Page images
PDF
EPUB

said in a speech at Perugia, it is "the indefinite series of generations which have contributed to it in the past, constitute it to-day and will continue to constitute it in the future." Society does not exist for the individual but the individual for society: "the whole life of society consists in assuming the individual as a means for social ends." The individual must of course be free to develop his own personality, and in the field of economics free-play must be left to private initiative, as the State is not capable of performing efficiently economic functions of a productive nature. The capitalist system is by no means condemned, as it would be in a Socialist régime, for capitalism is regarded by Fascism as necessary for the economic progress of society. Mussolini himself in a speech delivered some three years ago, declared that its extension to those parts of the world where it has not yet developed was desirable and would be beneficial to all humanity. But the right of the individual to liberty must not be superior to the State, nor can an exaggerated development of certain individuals or groups of individuals prejudicial to the interests of the community as a whole be permitted.

The whole nation is being reorganized on the basis of the labour corporations and syndicates, in which are included not only manual workers and clerks, but also employers and landowners, experts and engineers, managers and bailiffs, professional men, etc.; the State and its organs control the mutual relations of these various syndicates and give awards in conflicts arising between them. There is therefore a proposal to modify the existing electoral and parliamentary system so as to bring it into conformity with the new structure of society. The syndicates would come to enjoy some form of political representation, probably in the Senate. In the past the political life of the old Italian republics was based on the trade guilds, and even in the discussions for the creation of the constitution of 1848, which is still in force, there were proposals in favour of representation of the various trades and corporations, although at the time they were not adopted. To-day syndicalist representation is about to replace the old system of municipal councils, recently abolished.

Independently of politics, Fascism is permeating every aspect of Italian life, and it is no longer a one-man show, as so many

August 31, 1925.

foreigners seem to think, for, great as is the organizing and creative genius of Mussolini and extensive as are the authority and popularity which he enjoys, the system is now working normally under the guidance of numerous other collaborators of ability, while the various organs are constituted on such solid foundations that they are becoming every day less dependent on this or that individual leader.

Many of the measures of the Fascist Government to which die-hard democrats take exception are no doubt of a transitory nature, and liable to be modified when the circumstances which made them necessary shall have disappeared. But it should not be thought that any such attenuation of particular measures implies a change of policy or the relinquishing of the strict spirit of Fascist principles. There is no idea of abandoning the attitude that Fascism, far from offering its followers an easy life and an earthly paradise, such as is promised by Socialism, demands of them sacrifices and a strenuous existence of strife and struggle. Much has already been achieved, and the Italy of to-day is undoubtedly more prosperous and efficient than was the Italy of the preFascist or the pre-war era. But Mussolini and the other leaders never cease from insisting on the necessity for still greater efforts and still harder work in order to attain the further goal-the definite reconstruction of the nation in conformity with its higher destinies.

LUIGI VILLARI

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE ENGLISH VILLAGE

1.

2.

The Medieval Village. By G. G. COULTON.
Press. 1925.

Cambridge University

The English Village: an anthropological interpretation. By HAROLD
PEAKE. Benn Bros.

1922.

3. English Field Systems. By HOWARD LEVI GRAY, Ph.D. Harvard University Press. 1915.

4.

The Origin of Property: and the formation of the Village Community.
By JAN ST. LEWINSKI. Constable.

1913.

THE old English village, with its intricate field system, is best

known in literature by the abuse poured upon it. We do not refer to the sentimental lamentations of poets like Goldsmith, who were always careful to live in towns, but to the writings of men who were full of the lore of the country. The Tudor reformers abused it, as did their successors, until the classical denunciations of Arthur Young left nothing more to be said. To the modern inquirer the chief difficulty is not the long endurance of the system, but how it ever arose. The endurance can be explained by custom, for, except the schoolboy, there is no such rigid conservative as the peasant. But it seems to pass comprehension how anyone could have devised a system under which a man owning twenty-five to thirty acres of arable land held it scattered in thirty or forty acre and half-acre plots in all sorts of positions over three large fields. The inconvenience is manifest; but history supplies an explanation, for things do not really arise because they are inconvenient.

By the end of the eighteenth century, open-field or champion agriculture was evidently doomed. The voice that pronounced the judgment was Arthur Young's, but the forces behind him were the industrial revolution and the economic pressure of the Napoleonic Wars. Enclosure Act followed Enclosure Act until an open arable field became an historical curiosity. By the middle of the nineteenth century that result was accomplished. Denunciations had ceased because there was nothing left to denounce ; but the historical spirit was abroad, and the village community became the subject of patient investigation and heated controversy. The pioneer work was the pamphlet (for it is little more) by Nasse, entitled "The Agricultural Community of the

Middle Ages and Inclosures of the Sixteenth Century in England," a book that, considering the paucity of the records then available, astonishes by its accuracy and insight. Von Maurer followed in Germany with weighty tomes, and then England's greatest historical jurist compared the evidence collected by Nasse and Von Maurer with his own Indian knowledge. The result was "Village Communities in the East and West."

After that began two controversies of almost theological virulence. Lavelaye, eagerly followed by the socialists and hotly pursued by the individualists, represented the village community as a system of primitive and ideal communism destroyed by civilised selfishness. Seebohm made wigs on the green quite as effectually by arguing in favour of a Roman origin instead of the Teutonic mark. The later literature is quieter in tone and more thorough in method. Mr. Coulton has drawn a wonderful and fully documented picture of the actual life of the medieval peasant : a picture that should, but certainly will not, dispose of the last surviving advocate of the good old times and the "Merrie England" of the Middle Ages, for that individual is beyond argument and above records. It is not Mr. Coulton's purpose to treat in any detail of the problems of the field systems and the forms of the village. The two most important treatises on that subject are those by Mr. Lewinski and Dr. Gray, and it is more than curious that later writers have not referred to them or even noted them in bibliographies. Lord Ernle's book was written before either appeared. Mr. Coulton only mentions the subject incidentally, but Mr. Peake's work would probably have been entirely recast if he had really digested their conclusions.

The old English village or township was inseparably connected with the open arable fields. The classical modern description of this field system is contained in Seebohm's "English Village Community," a description that has been copied into numerous treatises and manuals since it appeared. Seebohm's main conclusions may have become untenable, but his account of the fields of Hitchin can hardly be improved upon. For our present purpose it will be sufficient to indicate the main characteristics of the system.

(a) All the houses of the township were clustered together at a central site, and all the inhabitants lived there.

(b) All the arable land of the township was divided into large

open fields, usually three in number, less often two, and occasionally four or an irregular number. The dominant feature was the two or three-field system.

(c) Each of the fields was cultivated in turn in a rigid rotation. In the three-field system this was generally: first, the bread corn, autumn-sown wheat or rye (sometimes sown together); secondly, the drink and fodder corn, barley, peas, beans, more rarely oats, all of course spring-sown; thirdly, fallow. The fallow field during the whole year until the ploughing, and the other fields after the crops had been harvested, were thrown open for grazing by the cattle of the township and fertilization by their manure.

(d) The holdings of the tenants of the manor-mostly villeins, but with a few freeholders-were scattered in acre or half-acre strips all over the common fields. The holding of each villein was called a virgate or yardland, and though varying in size in different townships was of constant size within the same township. It would often consist of 30 or 40 different strips, but always so divided that the owner had an equal area in each of the fields. Part of the demesne land of the lord would also be scattered in strips, but we are not concerned on this occasion with the position of the lord.

(e) The ploughing was effected on a co-operative system, the owners contributing the oxen necessary to make up the plough team. The heavy, cumbersome plough of the Middle Ages required a team of four or eight oxen and a team of men to guide them. To own such a team was beyond the capital of any single villein, and co-operation was an economic necessity.

It is very necessary to distinguish this two or three-field system from the Celtic or runrig system. Both have the feature in common that the arable fields are unenclosed, and this has caused many writers to treat all open-field agriculture as of the same kind. The resultant confusion is immense, and is well illustrated in the late Sir Lawrence Gomme's book on the village community. The Celtic system, as it subsisted in the Western Isles, is portrayed in Carmichael's account, copied into Skene's "Celtic Scotland " (Vol. III, p. 380); but some of the Scotch Board of Agriculture reports of 1794 give a better description, as it was in full operation at that time.

The second cause of confusion between the two systems is that, in both, the open-fields were divided up into strips. From

« PreviousContinue »