PRIMITIVE PROPERTYTranslated from the French ofEmile De LaveleyeMember of the Royal Academies of Belgium, Madrid and Lisbon, Corresponding member of the Institute of France, of the Institute of Geneva, Of the Academy Del Lincei, Of Rome, etc.by G.R.L. Marriott, B.A., LL.B.With an Introduction by T.E. Cliffe Leslie, LL.B., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-LawLondon Macmillan and Co. 1878.Cambridge: Printed by C.J. Clay, M.A., At the University Press.
PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
I am indebted for the translation of the present edition to Mr Marriott of Trinity College, Cambridge, who spontaneously undertook the task. At my request Mr Cliffe Leslie has written an Introduction to the work. In making this request I was aware that Mr Leslie's views with reference to some practical aspects of the subject were not identical with my own, but I felt sure that his attainments as a Professor of both Jurisprudence and Political Economy, and his extensive knowledge of legal and economic history, would enable him to introduce the historical development of property instructively to the reader, and to throw some fresh light upon it. I have only to add that the additions and alterations in the present edition make it in several respects almost a new work.
EMILE DE LAVELEYE
Liege, November, 1877.
INTRODUCTION.
By T.E. Cliffe Leslie.
M. De Laveleye's present work has two distinct aspects, historical and practical. On the one hand, it investigates the early forms of landed property in a number of societies, European, Asiatic, African, and American. On the other hand, it raises a practical problem, the importance of which will be admitted by readers who may dissent from M. de Laveleye's views with respect to its solution. A study of the course followed by the development of property from the infancy of society has led to two opposite lines of inference and thought -- represented respectively by Sir Henry Maine and M. de Laveleye -- with regard to its present forms in most civilized countries;but the historical researches of both these eminent writers coincide in establishing that the separate ownership of land is of modern growth, and that originally the soil belonged in common to communities of kinsmen.
The property of which M. de Laveleye treats in this volume is property in land; of all kinds of property that which has most deeply affected both the economic condition and the political career of human societies. In one sense indeed land was not primitive property; it was not man's earliest possession or wealth. The first forms of property are lost in the mist that surrounds the first infant stops of the human race. Wild herbs, fruit, berries, and roots were probably the earliest acquisitions, but the food thus obtained was doubtless devoured at once. When at length providence was developed so far as to lead to the laying by of some sustenance for the future, the inference to which the earliest developments of movable wealth, of which we get glimpses, unmistakably point, is that the store which individuals might thus accumulate would not have been regarded as their own absolute property, but as part of the common fund of the community, larger or smaller according to circumstances, of which they were members.
Before land had been definitely appropriated by tribes or smaller groups, movables of many sorts had been successively added to the stock of human possessions -- new descriptions of food, implements and weapons, ornaments, the rudiments of clothing, fuel, captured and domesticated animals, human slaves, vehicles, boats, tents, and other movable dwellings. The importance of some of these early kinds of property to the progress of mankind is illustrated by the probability that the domestication of animals, and the acquisition thereby of a constant supply of animal food, contributed more than any other agency to the cessation of cannibalism. And a mass of evidence converges to the conclusion that the chief of these various chattels were possessed in co-ownership by families or larger communities, held together by blood or affinity. The bearing of this proposition on the nature of the ownership of land in early society is obvious, and it has also a relation to the practical aspects of the subject which M. de Laveleye discusses.
Some evidence in support of it may therefore be appropriately adduced in the present Introduction; the more so that an opinion seems to prevail, even among scholars familiar with the true beginnings of property in land, that movable property in primitive society belonged from the first to individuals.
