patent to all. These rustics, by treating at least some of the total supply of land as common property, excluded the possibility of the complete monopolization of the land by the feudal nobility. Within the Association of the Mark the early Swiss learned their first lessons in self-goverment. As it was necessary to regulate the use of the common lands, semi-agricultural, semi-political meetings of all the inhabitants were convened at stated times. These were the Landsgemeinden, which have survived to our own time in several of the pastoral cantons and which resemble our own New England town meetings more closely than any institution in the world. Perhaps overmuch stress should not be laid upon inferences drawn from etymology, but this name Landsgemeinde is sug gestive in itself, this gemeinde or community of the land, whether the German word Land be used here in the sense of district or in the sense of soil. It is therefore especially significant that the very first Landsgemeinde of which we have any documentary record met in Schwiz in 1294 and promulgated a decree dealing with the subject of land tenure: The assembled people agreed to forbid anyone to sell or give land to monasteries or to aliens under pain of a heavy fine. All land thus alienated must be bought back or else confiscated by the community. The monasteries must pay the same taxes as all other members of the community or else be excluded from using the common lands. Aliens must pay the same taxes; nor can they exact any compensation from their tenants for this reason or take the land away from them. Rough and ready as these regulations undoubtedly were, they gave evidence of great insight on the part of the rude peasants. They constituted a revolt against the absorption of land by great ecclesiastical corporations or absentee landlords, and laid the foundations for a stable, compact commonwealth against which the attacks of armed feudalism proved impotent. Nowhere can the historical development of the Almend and Landsgemeinde be studied to better advantage than in the community of Schwiz itself, in Schwiz, which gave its name to the Republic and its coat of arms (a white cross on a red ground) to be the flag of Switzerland; within whose boundaries, at Brunnen, the perpetual pact of 1291 was confirmed in 1315, and on whose frontier, at Morgarten, was fought the first battle of the war of independence against HabsburgAustria. At the outbreak of this war of independence the land of Schwiz, with the exception of a few estates belonging to ecclesiastical and secular nobles, was common land. Karl Bürkli assures us, in a pamphlet entitled "Der Ursprung der Eidgenossenschaft," that the name of Ober- Allmig, or Ober Almend, is still applied to the wide stretch between the range of the Morgarten and the lake of Klönthal, and from the Wäggi Valley to Gersau. On this land now stand more than thirty villages and hamlets. There are hundreds of houses, even whole villages, built on this Almend land, the houses only being private property, whereas the land is public. If the houses burn down and are not rebuilt within a specified time, the land reverts to the community as Almend land. The Swiss struggle for independence against HabsburgAustria was long drawn and intermittent, but if any one event can be characterized as marking its beginning, it must be the quarrel between the men of Schwiz and the Abbey of Einsideln, standing under the protection of Habsburg-Austria, concerning the boundaries of their Almend. The quarrel was one of long standing. The monastery of Einsideln, when founded in 934, had received lands to the north of the Almend of Schwiz. In 1018 the boundaries of the monastery were extended southward, and it was not long before the expanding community of Schwiz came into conflict with the monks. The mountaineers rallied to the defense of their common lands. The dispute dragged along for fully a century; it seemed to defy all attempts at a satisfactory solution. Two emperors were called upon to arbitrate, Henry IV in 1114, and Conrad III in 1144. Both sides robbed, burned, and plundered, and it was not till 1217 that a temporary cessation of hostilities was effected by Count Rudolf I of Habsburg, acting in the capacity of umpire. This dispute over the Almend had, however, been of inestimable value to the men of Schwiz. It had united them against a common foe; it had taught them the first principles of defensive warfare, which they were destined to apply so brilliantly later on; their Landsgemeinde had fitted them for self-government under universal suffrage; the communal unit had been formed around the possession of common lands as a nucleus. In 1314 the dispute between Schwiz and Einsideln flared up again, for in the night of the 6th of January a marauding band attacked the monastery, took the sleeping monks prisoners, penetrated into the cellars, broke open the doors of the sanctuary, and in drunken fury overthrew the ornaments, treasures, vessels, vestments, and relics. This raid reflects but little credit on the men of Schwiz, but it shows the point of exasperation to which they had been goaded by the infringements on their Almend. The raid on Einsideln led to war between the men of Schwiz and the house of Habsburg-Austria, as protectors of the monastery. The men of Schwiz called to their aid their confederates of Uri and Unterwalden, who, under the same system of the Almend, had been growing up to the same status of local self-government and economic independence. In 1315 Duke Leopold invaded Schwiz and was repulsed with great loss by the Confederates in the battle of Morgarten. The battle proved to be one of the first occasions in the Middle Ages, if not the very first, in which an army of mounted knights was conquered by peasants on foot. The ball had now been set a-rolling. Little by little Habs burg-Austria was crowded out of the possessions it held on what is now Swiss soil. The territory it vacated acquired self-government-the serfs it left behind became freemen. The Republic of Switzerland arose-a new and startling factor in the European situation. It is not my purpose to describe the subsequent development of the Swiss Republic from the battle of Morgarten to the present day. Suffice it to insist upon the fact that the possession of common lands was the rallying point of the early patriots. One can not conceive of the struggle for Swiss independence without this incentive, and it seems entirely likely that had this system of communism in land not existed at that period the Republic of Switzerland would not have sprung up in the center of Europe. Its territory would doubtless now be forming part of Germany, France, Italy, and Austria according to its linguistic divisions. The common lands of Switzerland have maintained themselves to this day almost intact in the pastoral cantons. Even in the industrial cantons, where the maintenance of common lands encounters greater difficulties, vast tracts of forest and even cultivated lands are still owned in common, though often rented out to individuals, so that numerous small towns and villages actually collect no local taxes at all, and are able to distribute fuel to their citizens in winter. Such communities live on their ground rents as surely as do great landowners in other parts of the world. No one will deny that the communistic system of land tenure in Switzerland as practiced in the past and to some extent in the present is clumsy and antiquated, and that the same ends could better be served by the simple system of taxing land values, irrespective of improvements. But the achievement is the thing, and that is, that the equal rights of all the citizens in the land are guaranteed; that the great ethical principle finds local expression that the crust of mother earth belongs equally to all the children of men. The real origin of the Swiss Republic, then, is to be sought in the question of land tenure, not in the chance of an arrow in its flight. There is an impressive meaning in this fact that the land question presided at the birth of the nation, which, after a career of more than six hundred years, has proved itself to be the most enduring republic in existence. |