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and others, like the Lapps, may have altered their bent according to their geographical situation.

Some races perish from incapacity to adapt themselves to altered circumstances, as the red-skins, who are dying out with the game on which they subsist.

The tribes living solely by the chase and by fishing are the most savage and grovelling. Continually suffering from famine, obliged by the scarcity of game to live dispersed, exposed to the rigour of the seasons, to privation, fatigue, and misery, their habitual condition is one of isolation.

The pastoral tribes are less wretched. The shepherd finds in his flocks nourishment and clothing; he has time for observation and reflection. Nevertheless the condition of the pastor is often barbarous, for the demands of hisflocks and herds force him into isolation. And as pasture fails he is forced to remove from spot to spot. He is subject to famines, when the springs fail and the grass is burnt up by scorching suns, or when epidemics break out among his cattle. The Hebrews, rich in flocks and herds, were frequently compelled by want to seek corn in Egypt; and the Bedouins of our own day live in misery and barbarism. 'They are a pastoral population," says Mr. Palgrave, “condemned to savage life, with all its concomitants of ignorance and vice, by the circumstances of their condition, or fostered into insolence and open rapine by the weakness and negligence of those who should have kept them within due bounds. The Bedouin does not fight for his home, he has none; nor for his country, that is anywhere; nor for his honour, he never heard of it; nor for his religion, he owns and cares for none. His only object in war is the temporary occupation of some bit of miserable pasture-land or the use of a brackish well."1

1 Palgrave: Central and Eastern Arabia p. 34; London, 1865.

The agricultural race is that which is essentially the civilizing race; and when a people is forced by circumstances to discontinue its former vagabond life, and when it shows adaptability to bend to circumstances, it has entered on the road leading to civilization.

But the transition is singularly difficult. The instincts, sympathies, and habits of the nomad revolt against innovation and change of state. The labour of tillage is odious to him, and it is only after long experience that he learns to love it. Accustomed to live in tents, he must confine himself within stone walls. From being able to wander in freedom, he is obliged to remain chained to one spot. All notions of restraint on his free action upon the impulse of the moment are repugnant to his nature. Long apprenticeship can alone eradicate from his mind the idea that murder and brigandage are the paths to glory, and supplant them with the idea of submission to law and self-devotion to the common weal.

Probably religion alone was capable of effecting this radical change-of subduing the irritable and suspicious independence of the primitive races, and of casting into the midst of them the germ of definite alliance, an interest, an idea, a belief held in common, around which institutions might consolidate. Those peoples who, like the Indians, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Jews, had an intelligent sacerdotal caste to govern them, passed rapidly into powerful nationalities. Those, on the contrary, among whom a theocracy was unable to obtain foot-hold have remained in barbarism.

For the prosecution of agriculture security is essential, and that could only be attained by the establishment of a government; and government, to become permanent, was obliged to call to its aid the religious sentiment of the

people. The great founders of civilization, those who gave a race the twist from nomadic to a sedentary life, were prophets, men of minds above the ordinary level, who saw the necessity of a radical change in the mode of life, and who had courage to enforce this change as a religious duty. Mahomet was both a religious and a political regenerator of Arabia. Zarathustra acted the same double office for Iran. Moses aimed at not merely recasting the belief of the Israelites, but at changing their ancestral and traditional pastoral life to one of agriculture. The priests and kings of Egypt formed but one order; the early kings of Greece, like those of Rome, were monarchs and pontiffs at the same time. Agamemnon, before the old men of the Greek army, sacrificed to Zeus.1 The Eupatrides of Athens, and the Patricians of Rome, possessed the magistracy and the priesthood, the interpretation of the civil and the religious laws. Traces of this confusion of religious and political power remain to this day. The emperors of Germany are vested, on the day of their coronation, in a cassock and white alb. The kings of France in the Middle Ages wore at their coronation nearly all the vestments proper to a priest. The kings of Poland were buried in sacerdotal garb.

Agricultural and sedentary life necessitated some protective organization, and this was either sacerdotal or political, or most generally the two combined. Before entering into the forms of organization, it will be necessary to consider the exigencies of a community disposed to abandon its roving habits, and to build cities and cultivate lands.

Three conditions are necessary: 1. The possession of a fertile country; 2. The establishment of a strong and stable government; 3. The elaboration of ethical law.

From these three conditions three sorts of institutions, 1 Iliad, iii. 275.

corresponding to the requirements of property, security, and morality, have arisen: 1. Landed communities; 2. Government; 3. Magistracies.

These three classes of institutions are found among all peoples arrived at a certain standard of civilization; they are not necessarily theocratic, but under this mode of civilization they have contracted a form altogether special, and very different from that which they ultimately assume.

I. The appropriation of the soil, and even of moveables, such as we understand, is an idea foreign to the hunting and fishing races. In the age when men lived by the chase everything belonged to all, and no one could arrogate to himself peculiar property, least of all land. All that men sought with infinite labour were the necessaries of life, and these were common property. But with the adoption of the sedentary life men's views underwent a total change, though not all at once. Their method of regarding property passed through four stages. 1. Lands were cultivated by all, and fruits were enjoyed by all. 2. Lands were cultivated by some, and fruits were enjoyed by all. 3. Lands were cultivated by slaves, and the fruits were enjoyed by the owners. 4. Lands were cultivated by paid labourers, who received remuneration out of the fruits.

At first, land and its fruits were the common property of all. Every member of the tribe cultivated the land, either separately or in one common field, and all equally shared the fruits of their labour. This was, indeed, a necessity. For, if the race had started with private property, jealousies and discord would have ruptured the bond, and broken up the nascent society. In Crete and in Sparta of old community of goods was the rule. In the

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Celtic clans, bearing a common name and occupying a common estate, and in the ancient Gaulish and German societies, the land was in the corporate ownership of the community. We are told by Cæsar and Tacitus that nowhere was a private individual allowed to monopolize a portion of the soil, which was regarded as public property.1 And the latter informs us that the fields were occupied by all in turn. Diodorus tells us that in India no private person was permitted to call the land his own, but that the king was regarded as the sole possessor, and that those who cultivated the soil paid him a rent.2

Such, in the Middle Ages, was the position of the villein, or serf, towards the noble proprietor. "The village community of India," says Mr. Maine, "is at once an organized patriarchal society, and an assemblage of co-proprietors. The personal relations to each other of the men who compose it are indistinguishably confounded with their proprietary rights."3 In some of the South American tribes, especially in Paraguay, the same community of property is exercised. The Annals of China assure us that in remote antiquity the land was the heritage of all, but that it became afterwards the property of the emperor, who allotted it among the officers of state, but without permission to sell or give it away. In Egypt, the inundation of the Nile must have interfered with the establishment of private rights; anyhow, such as there were, they were bought up, at the advice of Joseph, by the crown. In Ethiopia, a large field near a city was daily spread with

1 Cæsar De Bello Gall. lib. iv. c. i. Tacitus: German. c. 26; "Agri, pro numero cultorum, ab universis per vices occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur."

2 Diod. Sicul. t. ii. c. 40.

3 Maine: Ancient Law, p. 128; London. 1861.

4 Gen. xlvii. 19, 20.

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