As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur
to them to divide and appropriate the soil.
to them to divide and appropriate the soil.
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
Consequently, when the
spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either
to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy. This singular
policy was pursued by all the ancients. After the captivity of Babylon,
Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus
abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the
expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled
with the Senate for the abolition of debts. Afterwards, towards the
end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire,
agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated
in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely
granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they
abolished debts. No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme,
ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a
coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future.
On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively
based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these
republics was war between the citizens.
Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated
political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more
influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in
the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a
legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy. Is
it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political
rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all
his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a
consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them
masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality
of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its
simplest expression.
"In giving property a just preponderance," says M. Pastoret, "Solon
repaired, as far as he was able, his first official act,--the abolition
of debts. . . . He thought he owed it to public peace to make this great
sacrifice of acquired rights and natural equity. But the violation of
individual property and written contracts is a bad preface to a public
code. "
In fact, such violations are always cruelly punished. In '89 and '93,
the possessions of the nobility and the clergy were confiscated, the
clever proletaires were enriched; and to-day the latter, having become
aristocrats, are making us pay dearly for our fathers' robbery. What,
therefore, is to be done now? It is not for us to violate right, but to
restore it. Now, it would be a violation of justice to dispossess some
and endow others, and then stop there. We must gradually lower the rate
of interest, organize industry, associate laborers and their functions,
and take a census of the large fortunes, not for the purpose of granting
privileges, but that we may effect their redemption by settling a
life-annuity upon their proprietors. We must apply on a large scale the
principle of collective production, give the State eminent domain over
all capital! make each producer responsible, abolish the custom-house,
and transform every profession and trade into a public function. Thereby
large fortunes will vanish without confiscation or violence; individual
possession will establish itself, without communism, under the
inspection of the republic; and equality of conditions will no longer
depend simply on the will of citizens.
Of the authors who have written upon the Romans, Bossuet and Montesquieu
occupy prominent positions in the first rank; the first being generally
regarded as the father of the philosophy of history, and the second as
the most profound writer upon law and politics. Nevertheless, it could
be shown that these two great writers, each of them imbued with the
prejudices of their century and their cloth, have left the question of
the causes of the rise and fall of the Romans precisely where they found
it.
Bossuet is admirable as long as he confines himself to description:
witness, among other passages, the picture which he has given us
of Greece before the Persian War, and which seems to have inspired
"Telemachus;" the parallel between Athens and Sparta, drawn twenty
times since Bossuet; the description of the character and morals of
the ancient Romans; and, finally, the sublime peroration which ends the
"Discourse on Universal History. " But when the famous historian deals
with causes, his philosophy is at fault.
"The tribunes always favored the division of captured lands, or the
proceeds of their sale, among the citizens. The Senate steadfastly
opposed those laws which were damaging to the State, and wanted the
price of lands to be awarded to the public treasury. "
Thus, according to Bossuet, the first and greatest wrong of civil wars
was inflicted upon the people, who, dying of hunger, demanded that the
lands, which they had shed their blood to conquer, should be given to
them for cultivation. The patricians, who bought them to deliver to
their slaves, had more regard for justice and the public interests.
How little affects the opinions of men! If the roles of Cicero and the
Gracchi had been inverted, Bossuet, whose sympathies were aroused by the
eloquence of the great orator more than by the clamors of the tribunes,
would have viewed the agrarian laws in quite a different light. He
then would have understood that the interest of the treasury was only
a pretext; that, when the captured lands were put up at auction, the
patricians hastened to buy them, in order to profit by the revenues from
them,--certain, moreover, that the price paid would come back to them
sooner or later, in exchange either for supplies furnished by them to
the republic, or for the subsistence of the multitude, who could buy
only of them, and whose services at one time, and poverty at another,
were rewarded by the State. For a State does not hoard; on the contrary,
the public funds always return to the people. If, then, a certain number
of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows
that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands,
deposits and accumulates real property there.
When Menenius related to the people his fable of the limbs and the
stomach, if any one had remarked to this story-teller that the stomach
freely gives to the limbs the nourishment which it freely receives, but
that the patricians gave to the plebeians only for cash, and lent to
them only at usury, he undoubtedly would have silenced the wily senator,
and saved the people from a great imposition. The Conscript Fathers
were fathers only of their own line. As for the common people, they were
regarded as an impure race, exploitable, taxable, and workable at the
discretion and mercy of their masters.
As a general thing, Bossuet shows little regard for the people. His
monarchical and theological instincts know nothing but authority,
obedience, and alms-giving, under the name of charity.
This unfortunate disposition constantly leads him to mistake symptoms
for causes; and his depth, which is so much admired, is borrowed from
his authors, and amounts to very little, after all.
When he says, for instance, that "the dissensions in the republic, and
finally its fall, were caused by the jealousies of its citizens, and
their love of liberty carried to an extreme and intolerable extent," are
we not tempted to ask him what caused those JEALOUSIES? --what inspired
the people with that LOVE OF LIBERTY, EXTREME AND INTOLERABLE? It would
be useless to reply, The corruption of morals; the disregard for the
ancient poverty; the debaucheries, luxury, and class jealousies; the
seditious character of the Gracchi, &c. Why did the morals become
corrupt, and whence arose those eternal dissensions between the
patricians and the plebeians?
In Rome, as in all other places, the dissension between the rich and
the poor was not caused directly by the desire for wealth (people, as
a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to
acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to
seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic.
So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we
demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the
social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of
the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had
nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been
conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the
Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of
the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their
tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the
republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been
exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars
had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the
empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and
since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames.
The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the
rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily:
a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and
the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor
left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave,
each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who
gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked
his jokes, perished also.
Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of
the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only
developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate
in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the
vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less
lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if. . .
&c. ,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and
Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can
be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history
does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon
such trivial causes. The passions of men, like the contingencies of time
and the varieties of climate, serve to maintain the forces which move
humanity and produce all historical changes; but they do not explain
them. The grain of sand of which Pascal speaks would have caused the
death of one man only, had not prior action ordered the events of which
this death was the precursor.
Montesquieu has read extensively; he knows Roman history thoroughly, is
perfectly well acquainted with the people of whom he speaks, and sees
very clearly why they were able to conquer their rivals and govern the
world. While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them;
we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall
without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French
writers, is skilfully composed,--spirited, witty, and filled with wise
observations. He pleases, interests, instructs, but leads to little
reflection; he does not conquer by depth of thought; he does not exalt
the mind by elevated reason or earnest feeling. In vain should we search
his writings for knowledge of antiquity, the character of primitive
society, or a description of the heroic ages, whose morals and
prejudices lived until the last days of the republic. Vico, painting the
Romans with their horrible traits, represents them as excusable, because
he shows that all their conduct was governed by preexisting ideas and
customs, and that they were informed, so to speak, by a superior genius
of which they were unconscious; in Montesquieu, the Roman atrocity
revolts, but is not explained. Therefore, as a writer, Montesquieu
brings greater credit upon French literature; as a philosopher, Vico
bears away the palm.
Originally, property in Rome was national, not private. Numa was
the first to establish individual property by distributing the lands
captured by Romulus. What was the dividend of this distribution effected
by Numa? What conditions were imposed upon individuals, what powers
reserved to the State? None whatever. Inequality of fortunes, absolute
abdication by the republic of its right of eminent domain over the
property of citizens,--such were the first results of the division of
Numa, who justly may be regarded as the originator of Roman revolutions.
He it was who instituted the worship of the god Terminus,--the guardian
of private possession, and one of the most ancient gods of Italy. It
was Numa who placed property under the protection of Jupiter; who,
in imitation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the
land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and
ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in
short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have
been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten
one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could
possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is
the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit,
and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply
this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by
means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects
them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an
indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin
of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the
development of this law.
Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy
abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year
494 B. C. , the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the
establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain?
That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the
proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the
benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over
to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children,
and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of
subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point,
&c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade
these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes,
notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius,
and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too
well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the
tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that
something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people
should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could
not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If
the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the
Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was
the end of it. On the contrary, if the demands of the proletaires became
too pressing, it declared a foreign war, and neighboring nations were
deprived of their liberty, to maintain the Roman aristocracy.
But the toils of war were only a halt for the plebeians in their onward
march towards pauperism. The lands confiscated from the conquered
nations were immediately added to the domain of the State, to the ager
publicus; and, as such, cultivated for the benefit of the treasury; or,
as was more often the case, they were sold at auction. None of them were
granted to the proletaires, who, unlike the patricians and knights, were
not supplied by the victory with the means of buying them. War never
enriched the soldier; the extensive plundering has been done always by
the generals. The vans of Augereau, and of twenty others, are famous in
our armies; but no one ever heard of a private getting rich. Nothing was
more common in Rome than charges of peculation, extortion, embezzlement,
and brigandage, carried on in the provinces at the head of armies, and
in other public capacities. All these charges were quieted by intrigue,
bribery of the judges, or desistance of the accuser. The culprit was
allowed always in the end to enjoy his spoils in peace; his son was only
the more respected on account of his father's crimes. And, in fact, it
could not be otherwise. What would become of us, if every deputy, peer,
or public functionary should be called upon to show his title to his
fortune!
"The patricians arrogated the exclusive enjoyment of the ager publicus;
and, like the feudal seigniors, granted some portions of their lands to
their dependants,--a wholly precarious concession, revocable at the will
of the grantor. The plebeians, on the contrary, were entitled to the
enjoyment of only a little pasture-land left to them in common:
an utterly unjust state of things, since, in consequence of it,
taxation--_census_--weighed more heavily upon the poor than upon the
rich. The patrician, in fact, always exempted himself from the tithe
which he owed as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession
of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his POSSESSIONS,
if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens' property was
taxed. "--Laboulaye: History of Property.
In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know
that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public
domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since
been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these
a tax, or _cense_, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained
by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a
light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS. Thus, among the Romans,
there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION regulating the
administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That
the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended
to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of
the public domain,--agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded
that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This
demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying
as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of
obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS. Upon this land they employed their
slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition
of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they
could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would
yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and
property.
Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude.
"The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in
order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property. A
colony was the reward of a victorious legion. But it was no longer
the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the
legions. The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,. . . but the
cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever. "
(Laboulaye: History of Property. )
The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of
territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of
accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied. Land is not
the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also
necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c. Where
did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain
these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians,
to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid
increase of usury, and the seizure of estates. Sallust, in his account
of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact. The conspirators
were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had
received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of
the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists,
free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already
they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined. The poverty caused
by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which
well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and
fairer means, possibly would have succeeded. In Rome, the mass of the
people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae
incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies;
deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal
to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in
short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal. "We
call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were
Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms
neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of
our lives and liberties. Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country,
all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers,
we have no rights, no property, no liberty. " [52]
The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the
imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy
of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the
Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for
expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and
given peace to the world. But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end
of her expiations had not come. A nation never was known to anticipate
its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion. Now, the
long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by
the massacre of a few hundred patricians. Catiline came to stay divine
vengeance; therefore his conspiracy failed.
The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid
of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the
empire. The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of
interest. [53] Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for
their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied
enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is
something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud
Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor.
But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching
institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day
more active. Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have
opposed this invasion with all their might. Their writings are filled
with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are
not always innocent.
St. Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in
disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went
about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while
lending money and piling up interests upon interests. [54] Why, in the
midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the
public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?
By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently
possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued
it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were
transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions,
was still applied to them. This conversion, instigated by senatorial
avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet
policy. If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each
citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the
amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could
cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor
should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire
never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession,
instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it. On what, then,
depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions
and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser
distribution of the right of possession.
I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because
it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual
possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few
of my readers seem to have understood. The Roman republic--having, as
it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose
conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any
nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if,
at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous
farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right
to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of
possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the
duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated
in morals; Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling
artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the
means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and
robberies that they were.
But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily
increased by the addition of new possessions. From the time of Nero, six
individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa. In
the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than
two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves. All
the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman
republic concur.
M. Giraud of Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch,
Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the
naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining
the provinces. "
But it never has been understood that the extension of property was
effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by
virtue of the constitution. When the Senate sold captured lands at
auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare.
When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized
the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of
interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege. "Property," said the
lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi
et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to
acquire, and then to lease and lend again. " But property is also the
right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social
condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled
to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell
it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and
anthropophagous property--will be established. [56]
The immediate and secondary cause of the decline of the Romans
was, then, the internal dissensions between the two orders of the
republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave
rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led
to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was
the establishment by Numa of the institution of property.
I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times
already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences:--
"The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing
extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that
they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman
law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever
a landed aristocracy exists.
"To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the
provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of
Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus
saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry;
but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach
of the first aspirant for power.
"The emperor shrank at the thought.
"While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave
way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves.
"Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the
soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens
and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the
towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the
husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius
complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman
people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One
day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of
Rome: that was a revolution.
"This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the
reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and
Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land
that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury,
to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from
taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest
one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure
served only to increase the evil which they wished to cure. To force
the rich to possess in Italy was to increase the large estates which
had ruined the country. And must I say, finally, that Aurelian wished to
send the captives into the desert lands of Etruria, and that Valentinian
was forced to settle the Alamanni on the fertile banks of the Po? "
If the reader, in running through this book, should complain of meeting
with nothing but quotations from other works, extracts from journals
and public lectures, comments upon laws, and interpretations of them, I
would remind him that the very object of this memoir is to establish the
conformity of my opinion concerning property with that universally held;
that, far from aiming at a paradox, it has been my main study to follow
the advice of the world; and, finally, that my sole pretension is to
clearly formulate the general belief. I cannot repeat it too often,--and
I confess it with pride,--I teach absolutely nothing that is new; and I
should regard the doctrine which I advocate as radically erroneous, if a
single witness should testify against it.
Let us now trace the revolutions in property among the Barbarians.
As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur
to them to divide and appropriate the soil. The land was held in common:
each individual could plow, sow, and reap. But, when the empire was once
invaded, they bethought themselves of sharing the land, just as
they shared spoils after a victory. "Hence," says M. Laboulaye, "the
expressions _sortes Burgundiorum Gothorum_ and {GREEK, ' k }; hence the
German words _allod_, allodium, and _loos_, lot, which are used in all
modern languages to designate the gifts of chance. "
Allodial property, at least with the mass of coparceners, was originally
held, then, in equal shares; for all of the prizes were equal, or, at
least, equivalent. This property, like that of the Romans, was wholly
individual, independent, exclusive, transferable, and consequently
susceptible of accumulation and invasion. But, instead of its being, as
was the case among the Romans, the large estate which, through
increase and usury, subordinated and absorbed the small one, among
the Barbarians--fonder of war than of wealth, more eager to dispose
of persons than to appropriate things--it was the warrior who, through
superiority of arms, enslaved his adversary. The Roman wanted matter;
the Barbarian wanted man. Consequently, in the feudal ages, rents were
almost nothing,--simply a hare, a partridge, a pie, a few pints of wine
brought by a little girl, or a Maypole set up within the suzerain's
reach. In return, the vassal or incumbent had to follow the seignior
to battle (a thing which happened almost every day), and equip and feed
himself at his own expense. "This spirit of the German tribes--this
spirit of companionship and association--governed the territory as it
governed individuals. The lands, like the men, were secured to a chief
or seignior by a bond of mutual protection and fidelity. This subjection
was the labor of the German epoch which gave birth to feudalism. By fair
means or foul, every proprietor who could not be a chief was forced to
be a vassal. " (Laboulaye: History of Property. )
By fair means or foul, every mechanic who cannot be a master has to be
a journeyman; every proprietor who is not an invader will be invaded;
every producer who cannot, by the exploitation of other men, furnish
products at less than their proper value, will lose his labor.
Corporations and masterships, which are hated so bitterly, but which
will reappear if we are not careful, are the necessary results of
the principle of competition which is inherent in property; their
organization was patterned formerly after that of the feudal hierarchy,
which was the result of the subordination of men and possessions.
The times which paved the way for the advent of feudalism and the
reappearance of large proprietors were times of carnage and the most
frightful anarchy. Never before had murder and violence made such havoc
with the human race. The tenth century, among others, if my memory
serves me rightly, was called the CENTURY OF IRON. His property, his
life, and the honor of his wife and children always in danger the
small proprietor made haste to do homage to his seignior, and to
bestow something on the church of his freehold, that he might receive
protection and security.
"Both facts and laws bear witness that from the sixth to the tenth
century the proprietors of small freeholds were gradually plundered,
or reduced by the encroachments of large proprietors and counts to the
condition of either vassals or tributaries. The Capitularies are full
of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these
threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the
government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The
complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians
at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same. It is said that,
whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the
curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought
an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until,
completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his
freehold. "--Laboulaye: History of Property.
How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by
large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy,
violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering
the laborer.
Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by
virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division
and extreme accumulation.
Property, at its first term, is almost null. Reduced to personal
exploitation, it is property only potentially. At its second term, it
exists in its perfection; then it is truly property.
When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows,
and rises quickly to the zenith of its power. Thus, the Jews, after
leaving Babylon with Esdras and Nehemiah, soon became richer and more
powerful than they had been under their kings. Sparta was in a strong
and prosperous condition during the two or three centuries which
followed the death of Lycurgus. The best days of Athens were those of
the Persian war; Rome, whose inhabitants were divided from the beginning
into two classes,--the exploiters and the exploited,--knew no such thing
as peace.
When property is concentrated, society, abusing itself, polluted, so
to speak, grows corrupt, wears itself out--how shall I express this
horrible idea? --plunges into long-continued and fatal luxury.
When feudalism was established, society had to die of the same disease
which killed it under the Caesars,--I mean accumulated property. But
humanity, created for an immortal destiny, is deathless; the revolutions
which disturb it are purifying crises, invariably followed by more
vigorous health. In the fifth century, the invasion of the Barbarians
partially restored the world to a state of natural equality. In the
twelfth century, a new spirit pervading all society gave the slave his
rights, and through justice breathed new life into the heart of nations.
It has been said, and often repeated, that Christianity regenerated the
world. That is true; but it seems to me that there is a mistake in
the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the
Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse
upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation
of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The
patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as
all aristocracies must.
It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning
to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of
Christianity was first exercised to its full extent.
The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the
commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the
Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity
exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests
and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often
persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages,
the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be
possible.
The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M.
Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion.
[57]
Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until
after the promulgation of the Gospel.
1. Slavery among the Romans. --"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of
the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither
property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his
master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past
use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides,
your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave,
and all that is of no use to you. ' When no market could be found for the
slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to
starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice. "
"Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary
school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out
servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the
useless mouths! "
"The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the
emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus
is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY.
_Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatur_, says Gaius.
"As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against
the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of
life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary
and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who
embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of
a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had
intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between
this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral
ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man. "
Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of
Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was
a thing; religion has made him a man. " The moral revolution which
transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity
before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have
only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL
of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the
condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between
slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a
day; the transitional step was servitude. "
Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and
whence came this difference? Let the same author answer.
2. Of servitude. --"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with
domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the
master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the
wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the
interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.
The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and
sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality,
and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing.
The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of
his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does
not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or
diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars
Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike. "
This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether
in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the
ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a
tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable,
irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties.
Why did his condition improve?
"In good season. . . " [when? ] "the serf began to be regarded as a man;
and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian
ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed
him. "
Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak
of the laws only. Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first
appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must
be cleared up.
"After the conquest, the serfs were scattered over the large estates
of the Barbarians, each having his house, his lot, and his peculium, in
return for which he paid rent and performed service. They were rarely
separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that
they had became the property of the purchaser. The law favored this
realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the
country. "
What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property
itself? For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom
he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor,
as well as the master.
"The Barbarians," again says M. Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize
the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are
incompatible with slavery. "
But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude
in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to
Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice
infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in
the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by
the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God
in the form of man? For we must not close our eyes to the fact that,
though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the
seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying
little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in
the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this
emancipation was essentially Christian. Suppose that the Barbarians had
remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world. As they did not change
the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs;
slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to
kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property;
whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots;
nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the
actors. The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less
dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans. Such was the nature upon
which, after the fall of the empire and the renovation of society,
Christianity was to act. But this nature, grounded as in former times
upon slavery and war, would, by its own energy, have produced nothing
but war and slavery.
"GRADUALLY the serfs obtained the privilege of being judged by the same
standard as their masters. . . . "
When, how, and by what title did they obtain this privilege?
"GRADUALLY their duties were regulated. "
Whence came the regulations? Who had the authority to introduce them?
"The master took a part of the labor of the serf,--three days, for
instance,--and left the rest to him. As for Sunday, that belonged to
God. "
And what established Sunday, if not religion? Whence I infer, that
the same power which took it upon itself to suspend hostilities and
to lighten the duties of the serf was also that which regulated the
judiciary and created a sort of law for the slave.
But this law itself, on what did it bear? --what was its principle? --what
was the philosophy of the councils and popes with reference to this
matter? The reply to all these questions, coming from me alone, would
be distrusted. The authority of M. Laboulaye shall give credence to my
words. This holy philosophy, to which the slaves were indebted for every
thing, this invocation of the Gospel, was an anathema against property.
The proprietors of small freeholds, that is, the freemen of the middle
class, had fallen, in consequence of the tyranny of the nobles, into a
worse condition than that of the tenants and serfs. "The expenses of war
weighed less heavily upon the serf than upon the freeman; and, as for
legal protection, the seigniorial court, where the serf was judged by
his peers, was far preferable to the cantonal assembly. It was better to
have a noble for a seignior than for a judge. "
So it is better to-day to have a man of large capital for an associate
than for a rival. The honest tenant--the laborer who earns weekly a
moderate but constant salary--is more to be envied than the independent
but small farmer, or the poor licensed mechanic.
At that time, all were either seigniors or serfs, oppressors or
oppressed. "Then, under the protection of convents, or of the
seigniorial turret, new societies were formed, which silently spread
over the soil made fertile by their hands, and which derived their power
from the annihilation of the free classes whom they enlisted in their
behalf. As tenants, these men acquired, from generation to generation,
sacred rights over the soil which they cultivated in the interest of
lazy and pillaging masters. As fast as the social tempest abated, it
became necessary to respect the union and heritage of these villeins,
who by their labor had truly prescribed the soil for their own profit. "
I ask how prescription could take effect where a contrary title and
possession already existed? M. Laboulaye is a lawyer. Where, then, did
he ever see the labor of the slave and the cultivation by the tenant
prescribe the soil for their own profit, to the detriment of a
recognized master daily acting as a proprietor? Let us not disguise
matters. As fast as the tenants and the serfs grew rich, they wished
to be independent and free; they commenced to associate, unfurl their
municipal banners, raise belfries, fortify their towns, and refuse to
pay their seigniorial dues. In doing these things they were perfectly
right; for, in fact, their condition was intolerable. But in law--I mean
in Roman and Napoleonic law--their refusal to obey and pay tribute to
their masters was illegitimate.
Now, this imperceptible usurpation of property by the commonalty was
inspired by religion.
The seignior had attached the serf to the soil; religion granted the
serf rights over the soil. The seignior imposed duties upon the serf;
religion fixed their limits. The seignior could kill the serf with
impunity, could deprive him of his wife, violate his daughter, pillage
his house, and rob him of his savings; religion checked his invasions:
it excommunicated the seignior. Religion was the real cause of the
ruin of feudal property. Why should it not be bold enough to-day to
resolutely condemn capitalistic property? Since the middle ages, there
has been no change in social economy except in its forms; its relations
remain unaltered.
The only result of the emancipation of the serfs was that property
changed hands; or, rather, that new proprietors were created. Sooner
or later the extension of privilege, far from curing the evil, was to
operate to the disadvantage of the plebeians. Nevertheless, the new
social organization did not meet with the same end in all places. In
Lombardy, for example, where the people rapidly growing rich through
commerce and industry soon conquered the authorities, even to the
exclusion of the nobles,--first, the nobility became poor and degraded,
and were forced, in order to live and maintain their credit, to gain
admission to the guilds; then, the ordinary subalternization of property
leading to inequality of fortunes, to wealth and poverty, to jealousies
and hatreds, the cities passed rapidly from the rankest democracy under
the yoke of a few ambitious leaders. Such was the fate of most of the
Lombardic cities,--Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Pisa, &c,. --which
afterwards changed rulers frequently, but which have never since risen
in favor of liberty. The people can easily escape from the tyranny of
despots, but they do not know how to throw off the effects of their own
despotism; just as we avoid the assassin's steel, while we succumb to a
constitutional malady. As soon as a nation becomes proprietor, either
it must perish, or a foreign invasion must force it again to begin its
evolutionary round. [59]
"The communes once organized, the kings treated them as superior
vassals. Now, just as the under vassal had no communication with the
king except through the direct vassal, so also the commoners could enter
no complaints except through the commune.
"Like causes produce like effects. Each commune became a small and
separate State, governed by a few citizens, who sought to extend their
authority over the others; who, in their turn, revenged themselves
upon the unfortunate inhabitants who had not the right of citizenship.
Feudalism in unemancipated countries, and oligarchy in the communes,
made nearly the same ravages. There were sub-associations, fraternities,
tradesmen's associations in the communes, and colleges in the
universities. The oppression was so great, that it was no rare thing to
see the inhabitants of a commune demanding its suppression. . . . "--Meyer:
Judicial Institutions of Europe.
In France, the Revolution was much more gradual. The communes, in taking
refuge under the protection of the kings, had found them masters rather
than protectors. Their liberty had long since been lost, or, rather,
their emancipation had been suspended, when feudalism received its
death-blow at the hand of Richelieu. Then liberty halted; the prince of
the feudatories held sole and undivided sway. The nobles, the clergy,
the commoners, the parliaments, every thing in short except a few
seeming privileges, were controlled by the king; who, like his early
predecessors, consumed regularly, and nearly always in advance, the
revenues of his domain,--and that domain was France.
Finally, '89 arrived; liberty resumed its march; a century and a
half had been required to wear out the last form of feudal
property,--monarchy.
The French Revolution may be defined as _the substitution of real right
for personal right;_ that is to say, in the days of feudalism, the value
of property depended upon the standing of the proprietor, while, after
the Revolution, the regard for the man was proportional to his property.
Now, we have seen from what has been said in the preceding pages, that
this recognition of the right of laborers had been the constant aim of
the serfs and communes, the secret motive of their efforts. The movement
of '89 was only the last stage of that long insurrection. But it seems
to me that we have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the
Revolution of 1789, instigated by the same causes, animated by the same
spirit, triumphing by the same struggles, was consummated in Italy four
centuries ago. Italy was the first to sound the signal of war against
feudalism; France has followed; Spain and England are beginning to move;
the rest still sleep. If a grand example should be given to the world,
the day of trial would be much abridged.
Note the following summary of the revolutions of property, from the days
of the Roman Empire down to the present time:--
1. Fifth century. --Barbarian invasions; division of the lands of the
empire into independent portions or freeholds.
2. From the fifth to the eighth century. --Gradual concentration of
freeholds, or transformation of the small freeholds into fiefs, feuds,
tenures, &c. Large properties, small possessions. Charlemagne (771-814)
decrees that all freeholds are dependent upon the king of France.
3. From the eighth to the tenth century. --The relation between the crown
and the superior dependents is broken; the latter becoming freeholders,
while the smaller dependents cease to recognize the king, and adhere to
the nearest suzerain.
spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either
to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy. This singular
policy was pursued by all the ancients. After the captivity of Babylon,
Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus
abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the
expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled
with the Senate for the abolition of debts. Afterwards, towards the
end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire,
agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated
in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely
granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they
abolished debts. No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme,
ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a
coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future.
On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively
based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these
republics was war between the citizens.
Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated
political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more
influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in
the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a
legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy. Is
it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political
rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all
his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a
consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them
masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality
of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its
simplest expression.
"In giving property a just preponderance," says M. Pastoret, "Solon
repaired, as far as he was able, his first official act,--the abolition
of debts. . . . He thought he owed it to public peace to make this great
sacrifice of acquired rights and natural equity. But the violation of
individual property and written contracts is a bad preface to a public
code. "
In fact, such violations are always cruelly punished. In '89 and '93,
the possessions of the nobility and the clergy were confiscated, the
clever proletaires were enriched; and to-day the latter, having become
aristocrats, are making us pay dearly for our fathers' robbery. What,
therefore, is to be done now? It is not for us to violate right, but to
restore it. Now, it would be a violation of justice to dispossess some
and endow others, and then stop there. We must gradually lower the rate
of interest, organize industry, associate laborers and their functions,
and take a census of the large fortunes, not for the purpose of granting
privileges, but that we may effect their redemption by settling a
life-annuity upon their proprietors. We must apply on a large scale the
principle of collective production, give the State eminent domain over
all capital! make each producer responsible, abolish the custom-house,
and transform every profession and trade into a public function. Thereby
large fortunes will vanish without confiscation or violence; individual
possession will establish itself, without communism, under the
inspection of the republic; and equality of conditions will no longer
depend simply on the will of citizens.
Of the authors who have written upon the Romans, Bossuet and Montesquieu
occupy prominent positions in the first rank; the first being generally
regarded as the father of the philosophy of history, and the second as
the most profound writer upon law and politics. Nevertheless, it could
be shown that these two great writers, each of them imbued with the
prejudices of their century and their cloth, have left the question of
the causes of the rise and fall of the Romans precisely where they found
it.
Bossuet is admirable as long as he confines himself to description:
witness, among other passages, the picture which he has given us
of Greece before the Persian War, and which seems to have inspired
"Telemachus;" the parallel between Athens and Sparta, drawn twenty
times since Bossuet; the description of the character and morals of
the ancient Romans; and, finally, the sublime peroration which ends the
"Discourse on Universal History. " But when the famous historian deals
with causes, his philosophy is at fault.
"The tribunes always favored the division of captured lands, or the
proceeds of their sale, among the citizens. The Senate steadfastly
opposed those laws which were damaging to the State, and wanted the
price of lands to be awarded to the public treasury. "
Thus, according to Bossuet, the first and greatest wrong of civil wars
was inflicted upon the people, who, dying of hunger, demanded that the
lands, which they had shed their blood to conquer, should be given to
them for cultivation. The patricians, who bought them to deliver to
their slaves, had more regard for justice and the public interests.
How little affects the opinions of men! If the roles of Cicero and the
Gracchi had been inverted, Bossuet, whose sympathies were aroused by the
eloquence of the great orator more than by the clamors of the tribunes,
would have viewed the agrarian laws in quite a different light. He
then would have understood that the interest of the treasury was only
a pretext; that, when the captured lands were put up at auction, the
patricians hastened to buy them, in order to profit by the revenues from
them,--certain, moreover, that the price paid would come back to them
sooner or later, in exchange either for supplies furnished by them to
the republic, or for the subsistence of the multitude, who could buy
only of them, and whose services at one time, and poverty at another,
were rewarded by the State. For a State does not hoard; on the contrary,
the public funds always return to the people. If, then, a certain number
of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows
that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands,
deposits and accumulates real property there.
When Menenius related to the people his fable of the limbs and the
stomach, if any one had remarked to this story-teller that the stomach
freely gives to the limbs the nourishment which it freely receives, but
that the patricians gave to the plebeians only for cash, and lent to
them only at usury, he undoubtedly would have silenced the wily senator,
and saved the people from a great imposition. The Conscript Fathers
were fathers only of their own line. As for the common people, they were
regarded as an impure race, exploitable, taxable, and workable at the
discretion and mercy of their masters.
As a general thing, Bossuet shows little regard for the people. His
monarchical and theological instincts know nothing but authority,
obedience, and alms-giving, under the name of charity.
This unfortunate disposition constantly leads him to mistake symptoms
for causes; and his depth, which is so much admired, is borrowed from
his authors, and amounts to very little, after all.
When he says, for instance, that "the dissensions in the republic, and
finally its fall, were caused by the jealousies of its citizens, and
their love of liberty carried to an extreme and intolerable extent," are
we not tempted to ask him what caused those JEALOUSIES? --what inspired
the people with that LOVE OF LIBERTY, EXTREME AND INTOLERABLE? It would
be useless to reply, The corruption of morals; the disregard for the
ancient poverty; the debaucheries, luxury, and class jealousies; the
seditious character of the Gracchi, &c. Why did the morals become
corrupt, and whence arose those eternal dissensions between the
patricians and the plebeians?
In Rome, as in all other places, the dissension between the rich and
the poor was not caused directly by the desire for wealth (people, as
a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to
acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to
seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic.
So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we
demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the
social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of
the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had
nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been
conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the
Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of
the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their
tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the
republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been
exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars
had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the
empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and
since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames.
The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the
rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily:
a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and
the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor
left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave,
each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who
gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked
his jokes, perished also.
Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of
the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only
developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate
in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the
vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less
lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if. . .
&c. ,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and
Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can
be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history
does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon
such trivial causes. The passions of men, like the contingencies of time
and the varieties of climate, serve to maintain the forces which move
humanity and produce all historical changes; but they do not explain
them. The grain of sand of which Pascal speaks would have caused the
death of one man only, had not prior action ordered the events of which
this death was the precursor.
Montesquieu has read extensively; he knows Roman history thoroughly, is
perfectly well acquainted with the people of whom he speaks, and sees
very clearly why they were able to conquer their rivals and govern the
world. While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them;
we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall
without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French
writers, is skilfully composed,--spirited, witty, and filled with wise
observations. He pleases, interests, instructs, but leads to little
reflection; he does not conquer by depth of thought; he does not exalt
the mind by elevated reason or earnest feeling. In vain should we search
his writings for knowledge of antiquity, the character of primitive
society, or a description of the heroic ages, whose morals and
prejudices lived until the last days of the republic. Vico, painting the
Romans with their horrible traits, represents them as excusable, because
he shows that all their conduct was governed by preexisting ideas and
customs, and that they were informed, so to speak, by a superior genius
of which they were unconscious; in Montesquieu, the Roman atrocity
revolts, but is not explained. Therefore, as a writer, Montesquieu
brings greater credit upon French literature; as a philosopher, Vico
bears away the palm.
Originally, property in Rome was national, not private. Numa was
the first to establish individual property by distributing the lands
captured by Romulus. What was the dividend of this distribution effected
by Numa? What conditions were imposed upon individuals, what powers
reserved to the State? None whatever. Inequality of fortunes, absolute
abdication by the republic of its right of eminent domain over the
property of citizens,--such were the first results of the division of
Numa, who justly may be regarded as the originator of Roman revolutions.
He it was who instituted the worship of the god Terminus,--the guardian
of private possession, and one of the most ancient gods of Italy. It
was Numa who placed property under the protection of Jupiter; who,
in imitation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the
land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and
ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in
short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have
been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten
one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could
possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is
the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit,
and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply
this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by
means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects
them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an
indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin
of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the
development of this law.
Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy
abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year
494 B. C. , the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the
establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain?
That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the
proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the
benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over
to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children,
and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of
subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point,
&c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade
these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes,
notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius,
and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too
well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the
tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that
something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people
should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could
not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If
the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the
Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was
the end of it. On the contrary, if the demands of the proletaires became
too pressing, it declared a foreign war, and neighboring nations were
deprived of their liberty, to maintain the Roman aristocracy.
But the toils of war were only a halt for the plebeians in their onward
march towards pauperism. The lands confiscated from the conquered
nations were immediately added to the domain of the State, to the ager
publicus; and, as such, cultivated for the benefit of the treasury; or,
as was more often the case, they were sold at auction. None of them were
granted to the proletaires, who, unlike the patricians and knights, were
not supplied by the victory with the means of buying them. War never
enriched the soldier; the extensive plundering has been done always by
the generals. The vans of Augereau, and of twenty others, are famous in
our armies; but no one ever heard of a private getting rich. Nothing was
more common in Rome than charges of peculation, extortion, embezzlement,
and brigandage, carried on in the provinces at the head of armies, and
in other public capacities. All these charges were quieted by intrigue,
bribery of the judges, or desistance of the accuser. The culprit was
allowed always in the end to enjoy his spoils in peace; his son was only
the more respected on account of his father's crimes. And, in fact, it
could not be otherwise. What would become of us, if every deputy, peer,
or public functionary should be called upon to show his title to his
fortune!
"The patricians arrogated the exclusive enjoyment of the ager publicus;
and, like the feudal seigniors, granted some portions of their lands to
their dependants,--a wholly precarious concession, revocable at the will
of the grantor. The plebeians, on the contrary, were entitled to the
enjoyment of only a little pasture-land left to them in common:
an utterly unjust state of things, since, in consequence of it,
taxation--_census_--weighed more heavily upon the poor than upon the
rich. The patrician, in fact, always exempted himself from the tithe
which he owed as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession
of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his POSSESSIONS,
if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens' property was
taxed. "--Laboulaye: History of Property.
In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know
that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public
domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since
been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these
a tax, or _cense_, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained
by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a
light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS. Thus, among the Romans,
there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION regulating the
administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That
the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended
to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of
the public domain,--agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded
that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This
demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying
as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of
obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS. Upon this land they employed their
slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition
of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they
could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would
yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and
property.
Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude.
"The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in
order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property. A
colony was the reward of a victorious legion. But it was no longer
the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the
legions. The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,. . . but the
cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever. "
(Laboulaye: History of Property. )
The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of
territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of
accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied. Land is not
the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also
necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c. Where
did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain
these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians,
to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid
increase of usury, and the seizure of estates. Sallust, in his account
of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact. The conspirators
were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had
received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of
the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists,
free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already
they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined. The poverty caused
by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which
well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and
fairer means, possibly would have succeeded. In Rome, the mass of the
people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae
incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies;
deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal
to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in
short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal. "We
call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were
Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms
neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of
our lives and liberties. Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country,
all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers,
we have no rights, no property, no liberty. " [52]
The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the
imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy
of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the
Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for
expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and
given peace to the world. But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end
of her expiations had not come. A nation never was known to anticipate
its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion. Now, the
long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by
the massacre of a few hundred patricians. Catiline came to stay divine
vengeance; therefore his conspiracy failed.
The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid
of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the
empire. The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of
interest. [53] Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for
their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied
enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is
something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud
Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor.
But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching
institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day
more active. Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have
opposed this invasion with all their might. Their writings are filled
with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are
not always innocent.
St. Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in
disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went
about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while
lending money and piling up interests upon interests. [54] Why, in the
midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the
public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?
By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently
possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued
it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were
transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions,
was still applied to them. This conversion, instigated by senatorial
avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet
policy. If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each
citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the
amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could
cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor
should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire
never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession,
instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it. On what, then,
depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions
and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser
distribution of the right of possession.
I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because
it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual
possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few
of my readers seem to have understood. The Roman republic--having, as
it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose
conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any
nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if,
at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous
farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right
to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of
possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the
duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated
in morals; Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling
artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the
means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and
robberies that they were.
But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily
increased by the addition of new possessions. From the time of Nero, six
individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa. In
the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than
two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves. All
the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman
republic concur.
M. Giraud of Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch,
Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the
naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining
the provinces. "
But it never has been understood that the extension of property was
effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by
virtue of the constitution. When the Senate sold captured lands at
auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare.
When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized
the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of
interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege. "Property," said the
lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi
et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to
acquire, and then to lease and lend again. " But property is also the
right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social
condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled
to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell
it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and
anthropophagous property--will be established. [56]
The immediate and secondary cause of the decline of the Romans
was, then, the internal dissensions between the two orders of the
republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave
rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led
to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was
the establishment by Numa of the institution of property.
I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times
already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences:--
"The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing
extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that
they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman
law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever
a landed aristocracy exists.
"To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the
provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of
Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus
saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry;
but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach
of the first aspirant for power.
"The emperor shrank at the thought.
"While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave
way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves.
"Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the
soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens
and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the
towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the
husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius
complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman
people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One
day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of
Rome: that was a revolution.
"This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the
reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and
Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land
that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury,
to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from
taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest
one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure
served only to increase the evil which they wished to cure. To force
the rich to possess in Italy was to increase the large estates which
had ruined the country. And must I say, finally, that Aurelian wished to
send the captives into the desert lands of Etruria, and that Valentinian
was forced to settle the Alamanni on the fertile banks of the Po? "
If the reader, in running through this book, should complain of meeting
with nothing but quotations from other works, extracts from journals
and public lectures, comments upon laws, and interpretations of them, I
would remind him that the very object of this memoir is to establish the
conformity of my opinion concerning property with that universally held;
that, far from aiming at a paradox, it has been my main study to follow
the advice of the world; and, finally, that my sole pretension is to
clearly formulate the general belief. I cannot repeat it too often,--and
I confess it with pride,--I teach absolutely nothing that is new; and I
should regard the doctrine which I advocate as radically erroneous, if a
single witness should testify against it.
Let us now trace the revolutions in property among the Barbarians.
As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur
to them to divide and appropriate the soil. The land was held in common:
each individual could plow, sow, and reap. But, when the empire was once
invaded, they bethought themselves of sharing the land, just as
they shared spoils after a victory. "Hence," says M. Laboulaye, "the
expressions _sortes Burgundiorum Gothorum_ and {GREEK, ' k }; hence the
German words _allod_, allodium, and _loos_, lot, which are used in all
modern languages to designate the gifts of chance. "
Allodial property, at least with the mass of coparceners, was originally
held, then, in equal shares; for all of the prizes were equal, or, at
least, equivalent. This property, like that of the Romans, was wholly
individual, independent, exclusive, transferable, and consequently
susceptible of accumulation and invasion. But, instead of its being, as
was the case among the Romans, the large estate which, through
increase and usury, subordinated and absorbed the small one, among
the Barbarians--fonder of war than of wealth, more eager to dispose
of persons than to appropriate things--it was the warrior who, through
superiority of arms, enslaved his adversary. The Roman wanted matter;
the Barbarian wanted man. Consequently, in the feudal ages, rents were
almost nothing,--simply a hare, a partridge, a pie, a few pints of wine
brought by a little girl, or a Maypole set up within the suzerain's
reach. In return, the vassal or incumbent had to follow the seignior
to battle (a thing which happened almost every day), and equip and feed
himself at his own expense. "This spirit of the German tribes--this
spirit of companionship and association--governed the territory as it
governed individuals. The lands, like the men, were secured to a chief
or seignior by a bond of mutual protection and fidelity. This subjection
was the labor of the German epoch which gave birth to feudalism. By fair
means or foul, every proprietor who could not be a chief was forced to
be a vassal. " (Laboulaye: History of Property. )
By fair means or foul, every mechanic who cannot be a master has to be
a journeyman; every proprietor who is not an invader will be invaded;
every producer who cannot, by the exploitation of other men, furnish
products at less than their proper value, will lose his labor.
Corporations and masterships, which are hated so bitterly, but which
will reappear if we are not careful, are the necessary results of
the principle of competition which is inherent in property; their
organization was patterned formerly after that of the feudal hierarchy,
which was the result of the subordination of men and possessions.
The times which paved the way for the advent of feudalism and the
reappearance of large proprietors were times of carnage and the most
frightful anarchy. Never before had murder and violence made such havoc
with the human race. The tenth century, among others, if my memory
serves me rightly, was called the CENTURY OF IRON. His property, his
life, and the honor of his wife and children always in danger the
small proprietor made haste to do homage to his seignior, and to
bestow something on the church of his freehold, that he might receive
protection and security.
"Both facts and laws bear witness that from the sixth to the tenth
century the proprietors of small freeholds were gradually plundered,
or reduced by the encroachments of large proprietors and counts to the
condition of either vassals or tributaries. The Capitularies are full
of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these
threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the
government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The
complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians
at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same. It is said that,
whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the
curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought
an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until,
completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his
freehold. "--Laboulaye: History of Property.
How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by
large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy,
violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering
the laborer.
Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by
virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division
and extreme accumulation.
Property, at its first term, is almost null. Reduced to personal
exploitation, it is property only potentially. At its second term, it
exists in its perfection; then it is truly property.
When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows,
and rises quickly to the zenith of its power. Thus, the Jews, after
leaving Babylon with Esdras and Nehemiah, soon became richer and more
powerful than they had been under their kings. Sparta was in a strong
and prosperous condition during the two or three centuries which
followed the death of Lycurgus. The best days of Athens were those of
the Persian war; Rome, whose inhabitants were divided from the beginning
into two classes,--the exploiters and the exploited,--knew no such thing
as peace.
When property is concentrated, society, abusing itself, polluted, so
to speak, grows corrupt, wears itself out--how shall I express this
horrible idea? --plunges into long-continued and fatal luxury.
When feudalism was established, society had to die of the same disease
which killed it under the Caesars,--I mean accumulated property. But
humanity, created for an immortal destiny, is deathless; the revolutions
which disturb it are purifying crises, invariably followed by more
vigorous health. In the fifth century, the invasion of the Barbarians
partially restored the world to a state of natural equality. In the
twelfth century, a new spirit pervading all society gave the slave his
rights, and through justice breathed new life into the heart of nations.
It has been said, and often repeated, that Christianity regenerated the
world. That is true; but it seems to me that there is a mistake in
the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the
Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse
upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation
of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The
patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as
all aristocracies must.
It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning
to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of
Christianity was first exercised to its full extent.
The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the
commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the
Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity
exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests
and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often
persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages,
the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be
possible.
The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M.
Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion.
[57]
Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until
after the promulgation of the Gospel.
1. Slavery among the Romans. --"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of
the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither
property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his
master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past
use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides,
your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave,
and all that is of no use to you. ' When no market could be found for the
slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to
starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice. "
"Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary
school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out
servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the
useless mouths! "
"The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the
emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus
is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY.
_Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatur_, says Gaius.
"As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against
the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of
life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary
and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who
embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of
a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had
intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between
this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral
ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man. "
Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of
Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was
a thing; religion has made him a man. " The moral revolution which
transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity
before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have
only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL
of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the
condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between
slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a
day; the transitional step was servitude. "
Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and
whence came this difference? Let the same author answer.
2. Of servitude. --"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with
domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the
master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the
wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the
interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.
The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and
sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality,
and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing.
The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of
his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does
not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or
diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars
Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike. "
This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether
in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the
ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a
tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable,
irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties.
Why did his condition improve?
"In good season. . . " [when? ] "the serf began to be regarded as a man;
and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian
ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed
him. "
Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak
of the laws only. Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first
appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must
be cleared up.
"After the conquest, the serfs were scattered over the large estates
of the Barbarians, each having his house, his lot, and his peculium, in
return for which he paid rent and performed service. They were rarely
separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that
they had became the property of the purchaser. The law favored this
realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the
country. "
What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property
itself? For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom
he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor,
as well as the master.
"The Barbarians," again says M. Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize
the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are
incompatible with slavery. "
But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude
in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to
Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice
infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in
the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by
the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God
in the form of man? For we must not close our eyes to the fact that,
though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the
seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying
little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in
the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this
emancipation was essentially Christian. Suppose that the Barbarians had
remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world. As they did not change
the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs;
slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to
kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property;
whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots;
nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the
actors. The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less
dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans. Such was the nature upon
which, after the fall of the empire and the renovation of society,
Christianity was to act. But this nature, grounded as in former times
upon slavery and war, would, by its own energy, have produced nothing
but war and slavery.
"GRADUALLY the serfs obtained the privilege of being judged by the same
standard as their masters. . . . "
When, how, and by what title did they obtain this privilege?
"GRADUALLY their duties were regulated. "
Whence came the regulations? Who had the authority to introduce them?
"The master took a part of the labor of the serf,--three days, for
instance,--and left the rest to him. As for Sunday, that belonged to
God. "
And what established Sunday, if not religion? Whence I infer, that
the same power which took it upon itself to suspend hostilities and
to lighten the duties of the serf was also that which regulated the
judiciary and created a sort of law for the slave.
But this law itself, on what did it bear? --what was its principle? --what
was the philosophy of the councils and popes with reference to this
matter? The reply to all these questions, coming from me alone, would
be distrusted. The authority of M. Laboulaye shall give credence to my
words. This holy philosophy, to which the slaves were indebted for every
thing, this invocation of the Gospel, was an anathema against property.
The proprietors of small freeholds, that is, the freemen of the middle
class, had fallen, in consequence of the tyranny of the nobles, into a
worse condition than that of the tenants and serfs. "The expenses of war
weighed less heavily upon the serf than upon the freeman; and, as for
legal protection, the seigniorial court, where the serf was judged by
his peers, was far preferable to the cantonal assembly. It was better to
have a noble for a seignior than for a judge. "
So it is better to-day to have a man of large capital for an associate
than for a rival. The honest tenant--the laborer who earns weekly a
moderate but constant salary--is more to be envied than the independent
but small farmer, or the poor licensed mechanic.
At that time, all were either seigniors or serfs, oppressors or
oppressed. "Then, under the protection of convents, or of the
seigniorial turret, new societies were formed, which silently spread
over the soil made fertile by their hands, and which derived their power
from the annihilation of the free classes whom they enlisted in their
behalf. As tenants, these men acquired, from generation to generation,
sacred rights over the soil which they cultivated in the interest of
lazy and pillaging masters. As fast as the social tempest abated, it
became necessary to respect the union and heritage of these villeins,
who by their labor had truly prescribed the soil for their own profit. "
I ask how prescription could take effect where a contrary title and
possession already existed? M. Laboulaye is a lawyer. Where, then, did
he ever see the labor of the slave and the cultivation by the tenant
prescribe the soil for their own profit, to the detriment of a
recognized master daily acting as a proprietor? Let us not disguise
matters. As fast as the tenants and the serfs grew rich, they wished
to be independent and free; they commenced to associate, unfurl their
municipal banners, raise belfries, fortify their towns, and refuse to
pay their seigniorial dues. In doing these things they were perfectly
right; for, in fact, their condition was intolerable. But in law--I mean
in Roman and Napoleonic law--their refusal to obey and pay tribute to
their masters was illegitimate.
Now, this imperceptible usurpation of property by the commonalty was
inspired by religion.
The seignior had attached the serf to the soil; religion granted the
serf rights over the soil. The seignior imposed duties upon the serf;
religion fixed their limits. The seignior could kill the serf with
impunity, could deprive him of his wife, violate his daughter, pillage
his house, and rob him of his savings; religion checked his invasions:
it excommunicated the seignior. Religion was the real cause of the
ruin of feudal property. Why should it not be bold enough to-day to
resolutely condemn capitalistic property? Since the middle ages, there
has been no change in social economy except in its forms; its relations
remain unaltered.
The only result of the emancipation of the serfs was that property
changed hands; or, rather, that new proprietors were created. Sooner
or later the extension of privilege, far from curing the evil, was to
operate to the disadvantage of the plebeians. Nevertheless, the new
social organization did not meet with the same end in all places. In
Lombardy, for example, where the people rapidly growing rich through
commerce and industry soon conquered the authorities, even to the
exclusion of the nobles,--first, the nobility became poor and degraded,
and were forced, in order to live and maintain their credit, to gain
admission to the guilds; then, the ordinary subalternization of property
leading to inequality of fortunes, to wealth and poverty, to jealousies
and hatreds, the cities passed rapidly from the rankest democracy under
the yoke of a few ambitious leaders. Such was the fate of most of the
Lombardic cities,--Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Pisa, &c,. --which
afterwards changed rulers frequently, but which have never since risen
in favor of liberty. The people can easily escape from the tyranny of
despots, but they do not know how to throw off the effects of their own
despotism; just as we avoid the assassin's steel, while we succumb to a
constitutional malady. As soon as a nation becomes proprietor, either
it must perish, or a foreign invasion must force it again to begin its
evolutionary round. [59]
"The communes once organized, the kings treated them as superior
vassals. Now, just as the under vassal had no communication with the
king except through the direct vassal, so also the commoners could enter
no complaints except through the commune.
"Like causes produce like effects. Each commune became a small and
separate State, governed by a few citizens, who sought to extend their
authority over the others; who, in their turn, revenged themselves
upon the unfortunate inhabitants who had not the right of citizenship.
Feudalism in unemancipated countries, and oligarchy in the communes,
made nearly the same ravages. There were sub-associations, fraternities,
tradesmen's associations in the communes, and colleges in the
universities. The oppression was so great, that it was no rare thing to
see the inhabitants of a commune demanding its suppression. . . . "--Meyer:
Judicial Institutions of Europe.
In France, the Revolution was much more gradual. The communes, in taking
refuge under the protection of the kings, had found them masters rather
than protectors. Their liberty had long since been lost, or, rather,
their emancipation had been suspended, when feudalism received its
death-blow at the hand of Richelieu. Then liberty halted; the prince of
the feudatories held sole and undivided sway. The nobles, the clergy,
the commoners, the parliaments, every thing in short except a few
seeming privileges, were controlled by the king; who, like his early
predecessors, consumed regularly, and nearly always in advance, the
revenues of his domain,--and that domain was France.
Finally, '89 arrived; liberty resumed its march; a century and a
half had been required to wear out the last form of feudal
property,--monarchy.
The French Revolution may be defined as _the substitution of real right
for personal right;_ that is to say, in the days of feudalism, the value
of property depended upon the standing of the proprietor, while, after
the Revolution, the regard for the man was proportional to his property.
Now, we have seen from what has been said in the preceding pages, that
this recognition of the right of laborers had been the constant aim of
the serfs and communes, the secret motive of their efforts. The movement
of '89 was only the last stage of that long insurrection. But it seems
to me that we have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the
Revolution of 1789, instigated by the same causes, animated by the same
spirit, triumphing by the same struggles, was consummated in Italy four
centuries ago. Italy was the first to sound the signal of war against
feudalism; France has followed; Spain and England are beginning to move;
the rest still sleep. If a grand example should be given to the world,
the day of trial would be much abridged.
Note the following summary of the revolutions of property, from the days
of the Roman Empire down to the present time:--
1. Fifth century. --Barbarian invasions; division of the lands of the
empire into independent portions or freeholds.
2. From the fifth to the eighth century. --Gradual concentration of
freeholds, or transformation of the small freeholds into fiefs, feuds,
tenures, &c. Large properties, small possessions. Charlemagne (771-814)
decrees that all freeholds are dependent upon the king of France.
3. From the eighth to the tenth century. --The relation between the crown
and the superior dependents is broken; the latter becoming freeholders,
while the smaller dependents cease to recognize the king, and adhere to
the nearest suzerain.
