church. The bishopric of Augsbourg, at the commencement of the ninth century, owned 1,427 farms, mansi , and the convent of Benedictheuern, in Upper Bavaria, 6,700 in the year 1070.
4. Even in ancient Egypt we find grants of lands as a reward for military service, which remind us of the Swedish in-delta and the feudal system of other countries. According to Herodotus (Bk. ii.) the warriors enjoyed a peculiar privilege entitlingthem to twelve acres of land free from every kind of rent or tax But they succeeded one another in the occupation of thisland, and the same men never possessed the same lands. It was therefore the same system as Caesar mentions among theSuevi ( Com . iv. 1. 5).
5. Capit. III. c. 2. Anno 811. Quod pauperes se reclamant expoliatos esse de eorum proprietate . See also numerous texts tothe same effect in Maurer, Einleitung , &c. p. 210.
