THE SWISS ALLMENDS.
All the realm shall be in common, * * *
And there shall be no money.--SHAKESPEARE.
The reader will have seen that I was, throughout the excursion
recorded in the foregoing pages, paying some attention to the Swiss
Allmends. Allmend means land which is held and used, as the word itself
indicates, in common. In this general sense it includes common land
of all kinds, whether in pasture, under forest, or in cultivation. In
ordinary usage, however, it has come, without absolutely excluding
the two former kinds, to signify common land under cultivation, with,
in fact, almost a further restriction to common land, in which the
cultivation is effected by the spade, or at all events, by the hand of
man.
It is to the old burgers in any commune that these kinds of land are
common. The old burgers are, with but very few exceptions, the lineal
descendants of those who were burgers, say 200, it may have been 500,
or even 1,000 years ago. New burgers are those, or the descendants of
those, who, having come in from other cantons, or communes, settled in
the place, and who have no rights of any kind in the common land. Land
may be common to all the old burgers of a commune equally: it is then
said to belong to the commune. Or it may belong to sections of the old
burgers, as, for instance, to those who reside in a particular hamlet;
or to those who belong to a particular class of families; and these may
hold it either simply for their own use, or for the promotion of some
defined object: in any such cases it is said to belong to a corporation.
A Swiss commune may be taken as the analogue of an English parish.
The difference is that all the burgers, old and new, of a commune
have now, generally--the old burgers, according to the old theory of
the commune, had always had--an equal voice in the government and
administration of the affairs of the commune, with the exception of the
management and usufruct of the common property, which belongs, as it
always has done, exclusively to the old burgers, either collectively,
or sectionally. Residents from other cantons, or communes, are now
pretty generally admitted more or less completely to participation
in political rights. Formerly this was not the case: they were only
tolerated. But with respect to the common property, whether of the
commune or of its corporations, they are still rigidly excluded from
all participation in it. For instance, there are alien families, that
is to say, not descended from old burgers, which have been settled in
Schwyz for two centuries, but which at this day have no share in the
common lands. In order to bring an English rural parish into the same
political condition as a Swiss commune, the humblest day-labourer ought
to have, theoretically and practically, an equal voice with the squire
in the election of the magistrates and officials of all kinds, and in
the management of the Church funds, the schools, the roads, the water
supply, the poor, &c., of the parish. To take an extreme supposition,
the parochial assembly ought to be competent to enact that the parish
should hire or buy so much land as would enable it to allow to each
family a quarter, or half, of an acre of garden-ground, rent free. If,
for the purpose of enabling us to understand the difference, we take
the Swiss commune to represent, in the political order, the natural
state of things, we must then regard the English rural parish as having
lost a part of its rights through the usurpations of the central
government, which now appoints the magistrates &c.; and as having had
the majority of its inhabitants disfranchised by the usurpations of the
rate-payers. Or if we regard the English rural parish as the perfection
of local organization, we must say that the Swiss commune has usurped
on the one side the legitimate powers of the central government, and
on the other deprived the natural parochial depositaries of power,
that is to say, the rate-payers, of their rightful privilege of being
the exclusive administrators of everything in which the parish is
concerned. The governing element in the idea of our parish appears to
be the land, in that of the Swiss commune, the individual man.
The commune, then, is not far from being an independent, autonomous
entity, both politically and economically. What we have now to consider
is one department of its economy; that of its common lands. These,
as I have already mentioned, consist of three distinct kinds; summer
pastures, forests, and cultivable land. It follows from the fact of
its autonomy that each commune will manage its common property very
much in its own fashion; and probably there are no two communes which
manage it in precisely the same fashion. But it also follows from
the general similarity of their circumstances and conditions, that
certain general features will pervade their management everywhere. It
is with these general features that, in a notice of this kind, we are
chiefly concerned. The little I shall have to say, in order to make
them understood, will be founded on what I observed in the cantons I
visited this summer, and in which I inquired into the system, and saw
it at work. Those cantons were Unterwalden, Uri, Schwyz, and Glarus.
My observations will, to some extent, be illustrated and checked by
facts drawn from other quarters. For there is nothing in the world,
whether in human institutions, in physiology, or in anything else, that
can be understood if looked at as an isolated phenomenon. There is no
such thing as an isolated phenomenon. Not even is the world itself
such, any more than anything it contains. Everything is relative,
concatenated, dependent; has causes, a _milieu_, functions, &c.; all of
which so modify it, have so much to do with its being as and what it
is, and throw so much light upon it, that if it is to be understood,
some reference must be made to them.
* * * * *
We will begin with the common pastures for summering cattle--the alpes.
Upon this subject the Statistical Bureau of the Federal Government
published, in 1868, a quarto volume of 435 pages, to which I have
already referred. It is a work of very comprehensive details, and of
much interest. It exhibits completely, and analyzes thoroughly, all
the information the office had, up to that date, been able to collect
on the subject. I will now extract from this report such leading
particulars as will give the reader a general knowledge of this part
of the matter, premising the observation, which the Bureau makes, that
whatever errors there may be in the figures must always, for obvious
reasons, be on the side of their falling short of the truth.
The number of alpes is 4,559. Their aggregate area, in English acres,
is somewhere about 2,650,000; which about equals the area of the four
counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent. Their capital value,
by the returns made, is 77,186,103 francs. But, as the office remarks,
that probably at least a half must be added to this sum to get at the
true figures, we may suppose that their aggregate capital value is, in
English money, about 4,500,000_l_. Their letting value is returned at
3,362,642 francs. The number of cow-runs is returned as 270,389. The
average number of days the alpes are fed at 93. The gross revenue at
10,893,874 francs. The net revenue at 9,545,007 francs. A fairly good
cow in Switzerland, I was told, is worth twenty napoleons. We will take
the good and the indifferent as averaging fifteen napoleons. This will
make the value of the stock yearly put on the alpes, in English money,
3,250,000_l._ If then we put the capital value at 4,500,000_l._, and to
this add the value of the stock, and for the sake of round sums, raise
the net proceeds, which we may do safely, to 12,500,000 francs, we
shall have 500,000_l._ as the net revenue on a capital of 7,750,000_l._
This will give a little less than 7 per cent. profits for this portion
of the property of the Swiss people, for 93 days. The Bureau calculates
a much higher rate of profit. I say for 93 days, because though this
is all they get during the year from the alpes, the cows are earning
profits for them elsewhere during the rest of the year.
To this 500,000_l._ of profits we must add, looking at the concern from
a national point of view, the support of all those who, as cowherds
and cheese-makers, or as engaged in the sale at home of the cheese,
or in its transportation to foreign markets, are wholly, or in part,
maintained by it. No deductions need be made from this net sum, for the
cows replace themselves; and whatever is expended on the pastures has
been already deducted.
We now come to the distribution of this property, and of its income.
Taking
Francs
The capital value at the low and uncorrected figures of 77,186,103
The letting 3,362,642
The total gross revenue 10,893,874
and distributing these several sums according to ownership, we find the
respective interests of the several owners to be as follows:--
Communes Communes Corporations Private
and private owners
owners
jointly
Capital value. 26,226,265 3,851,489 14,565,487 32,542,853 }
Letting value. 1,127,355 199,270 443,803 1,592,214 } Francs.
Gross revenue 4,010,102 624,102 1,788,224 4,471,446 }
From this it would appear that the average selling value of a cow-run
for an average of 93 days is 287 francs. Its average letting value 12
francs 48 cents. Its gross average revenue 40 francs 45 cents. This is
according to the returns, which very much underrate the true figures.
Their respective values in the neighbourhood of populous towns rise to
several times the amounts of these averages.
The figures given will enable the reader to understand the magnitude of
this part of our subject. The population of Switzerland, now somewhat
over 2,500,000, has, in proportion to its numbers, a larger share in
the manufacture of cotton and silk than any other in the world. Of
course this, and the rapid increase in the number of travellers who
every year visit the country, must have of late very much augmented
the population. If, however, we divide this augmented population into
families of 6 souls each, we shall find that the revenue accruing from
communal and corporation alpes, excluding those held by private owners,
is still sufficient to give yearly, for these 93 days, 10_s._ to every
family in the country. The sum required to do the same for every family
in the United Kingdom would be 2,666,666_l._ a year. But as we know
that in Switzerland the majority of families, from living in towns and
from other causes, have no share in the revenue accruing from the use
of the common alpes, we must set down the average share of each actual
participant as very much more than double this sum. In fact, two would
be a low average for the number belonging to those who send up cows to
these alpes: but if we take two as the average, this would give about
3_l._ a year as the average net profit of each _usager_.
The next point for consideration is, how has it come about that
these common pastures form so large a feature in Swiss agronomy? The
probability is that the system was once universal in Switzerland; and
not among the Swiss only, but also among all other people when they
were in the stage which is intermediate between the pastoral and the
agricultural condition. The agricultural condition implies a precedent
pastoral condition. Now as long as people are in the pastoral stage,
or in the intermediate stage, when the agricultural and the pastoral
are in conflict, common pasturage is inevitable. The system now in
vogue in our Australian colonies is not a case to the contrary, because
that belongs to the era of capital, and takes its form from the action
of capital. There is abundant evidence of this conflict, with its
necessary condition, common pasturage, having once been the rule in
Germany, in France, in this country, and elsewhere. Circumstances,
which are absolutely sovereign in a matter of this kind, for there is
no possibility of resisting them, carried other countries out of this
state of things, while they kept Switzerland in it. If a thousand, or
five hundred years ago, some Titans of the race that undertook to set
Ossa upon Pelion, and to roll to the top of the pile Olympus with all
his forests, had run a mountain-crusher over Switzerland and flattened
in its Alps, then the system of common pasturage could no more have
existed there down to our time than in the plains of Lombardy or the
vale of Aylesbury.
* * * * *
But this is a point there is no understanding without a general
acquaintance with the whole subject, which belongs to, and is indeed
the main stem in, the growth and evolution of human society. The
history of human society is the record of its growth; no particular
stage of which can be understood, if disconnected from what preceded
it; that is to say, without a knowledge of the precedent history, which
was that out of which the subsequent history grew. We ourselves cannot
be regarded as having reached the final stage in that evolution. The
time of course will come, when it will be seen that the point at which
we now are, as respects not the land only but many other things also,
was not a permanent resting place, but merely a step in an endlessly
ascending series. The evolution, in other words the orderly advance, in
harmony with advancing circumstances, of the uses of the land, which
has been going on from the beginning, will continue--at all events
we have no reason for supposing the contrary--as long as man and the
land shall continue. If the past in this matter had been compounded
of haphazard progression and retrogression on the same level, or of
mingled ascents and descents on haphazard uneven ground, there would
probably be no evidence perceptible of plan or design; and then we
should not be able to understand how any particular stage--indeed,
there would then be no stages--had been reached. Nor, with respect to
our own existing position, should we be able to conjecture in what
direction things might be tending. Observation and thought would be
futile, and action aimless, were everything, in such a fashion, the
sport of blind accident. But now, because we see that these matters
are subject to a law of growth, we can trace their history, and reason
about them, and understand them; and notwithstanding the action of
temporarily disturbing causes, even when accompanied with checks and
hardships, can rest in the belief that Omnipotent and Beneficent
Intelligence directs them, no less than all the other phenomena of the
universe.
What, then, we have to determine is, What, as constituted by nature,
is the relation of man to the land? What have been the advances in
circumstances that bear upon this relation? And how have they affected
it, or how has it dealt with them? That is to say, What are the facts,
or the principles, that underlie the history? And what has been their
history? It is evident that some general knowledge of this kind must
be requisite for the right appreciation of any particular stage. For
instance, without it we shall not be able to understand what this Swiss
system, about which we are now inquiring, really was? what made it what
it was? what is the place it occupies in the great historical series of
advances through which man’s relation to the land has passed? and what
it is that is now rendering it unsuitable to existing circumstances,
and so preparing the way for something higher and better?
We must begin at the beginning. What, in the earliest times of all,
was the relation of man to the land? What had nature ordained it to
be? What was its original purport, form, and character? They will, we
can believe, be seen most distinctly under the simplest and least
complicated conditions. The first stage must have been that in which
man lived by the chase--by the pursuit and capture of wild animals;
and in a less degree by the fruits of the earth produced spontaneously
in their season. This must have come first, because if man were
placed abruptly in a world, already peopled with wild animals, and
with plants that at times bore fruit, these could have been the only
means available for supporting life. To this day it continues to be so
among many savage tribes; a fact which throws much light upon man’s
history. We also know that it was so once in parts of the world where
it has long ceased to be so. For instance, geological investigations
have shown that there was a time when it was so in this island. The
relation therefore of the land to primitive man was that it supplied
him with the food that was to support his life. That was the substance,
the principle, of the relation. Man and the land were two related
terms; and the food, which the land produced and the man consumed, was
the third term, which brought them into relation. It constituted the
relation.
And in the character and purport of this relation there was no
difference at all between sovereign man and the lower animals. The
relation was precisely the same for everything that breathed. In the
first stage, indeed, man’s condition was very little in advance of that
of the lower animals. His life was passed, and supported very much in
the same fashion as theirs.
A coefficient condition of this primæval relation was that of property.
Each tribe had its own hunting ground, which was its own property. It
was its own property because other tribes were not allowed to hunt over
it, to use it, or to encroach upon it in any way. It was jealously
guarded for the separate use of the tribe. This was necessary: and
therefore, like the relation itself, an ordinance of nature. And it,
too, is a condition which exists among and is enforced by, and we
cannot but suppose must always have existed among and been enforced by,
the lower animals. Each pair of lions, and each pair of redbreasts, has
its own hunting ground, from which other lions, or other redbreasts,
that attempt to encroach upon it, are violently expelled. But property,
among these hunting tribes, must always have been, as we see that it is
at this day, of two kinds. There was that which belonged to the whole
tribe equally. This applied to the land they hunted over. It was held
in common, because, under the circumstances, it was necessary that
it should be so held. This was the only way in which the fundamental
principle of the relation of the land to man--that its use is to supply
man with food--could have been carried out then. Its common use arose
out of, and was necessitated by existing circumstances. It could not
have been divided into portions for each family, because the wild
game, the human food it then produced, was not at all times evenly
distributed throughout it, but would sometimes be on one part of the
run and sometimes on another. Still the recognition of this necessity,
as respected the land, did not exclude either the idea, or the fact, of
separate individual property. That form also of property was, in this
the lowest stage of human society, understood and acted upon. If a man
had fortified a cave against the entrance of wild beasts, or had built
a hut, or wigwam, that did not belong to the tribe, but to himself, as
much so as the burrow, or lair, or nest, an animal forms for itself, is
its own. So with the skins he might have dressed; the stones and bones
he might have chipped and pointed; the bows and arrows, the spears and
clubs, the slings and throwing sticks he had made; and after a time,
too, with the women he had acquired by capture or purchase; and the
children they had borne to him.
The necessity of association must also, from the beginning, have been a
corollary to the right of property. There never could have been a time
when it could have been dispensed with. If each family had dwelt in
isolation, it could not have protected itself, or its hunting ground,
either against wild beasts, or against encroaching neighbours. Nor
could it have hunted so effectually as to have secured a supply of
food. Association, therefore, was a necessity. And this, again, we find
is resorted to by those animals which are not strong enough to protect
themselves, or to capture their food, individually; or which require
for their security more vigilance than could be maintained at all times
by an isolated individual. It is not acted on by lions or tigers,
because they can do without it, but it is acted on by the herbivorous
animals, and even by some of the less swift, or less strong species
of carnivors. The herbivors associate because though, notwithstanding
their association, many will be destroyed by their natural enemies,
still in consequence of their association into large communities, many
will escape. And some of the carnivors, which pursue animals stronger
or fleeter than themselves, as for instance wild dogs and wolves,
associate, because by this means they can best secure their prey. Lions
and tigers would associate if their herbivorous prey were to become far
stronger than themselves.
Here, then, we have three main facts, a determinate relation, ordained
by nature, of the land to man, a coefficient condition of that
relation, and a corollary to that condition, which have existed from
the beginning; and which, as far as we can see, must exist to the end.
Neither society nor life could be maintained without them. Each of
the three, in a sense and degree, the brute also recognizes.[4] The
advancing circumstances of human society have in no way abrogated,
or weakened them. The only difference is that the constitutive facts
themselves, remaining throughout the same, have been suitably applied
to the successive advances, whatever their character may have been,
that have been made in the circumstances.
To these circumstances, which play so great a part in the history, for
they it is that make the matter progressive, and so give it a history,
we must now direct our attention. After a time some kinds of animals
are domesticated, and society enters on the second, the pastoral stage.
This was the first clearly defined advance in the circumstances. We
know not where, or when, or how, or by whom were first domesticated the
ox, the sheep, the goat, the hog, the horse, the ass, or the camel. The
dates of these achievements, pregnant with so vast a series of mighty
consequences, lie far back beyond the reach of the dimmest traditions
of mankind. Here, however, we are concerned only with the way in which
their domestication affected the tenure and the use of the land. The
most obvious effects were that the extent of land, which had formerly
been required for the maintenance of the tribe by the chase, would
now maintain a great many more families; and that, in this part of the
world, where moisture is continuous, and therefore grass abundant,
(it would be different in the dry plains of Asia,) their lives could
not possibly be so vagrant as had been the case with their hunting
forefathers. Because now, instead of following the migrations of wild
animals, and searching for them when sparingly dispersed over large
areas, they would have to attend to their flocks and herds. But their
flocks and herds would still have to be protected from wild beasts,
and from their neighbours. A sufficient number therefore of families
must be associated into a village community to enable it to guard its
own pasture ground; which in no part of Europe needed to have been of
any great extent. Our three great facts, that the object of the land
is to produce food; that for this purpose it must be held as property;
and that, in order that it may be so held, those to whom it belongs
must associate themselves, have in no way been enfeebled. They still
remain in force, and govern human life. And we shall see that they will
continue to do this under every new combination of circumstances that
will arise. We shall never come to a time when men will not remove
whatever would, under the circumstances of the day, hinder the land
from producing the greatest amount of food; nor when property will
cease to exist, or cease to be modified according to circumstances; nor
when men will cease to associate for its protection. With respect to
the latter, history will show us the village growing into the city, and
neighbouring cities associating, and growing, in one way or another,
into unions of cities, nations, and empires; but the necessity for,
and the object of association will remain the same; for persons and
property will always need protection; collectively, against aggressions
from without, and, in the case of the individual, against aggressions
from within. The need of protection will remain, and will be provided
for in just the same way when property shall have become so varied
in kind, and the new kinds so vast in amount, that the aboriginal
property of land, that once was all in all, shall have become of
secondary importance. Neither will the need disappear, or the old means
of providing for it become obsolete, when the number of the millions
of those who are associated shall exceed the number of families that
were associated in the old pastoral or hunting community. The purpose
and principle were precisely the same in the village of a score of
families, or in the combination of such villages in the primæval German
forest, as it is at this day among the forty millions who are now
associating themselves into the German Empire.
With respect to the form of private, individual property, that in
the pastoral period assumed a great extension: for the flocks and
herds--which had now become all in all to the community--were private
property; whereas the wild animals, which in the foregoing stage
had occupied that position, had been common property. The pasturage,
however, still remained common to the flocks and herds of the
inhabitants of the village; just as formerly the hunting area had
been open to all the members of the old tribe. But the commencement
of individual appropriations of land is now becoming visible; for any
enclosures, near to the homestead, for the purpose of penning the
cattle at night, and for protecting them against wild beasts and bad
weather, will belong to those who have themselves constructed them for
their own cattle.
In the hunting stage the tribe had ever been on the move, and their
whole time had been expended in a hard, and often ineffectual struggle
for bare existence. Nothing more was possible. But the inhabitants of
the pastoral village have now become stationary; and have, on easy
terms, a sufficiency of food. This places some leisure time, during
the year, at their disposal. A great advance has been made; and it
proves to be one which like all others has in itself the germ of future
advances; for it leads on to the culture of the soil, which is the
third stage. But this, too, was brought about at so remote a period in
the lost history of the race, that there are no traces of traditions
of when, or where, or how, or by whom was introduced the culture of
any one of the different kinds of cereals. All of the matter that we
know for certain is that the fact turns out to be exactly the contrary
of what we might have expected. Such improvements, amounting to
transformations, of the seeds of some now untraceable natural grasses
into our different kinds of grain, we should have felt almost sure
were quite beyond the capacities and opportunities of little village
aggregations of savages, or at best of semi-savages. First the idea of
the possibility of such transformations, and then the thought, care,
and patience necessary for effecting them, we should have been disposed
to ascribe only to people among whom knowledge had largely accumulated.
Suppositions, however, of this kind, though they would, before
the matter had been investigated, have been entertained by almost
everybody, are completely contradicted by the facts of the case. These
assure us that we are indebted, beyond controversy, not only for the
domestication of animals, but also for the existence of our cereals in
their present form, to the ideas, and to the patient and thoughtful
labour of our remote unnamed barbarian ancestors. And these barbarian
inventors of wheat, barley, and oats, and, that we may not ungratefully
exclude from their due the natives of the New World, we must add of
maize also, were as great benefactors of the race as the inventors of
letters, and of the steam-engine. And this ought to awaken within us
both a stronger sense than we now have of the continuity and unity of
human history, and a greater respect than we have for still existing
barbarian races.
A highly interesting illustration and confirmation of the fact now
before us has lately been brought to light. In ’69 the government of
Mauritius sent a commissioner to collect specimens of the different
kinds of sugar-cane cultivated by the natives of New Caledonia, and to
report on their respective merits. His report was issued only a few
months ago. It figures, and describes separately, forty-four kinds
he found still in cultivation. In the copy I now have before me each
of the forty-four figures is carefully coloured; variation in colour
being in this plant an indication of other variations, some of which
might be useful. Here, then, are savages of a very low type, for they
even practise cannibalism when other means of supporting life have
failed, cultivating forty-four varieties of a plant, which probably
was not originally indigenous to their island; and of which it is very
doubtful whether in their island it ever produced a fertile seed.
Every variety therefore which originated among them must have been the
result of a sport. And this must have been watched for, and turned to
account when it presented itself. Indeed, their method of cultivating
the sugar-cane, which is as wonderful as the number of kinds they
cultivate, appears to be intelligently directed to the aim of producing
sports. But it will be better to allow the commissioner himself to
describe to us in his own words what he saw.
He says, ‘Besides the sugar-cane the chief alimentary support of the
New Caledonians were,’ before the French took possession of the
island, ‘the taro and yam. The former, requiring an abundant supply
of water, was usually grown in terraces formed on the slopes of the
natural amphitheatres presented by the spurs of the main mountain
range, and most ingeniously irrigated by a constant _fillet_ of water.
The latter, requiring a deep, open, rich, and well-drained soil, was
planted on beds formed by heaping up the naturally thin surface soil of
a few inches deep into beds of about three feet high by four feet wide,
from which only one crop was taken, and the next year fresh ground was
broken up for new plantations.
‘It was on the edges of these beds, forming, as will be at once
evident, a peculiarly rich and deep loose soil, that the natives
planted their canes, not in lines near each other, as we do, but twenty
or thirty feet apart, and in a single row only. As the detached stools
grew they were tied up in a bundle with straw, in order to exclude
light and limit the number of shoots, and to force them to lengthen;
and likewise to make them tender and juicy, instead of sweet. For a
New Caledonian values a cane for the quantity of its juice, not for
its saccharine qualities, and has probably never eaten a really ripe
cane. No marvel that under such treatment, allowing only three or
four canes to a stool, they should grow large and long; so long, in
fact, that those which were tabooed, or kept for grand ceremonies,
have, after two and a half or three years, attained a length of from
twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of four inches or more,
requiring to be supported on forked sticks as they fell over. Above all
it should be noted, that in direct opposition to our system, the cane
was never replanted in the same land, thus giving it the best chance
of progressive development, and avoiding the chances of degeneracy
or disease. Every intelligent cultivator will at once recognize the
necessarily practical effect of such a continual principle of selection
carried out for perhaps centuries.’
Note the carefulness of these New Caledonians in this matter. The soil
is collected and piled up into beds to secure a sufficiency of depth
for the descending roots, in order that every root that could be formed
might be turned to account. The canes are set in single rows to give
to each leaf of each plant all the air and the light possible. The
stems are banded up with straw to prevent evaporation. The plants in
the single rows are set twenty or thirty feet apart, that there may be
no interference of the roots of one plant with the roots of another.
That they may have all the stimulation possible, they are never grown
in succession on the same spot. Our science can suggest nothing more
adapted, were it a seeding plant, to give rise to improved varieties
by seed-variation, or to force a plant that does not produce seed into
producing varieties by sporting. All this, too, is done under great
local disadvantages and discouragements, for the island is most years
affected with severe droughts and devastated with swarms of locusts
which destroy the leaves of the canes. It is worth noting that the
commissioner expresses the surprise he felt at witnessing the wonderful
acuteness with which the natives distinguish unerringly, and give the
native name to any cane shown to them which may have only an inch or
two fully formed; frequently recognizing a still smaller specimen
merely by its leaves. He never saw them make a mistake.
In this careful cultivation of the sugar-cane, and preservation of
its varieties, we can hardly doubt but that we have an existing
instance, _mutatis mutandis_, of the process by which some branch of
our remote barbarian ancestors improved some grasses producing small
edible seeds, into the kinds of grain we now cultivate. Similar care
they had already bestowed on the formation of the races of domestic
animals we now possess. And we ought not to forget that they were at
the same time rough-hewing our language and morality. With respect to
their morality--the parent stock of ours, as was the case with their
language--we may, in passing, observe that in all probability they
enforced and practised it, as Mr. Wallace, who lived for some years
among the savages of these islands, found them practising theirs, much
more rigidly than we do ours.
We have now reached a point at which we find that some reconstruction
of the agrarian arrangements of the pastoral village community is
being forced upon them. Formerly their flocks and herds were their
only support. They are so no longer. The cultivated produce of the soil
has not taken their place, but has become, to an indispensable degree,
a subsidiary means of support. And as time goes on it is becoming so
more and more largely, through increasing skill in the cultivation of
the soil, and through its consequence, an increase of population. This
new means of support has now become necessary; and it cannot be turned
to account on land absolutely common. Each crop must be the property of
the man who prepared the land for it, sowed, protected, and harvested
it. The land therefore upon which it was grown must be his, for at all
events the space of time requisite for these operations. This gives
rise to the system of property in land limited in respect of time, that
is to say, some form of the system of shifting severalties. Of course
this must gradually pass into absolute permanent property, because the
day will come when that will be necessary for enabling the community
to obtain from the land the greatest amount of food. The conditions,
however, that will suggest that are still a long way off. As changes
become necessary, they will, each in its turn, have to fight for its
establishment. The old methods will always have prescription, fact,
tradition, custom to support them; the new, utility and necessity.
It is interesting to recall how recently amongst ourselves a stage
of this conflict had to be fought out. From the Saxon times there
had been established in this country a form of the agrarian system of
village communities, the members of which had defined common rights in
the land. It had in the early part of the Middle Ages become general.
It was not a survival of, or a reversion to the ideas of the pastoral
age. The two main features of that system had been that all the land
of the village had been in precisely the same common condition, and
that the rights in it also of every member of the village community
had been precisely the same. Of this our mediæval agronomic system
can be regarded as only a very remote descendant. In the first place
it was devised for an agricultural community; and in the next it had
to be adapted to a complicated social system of lords of manors,
large and small freeholders, peasant cultivators, cotters, &c.; and
each of these classes was in a different position from the others for
turning to account its commonable rights. It was an attempt, under
the social and economic conditions of the times, to make the land
support the community. It supplemented the use of land that was more
or less appropriated by large and various common rights. In the case
of the peasant cultivators this was intended as compensation, just
as it was in Russia, for the services exacted from them. The lands
of the feudal lord, as of his Saxon predecessor, both of whom were
necessary personages in the political system of their times, could not
have been cultivated otherwise; for a general arrangement of rents
and wages to be paid in money was impossible then. That old system
has left in our language some traces of its existence. The words
Lammas lands, lot-meadows, shifting severalties, folkland, open time,
field-constraint, &c., once stood for some of its details. It was
already dying out towards the close of the middle ages. The influx of
silver on the discovery of America, by raising the price of wool in
foreign markets for manufacturing purposes, at a time when there was
no cause in operation to raise the price of wheat, hastened its decay.
For it made it profitable to those who were in a position to effect it,
to consolidate small holdings, which involved the extinction of the
commonable rights that had appertained to their old cultivators. The
Enclosure Commissioners of our own day had to deal with the last traces
of the system.
For many centuries it did good service. It was workable, when perhaps
nothing else could have been with the single exception of the old
world form of slavery. But it could not stand after rent and wages
had become possible, and when it was seen that by cultivating larger
farms, and by the extinction of common rights, the land might be turned
to better account for the community generally. New circumstances,
possibilities, and requirements necessitated a new system. The object
of the land is to provide food for those to whom it belongs, that is
to say, for the community to which it belongs. This object has always
overridden, and must always override every other consideration. For
instance, the practice of Lammas lands (which meant that the members of
the agrarian village community must each year cultivate on contiguous
pieces of land the same grain crop, in order that the stubbles and
succeeding fallow, on the whole space so cultivated, might, after the
crops had been carried, be thrown open as common pasture to the cattle
of the whole village,) could not possibly have been maintained after
the introduction of artificial grasses and turnips; because every one
could see that the land might be made to produce a great deal more food
by ceasing to be Lammas land, and by being laid down with artificial
grasses and cultivated for roots. And this could be done only by
enclosing the land, which could not have been enclosed under the old
system, and by extinguishing the old common rights. A man would not
lay down artificial grasses, and cultivate roots, for the flocks and
herds of the parish. If this method of increasing the food supply of an
increasing population was to be resorted to, the artificial grasses and
roots must be the property of the man who grew them. The land must be
enclosed, and his neighbours’ flocks must be excluded at all seasons.
Henceforth the number of those who can keep flocks and herds will be
much reduced. These will, however, in the aggregate be much larger than
in former times. And through the medium of the other forms of industry
to which the other members of the community will now be able, and
required, to devote themselves, these larger flocks and herds will be
in a sense common to all: they certainly will be produced for all. At
first, and for a long time, hardships will ensue. But these, and even
their long continuance, are no proof that the change does not belong
to the natural order of things. Most changes are accompanied by throes
and inconveniences; the use of which is to prevent the introduction
of any changes excepting those which circumstances and events have
demonstrated to be necessary and inevitable; and to force men to
struggle to accommodate themselves to such as are of this kind. Take as
an instance the change we are now speaking of. It was accompanied for
some generations with great hardships. But most people will now readily
acknowledge that it was both necessary and beneficial; and that it
would be extremely mischievous to attempt to revert to it in any way or
degree.
And just as it was with this mediæval system of ours, and with the
semi-pastoral, the pastoral, and the hunting stages that went before
it, so we may suppose will it be with our present land system, which
appears to most of us as an ordinance of nature, that has been from
everlasting, and must continue to be to everlasting. It would be to
everlasting if the circumstances which gave rise to it were to be
everlasting: and the same might have been said of every system that
preceded it. But if it should become distinct to men’s minds that by
the introduction of some change in the system the land of the country
could be made, through means that have now become possible, to produce
for the people of the country a great deal more food than it does under
the present system, then the present system would go as certainly as
the Lammas lands, lot-meadows, folklands, &c. of the old system went.
To maintain a system which is giving less food, to the exclusion of
one which would give more food, would appear as a contravention of the
purpose of nature. Its foundations, that upon which it was built, and
which upheld it, would be gone. It would have nothing but unsupported
prescription to support it. And there would be at the same time events,
facts, necessity pushing against it to overturn it, just in the same
way as it itself pushed against and overturned what had been before
itself. It would be thawed, like snow upon which the sun was shining.
The perception by the community of the possibility of turning the land
of the country to better account would be the sun that would melt it
away; just as it had every system in its turn when its day was done,
back to the beginning. For the people have a right to insist that the
land shall be allowed to yield for them as much food as it is capable,
under the circumstances of the times, of being made to produce.
The new facts would sap, mine, and explode the old and now inadequate
arrangements. And it would not be so much reasonings and opinions
that would do this, as facts that had established themselves, and
upon which reasonings and opinions would be based. Suppose that from
actual, unmistakeable instances it were to become manifest to the
general comprehension, that the application of capital to the culture
of the land, in such amounts as none but owners of the land will
apply to it, would vastly increase the amount of food the land of the
country could be made to produce for the people of the country; and
that what prevented those who might be ready to apply this amount of
capital from becoming owners of the land to which they were ready to
apply it, was the power the existing landowners have of charging and
settling land, then this power in some way or other would disappear as
completely as the Lammas lands &c. have disappeared, and for precisely
the same reason. It may seem humiliating, but it must be acknowledged
that the material interests of mankind have within themselves much
more power for enforcing changes by which they may be promoted, than
those interests which are moral and intellectual. The fact is that they
come first. Man must live. His moral and intellectual interests are
not his primary and most pressing concern. In the order of nature they
come afterwards. They are, indeed, hardly seen, or even felt, till the
material wants have been supplied.
The mass of mankind appreciates these things according to their
natural order. What, for instance, can be more truly shocking than
the pauperism of this country? The amount of moral and intellectual
degradation it implies, and that in the bosom of a society conspicuous
not only for wealth, but also for culture, refinement, and
philanthropy, is perhaps the most saddening sight on the face of this
earth. Its amount baffles calculation, for it is not to be ascertained
by counting the numbers of those unhappy persons in the United Kingdom
who are at any particular moment receiving relief, but by adding to
their number, could it be done, the number of the present generation
who have received, and of those who will receive, relief: for the
man who received relief yesterday, and the man who will receive it
to-morrow, are as much paupers as the man who is receiving it to-day.
The total, therefore, of our pauperized population amounts not to one,
but to several millions. Many see this and understand it, but no one
is shocked at it. At all events, no one calls aloud for inquiry into
the causes of so portentous an evil with a view to its mitigation.
Why? because the mass of mankind are little affected, as things now
are, at the sight of moral and intellectual degradation. Were they,
however, only to be brought to see with distinctness, that the land of
the country is, as Lord Derby tells us, producing no more than half
as much as it might be made to produce; or, as the Lords’ Committee
for inquiring into the means available for improving the land, tells
us, that only one fifth of what requires draining has been drained;
then everyone would be shocked, and would clamour loudly for inquiries
and remedies. It is the abundance free trade supplies, so long as
the highways of the sea are open, that is, in these piping times of
peace, blinding our eyes to these facts and to their causes, nature,
and consequences, and will probably continue to do so, till a maritime
war shall have obliged us, when it will be too late, to understand the
everyday wisdom of making the most of our own soil. (By the way, why
are such committees as that just referred to exceptionally necessary
for the land? Ship-builders, cotton-spinners, iron-masters, &c., do not
ask for parliamentary inquiry into means for improving their unfettered
industries. No one hears of their languishing for want of skill or
capital.)
The foregoing sketch of some of the most prominent facts in the history
of man’s relation to the land, taking it at the beginning, and bringing
it down to the modification of it now existing amongst ourselves,
though altogether inadequate as a sketch of the general subject, has
occupied more space, I am well aware, than I can claim for anything of
the kind here. Still it was quite necessary, for without it we should
not be able to assign to the Swiss system its place in the series of
advances that have been made in the application and working out of this
relation, because without it we should not have had the series before
us. Nor without it should we be able to see how honest and successful
an attempt the Swiss system was to carry out the substantial purpose of
the relation of the land to man, because without it we should not have
had our attention directed to the nature of the relation. Nor again,
without it, should we be brought to look for the peculiar circumstances
upon which the Swiss system had to act, because without it we should
not have been brought to see that circumstances are supreme in deciding
in what form and fashion the relation itself, and its two efficient
conditions of property and association--the three constant quantities
in this matter--shall at any time be worked.
As then the substance of the relation is unvarying, and what variation
there may be at any time or place can only be in the circumstances,
which affect no more than the form of the relation, we have to look
in the case now before us for the circumstances which, while other
European countries were advancing step after step, in Switzerland,
till within a very recent period, prohibited all advance. These, I
think, will all be found to be included under two heads, viz., the
peculiarities of the physical character of the country, and the
absence of accumulations of capital: and the two were, I believe,
closely connected. The country had no sources of mineral, nor, under
the conditions of former times, of agricultural wealth. It could not
maintain a large population on its own resources. Nor could it have
any cities, the inhabitants of which, either like those of Flanders,
by the easy terms upon which they might get the raw materials, could
have manufactured for others, or like those of Venice, Genoa, and of
the cities of Holland, might have become common carriers. They could
have had no commerce except with their surplus cheese. And the amount
of this that could be spared was so small, and the transportation
so difficult, that but little could be made of it; and the whole of
this little was wanted for the necessaries of labour, such as the
useful metals &c. which the Swiss were obliged to procure from abroad.
There was therefore no margin for saving, and so there could be no
accumulations of capital. For long ages the most assiduous industry
could supply the Swiss with only the necessaries of life, and barely
with them, even when aided by the surplus cheese. Throughout all this
time the system of common pasturage was maintained. It worked well: it
saved from perishing a population that was ready to perish.
In these days, however, all this has been changed. By the aid of the
new means of transportation and communication, and by the substitution
of machinery for manual labour, the motive power for which Switzerland
has in abundance, and can now turn to excellent account, the people
are becoming rich. Capital has accumulated, and is still further
accumulating rapidly. Families, therefore, can be supported without
the common use of the land--and in most cases better without it than
with it. And besides, if its common use be maintained, it will prove,
when capital exists in abundance, a hindrance to the greatest possible
production of food for the people. In short, the existence of capital
has now brought about conditions which render the system of commonable
land no longer the best. That will be its doom. No system that has been
assailed by such conditions has ever been able to maintain itself. It
will be no defence of it to say that it has hitherto been a good and
workable system, and that the long ages of its existence have proved it
to be so. This is what might have been said, and doubtless was said,
with truth but without effect, of every system, not only of agronomy,
but of everything else that was ever established in the world. This
is the logic of sentiment, of habit, of custom, of tradition; and of
those who think that they have interests distinct from and superior to
the interests of the rest of the community; and of those who cannot
understand what is understood by the rest of the world. It is, however,
no match for the logic of facts, and of the general interest--the
public good. That must ever be the strongest logic as well as the
highest law. If, then, it is about to be overturned by capital,
notwithstanding its long history and all that may be said on its
behalf, we may infer that it was the absence of capital which brought
it into being and maintained it down to the advent of capital.
Let us take the case of these Forest Cantons. In order to understand
their position in respect of this matter, we must not limit our view
to their present condition; we must go further back; our survey must
include a wider range. Some centuries ago they were much secluded from
the world. At that time there was, in comparison with what we now see
in them, very little cultivable land reclaimed. Means of communication
by wheeled carriages had not yet, in most places, been so much as
thought about. The people therefore were thrown almost entirely upon
their own scanty local resources. With hardly any means for getting
supplies from without, with very little land for cultivating cereals,
and in the days before maize and potatoes, their chief reliance was
upon their cows. It is very much so even at this day. But in those days
the reliance was all but unqualified. Their cows supplied them not only
with a great part of their food, but also, through the surplus cheese,
with tools, and everything else they were incapable of producing
themselves from the singularly limited resources of their secluded
valleys. The Switzer was then the parasite of the cow. There were no
ways in which money could be made: there were no manufactures, and
no travellers, and so there were no innkeepers to supply travellers,
nor shopkeepers to supply the wants of operatives, manufacturers, and
travellers; and there were none who had been educated up to the point
that would enable them to go abroad to make money with which they might
return to their old homes: neither they nor the world were then in a
condition to admit of this. The adoption of foreign military service
for a livelihood, which was a common practice at this period, was a
proof of the poverty of the country, and did not at all contribute
to enrich it; for the savings from their pay, brought home with them
by those who returned, could never have compensated for the cost of
bringing up those who through the practice were lost to the country.
If the general population had not had the means for keeping cows, they
would not have had the means for living. The problem, therefore, for
them to solve was, How was every family to be enabled to keep cows?
Under the conditions of those times the family that could not have kept
cows must have ceased to exist.
The local conditions were very peculiar. Small prairies might be
formed in the valley bottoms, and by quarrying the rocks, levelling,
surface-soiling, and irrigation, they might in some places be carried
a little way up the mountain sides. But if the grass of these prairies
were to be consumed by the cattle in the summer, there would be no
provision for them in the coming winter. As, then, the prairies could
not be fed in summer, what was to be done with the cattle at that
season? The mountain pastures, which could not be cut for hay, enabled
them to meet this difficulty. The cows of the village community might
during the summer be kept on these mountain pastures, and this would
admit of the bottom and the irrigated prairies being reserved for
making hay, which might support the cows in winter and spring. This,
therefore, must be the plan. Everyone must have the right of sending
his cows up to these summer pastures. Everyone in summer then would be
able to devote himself to keeping up, perhaps to enlarging a little,
his prairie land, and to making and storing up hay for winter. But this
would depend on a sufficient amount of summer pasturage being kept
common. Common property is not generally well looked after, or made
the most of: but this is true of Alpine pasturage in a less degree
than of other kinds of commonable land, because it does not depend
for its produce upon care and labour, as a commonable cornfield or a
commonable vineyard would; nor is it easily exhausted, for it is at
rest throughout at least two-thirds of the year. It is very different
with prairie, that is to say, made and cultivated grass land: its first
formation--it is all made land--and the maintenance of its fertility
sufficient for the two or three crops of hay taken yearly from it, and
the making and storing up of this hay, require an amount of attention
and labour it would be vain to expect as a general rule without the
stimulus of private property. If common labour were attempted in a
matter of this kind, most men would endeavour to throw as much as
possible of the work on their neighbours; and as to improvements of the
common property, what would then in theory be everybody’s business,
would in practice be nobody’s: the labour would be both less in amount,
and less enterprising. Clearly the best system with respect to the
prairies was that they should be pretty generally private property.
The mountain pastures were already formed. They were the gift of
nature. They could not be very much improved. Under any treatment
they would continue to exist. Not so with the prairies. They could
not have been created without a vast amount of labour, and they could
not be maintained without its continuance. And so it came to be the
established rule, that the natural summer pastures should be common,
and that every burger should have as many cows kept upon them in the
summer as he had himself kept during the previous winter with the hay
he had made from his labour-created and labour-maintained prairies; or,
if as yet he had no prairies, with the dried leaves and coarse stuff he
had been able to collect from the common forest.
If these mountain pastures had been allowed to become private property
in those times when the people were parasites of the cows, the few
who had got hold of them would have been very rich, and those who had
failed to secure a share in them would have been quite starved out.
They would not have been able to have kept cows through the winter,
because in the summer they would have been obliged to put them on their
little bits of prairie ground, and so could not have reserved their
produce for winter.
And in the days anterior to accumulations of capital, this, which is
a great point, worked fairly for all. All were placed on about an
equal footing. Whatever differences of condition there might have
been then, resulted mainly from differences of industry. But these
were differences which had play within very restricted limits; for the
field for industry had little extent and no variety. The community
said to its members: ‘Do what you may your struggle for existence must
be hard. It cannot possibly be maintained without cows; and you will
not be able to keep your cows in the winter without their having been
taken off your hands and off your prairies during the summer; for,
throughout the whole of that season, you must be attending to your
prairies, and to their produce, which must be reserved for winter. In
order that this may be done, the mountain pastures shall be treated
and used as common property; so that during the summer the cows of
all may be kept upon them. Each shall have the right of sending up to
them in the summer as many cows as he had kept from the produce of his
prairies through the previous winter.’ As no family could reclaim and
keep up more of this prairie land than was sufficient to provide hay
for a few cows--an industrious and prosperous family might do this
for five or six, a less industrious and less prosperous for two or
three--the people were all placed by this system very much on a footing
of equality. The system was both necessary and fair. It originated in
the nature of the country, and in its then economical conditions; and,
in turn, it created the Swiss life and character. It was evidently a
form maintained down to our own times, under peculiar circumstances,
of the semi-pastoral stage. The common pasturage was the same in both;
and the prairies, held as private property and cultivated for hay,
were analogous to the enclosed fields, held as private property and
cultivated for grain, of that stage. The shifting severalties also of
garden-ground, to which we shall come presently, were genuine incidents
of it.
I will show presently how, under the altered conditions of the times,
the old system of common pasturage has now become both unnecessary and
unfair. To the existing circumstances of the country it is not at all
adapted; and so, according to the law which makes them sovereign in
human affairs, it must die out: but of that anon.
* * * * *
We now come to the second part of the common property of these
Cantons--the forests. Under the conditions of the past it was as
necessary that there should have been common forests as it was
that there should have been common summer pastures. Wood, with the
exception, here and there, of turf, and which followed the same rules,
was in Switzerland the only fuel. In times when men did not live much,
or at all, on wages, and wood was the only fuel, it was necessary
that all the members of the community should have the right of taking
so much as would supply their absolute wants from the contiguous
forest. This also, therefore, must, at all events so far, remain
common property. That it should have been so was quite imperative in
Switzerland, on account of the length and the severity of the winter.
If any members of the community had been excluded from the right of
fuel, they would have died of cold. Suppose that these forests had
been allowed to become private property: two evil consequences would
have ensued; a large part of the existing population would forthwith
have been deprived of the means of obtaining fuel; and as a private
owner might do with his own what he pleased, his necessities, or greed,
or bad judgment, might bring him to cut down, at one time, a large
portion of the forest, or might prevent his taking the care necessary
for maintaining it in a serviceable condition for the generations
that would follow him. These difficulties were overcome by keeping
the forest in the hands of the community, and distributing, on a plan
which would be fair to all, the amount of fuel that would be necessary
for each. It thus became the interest of all to see that the forests
were not wastefully used, and were properly maintained; and a regular
supply, which was the great point, of what was indispensable was
secured for all.
The rule generally observed in the distribution of the produce of the
common forests was, that each family should have an allowance of fuel,
and of timber for repairs, in proportion to the size of his dwelling
house and byre; so many solid klafters for the former, and so many
hewn timber trees, generally fir, for the latter. In the days before
accumulations of capital, when, through the condition of each being
mainly the result of his own industry and actual manual labour, all
were kept pretty much on an equality, this method of distribution was
fair enough. Its principle was analogous to that which was observed in
the use of the common pastures.
Under the circumstances of time and place the maintenance of common
property in the forests was a matter of life and death. In these
valleys at that time there were no ways of earning the means for buying
fuel. The people had in summer to be attending, each to his little bit
of prairie land, to his hay-making, and to his little plot of corn; and
in winter he must still be at home, looking after and tending his cows,
and doing the many things requisite for the maintenance of his family;
and which, under the circumstances of the time and place, would not
have been done at all if not done by himself.
What has now been said about the mountain pasture and fuel fully
explains the disabilities laid on residents who had come in from other
cantons, or communes. They were excluded from political rights, and
from participation in the common property, not out of any mean and
unreasonable jealousy, but because the common property was barely
sufficient for the existing burgers--population always increases up
to, it might be more truly said down to, the means of subsistence--and
increase of numbers would have destroyed the action and benefits of the
system: the only system then and there possible.
* * * * *
We still have to consider a third kind of commonable land--the
garden-ground. This was, originally, as necessary as the other two
kinds. It would amount for each to shares of an acre or two. It
completed the support of the family. It was an indispensable supplement
to the cows and the fuel. And even in these times, when money can
be earnt in many ways, the quarter, or half, of an acre, in some
places still the whole acre, which can be assigned to each member of
the commune, has some advantages. It enables the family to secure a
sufficient supply of cabbages, onions, haricots, flax, hemp, potatoes,
and occasionally, a serviceable amount of wheat or maize. Formerly
there was no other way for the household to procure these articles:
though, indeed, in these days, this obvious advantage is sometimes
counter-balanced by greater, but less obvious disadvantages. The old
rule was that every commune should have a certain amount of _terre
laborable_; and that this should, at stated periods, say every year,
every five, ten, or twenty years, as might be the local arrangement,
be reportioned among those who would themselves cultivate their lots.
The community must have hands and hearts to protect it, indeed even
to enable it to be a community; and these hands and hearts must
have the means of living; and if all the _terre laborable_ had been
allowed to fall into the condition of private property, many would
have been deprived of a necessary ingredient in the means of living.
And here again, if _Beisassen_ had been admitted to a participation in
the communal garden-ground, the aim and object of the system would,
so far as that went, have been defeated. In many, probably in all
communes, it was the rule that new comers might purchase the position
and rights of burgers, when, but only when, the old burgers were in
favour, unanimously, of their admission. This wise requirement of
unanimity upon the question of the admission of a new burger secured
the community against the action of a cause, which, if unrestricted,
would certainly and rapidly have reduced the severalties of its
members in this, and all other kinds of their common property, to
insufficiently small dimensions. It is true that they have at last been
overtaken by this inconvenience; but it has been brought about by the
action of a natural cause which could not have been met and obviated
in any way: for it has been the result of an increase of population;
and that increase of population has been the result of an increase of
wealth; which again, in turn, was the result of an increase of variety
in the ways opened for obtaining a living. Our porter from Meiringen
to Brieg, Jean Ott, a burger of Im Hof, has ten children. He obtains
his livelihood by carrying travellers’ knapsacks. Those knapsacks
therefore have ultimately been the cause of the existence of the ten
children. The boys will all be burgers of Im Hof. Their existence will
lessen the value of the severalties of the common property of Im Hof.
In this way, everywhere, the severalties are being so reduced as to be
no longer sufficient for the support of families. Thus they become only
prophylactics, if that, against pauperism.
The four parts then of the system we have been considering, the common
summer pastures, the reclaimed appropriated prairies, the common
forest for fuel, and for building and repairs, and the common _terre
laborable_, hung together inseparably. Each was necessary under the
circumstances of the character and natural formation of the country;
and of the absence of accumulations of capital, and of anything else
to give employment, the existence of which would have meant that there
were other sources than land for supporting life. The Switzer--that
is the governing fact--was the parasite of the cow. He could not have
existed without it. But he could not have kept cows without their
having been taken off his hands during the summer by their maintenance
on the common mountain pastures. This was necessary for enabling
him to form and maintain the prairie land, and to make hay from it.
Otherwise the cows could not have been supported in the winter. But
these prairies could not, as a general rule, have been formed without
the stimulus of private property. Many families could not have existed
unless they had had a supply of fuel from the common forest. An assured
amount of garden-ground was almost as necessary as an assured amount of
fuel.
* * * * *
It will help us to understand how this system acted, and why it acted
as it did, if we observe how the introduction of the new conditions has
affected it. Switzerland, which was for many ages the poorest country
in Europe, is rapidly progressing towards becoming, in proportion to
the amount of its population, one of the richest. As I have already
reminded the reader, no other country in the world, in proportion to
its population, manufactures cotton and silk so largely. Again, it is
said that 150,000 travellers pass every year through the single town of
Interlaken. We will not take into account any but these; and we will
suppose that those who stay in the country some months as well as those
who stay some weeks, and those who are careless, as well as those who
are careful, about their outgoings, spend each, on an average of the
whole, 35_l._ This will amount to 5,250,000_l._ As to Swiss investments
in foreign securities, from what inquiries I have been able to make
I have come to the conclusion that they are very considerable. This
is nothing less than making foreign countries tributary to them. The
interest paid on these investments is so much tribute. It is just as
much a tribute as that which the Jews paid to the Romans, or which
the Khedive is at this day paying to the Porte. How it came about in
any one of these cases that the payment had, or has, to be paid, is
practically, of no importance: what is essential, as far as the matter
before us is concerned, is the fact of the payment. The money goes to
Switzerland. Russians, Americans, French, Italians, Germans, are in
this way working for, and are being taxed for, the Swiss. English,
Dutch, and Danish funds do not pay interest enough for them. There is
therefore no longer any point in the Frenchman’s sarcasm, ‘We fight for
honour, but you fight for money.’ Nor in the Switzer’s rejoinder, ‘It
is only natural that each of us, like the rest of the world, should
fight for what he has not got.’ The Swiss have at last come to be so
prosperous, and to have so many other means of making money, both at
home and abroad, that they would not in these days risk their lives in
foreign military service for a franc a day.
What we now have to observe is, that this influx of wealth has, to
a great extent, rendered the old system of common pasturage both
unnecessary and unfair. While it has been abrogating its necessity,
it has been reversing its action. In these days a man keeps an hotel,
or a shop; has a bank, or a factory; or in some way or other makes a
good deal of money: perhaps it was made abroad, and he has returned
home with it. He will now keep a dozen, he may even keep two dozen
cows. He will be able to do this, because he will keep them out of
the profits of his business, or from the interest of accumulated
capital; and not, as was alone possible formerly, by his own labour
and that of his family. If he were reduced to that means for keeping
them, their number would be reduced to four or five. And this rich
man is a burger, and therefore he is entitled to send them all up
to the common pastures. If he have more than two dozen, all still
may be sent. At the other extremity of society many are called into
existence by the existence of the rich. These will be supported by
wages. And these wages they will not get unless they work regularly.
But if they work regularly for wages, they will not be able to spend
the summer in collecting winter provender for cows. Nor in winter, if
they had provender, could they devote their time to cows. These men,
therefore, though burgers, equally with the rich, will be unable to
turn their rights in the common pastures to account. Their rights thus
fall into abeyance. And in many places the population has so increased
that there is no longer common pasturage enough for those who do keep
cows. Some half-dozen rich burgers, then, may alone have more cows
than the pastures, which remain common, would be able to maintain, or
an increase in the number of burgers who are able to keep a few cows
each, may have brought things to the same point. And either of these
cases may be coincident with the inability of a large proportion of
the burgers to keep any cows at all. Increase, then, of wealth, and
consequent increase of population, have altogether altered the action
and defeated the purpose of the old system. In those communes in which
the rich are in the majority--a state of society which, strange to say,
does exist in some--the old rule is rigidly maintained: every burger is
still entitled to send up to the common pastures all the cows he kept
through the winter. In places, however, where wealth has so increased
the number of cows that there is no longer sufficient common pasturage
for all, each burger sends up a _pro ratâ_ proportion of his herd, say
a third, or a half. In such cases, by the very maintenance, as far as
possible, of the old, originally fair rule, the poor, some partially,
some utterly, are excluded from the use of their property. As Dr.
Bekker observed to me, it is the literal application of the saying,
that ‘to them who have shall be given, and they shall have abundantly;
but from them who have not shall be taken away what they appear to
have.’ In many places it has become the practice, and it is one which
the force of circumstances is rapidly extending, to let the common
pastures. The question then arises, of what is to be done with the
proceeds? In the case of the communal alpes they may be applied to the
payment of local rates; or they may be divided among the burgers, who
may receive each an equal amount, or an amount proportionate to the
number either of his cows, or of his family.
But to each of these methods, and I believe to every conceivable
method of appropriating the proceeds, valid objections may be made.
If they go in reduction, or whole payment, of rates for schools,
roads, churches, fountains, police, &c., then the rich are eased in
a far greater degree than the poor; who, according to the original
principle of the system have an equal right in the common property
with the rich; its use having been, at the time of its institution,
so regulated--this was possible under the circumstances of those
times--as to enable all to participate in it; and, too, to participate
in it pretty equally. Riches have supervened, and have, as things now
are, made this impossible. But as those who are now poor may some day
become rich, their rights are still, contingently, equal to those
of the rich. Or, if the proceeds are divided among the _usagers_ in
equal amounts, or in proportion to the number of cows owned, or of the
family--and these methods of distribution are often resorted to in
places where the population has quite outgrown the common pastures--the
benefit to each burger will be very small. In the equal _per capita_
distributions idleness will always be rewarded, without industry
being ever encouraged. And in the proportionate distributions it will
generally happen that those who want help most will get the least, and
those who want it least will get the most; which difficulty will be
further aggravated by the fact, that in these days many of those who
want it most are least deserving of it. Again, all these methods of
distribution exclude the new burgers; and such exclusions are in direct
contradiction to the ideas, the sentiments, and the requirements of
modern societies.
In those cases in which common pastures belong to sections of the
burgers of a commune, that is to say, to corporations, for instance,
to the burgers of a particular hamlet, or to certain families, either
with or without a definite object to be promoted by the use, or the
proceeds, of the common property, or in some way or other by those
who hold it, it is found that the same disturbing action, as in the
case of the communal property, though not quite to the same degree,
has been introduced by the influx of riches. Some get rich, and some
get poor; which in the case of these corporations also, renders the
system unmeaning, and even noxious. And riches lead to an increase of
population which renders the share of each corporator of little value.
The fact is that the old system is utterly inapplicable to the new
conditions into which society has advanced. It was intended for that
state of things, modified by the strong peculiarities of Switzerland,
in which land is the only means of supporting life. Life may now be
supported by capital, either invested or employed, a means which admits
of indefinite extension, or by the labour and skill of those whom
capital employs. This has deprived the old system of its character
and utility; and even in many places made its action prejudicial to
the interests both of individuals and of society. Its object--that of
supporting life--can now be better attained by other arrangements, and
also by other means.
Still the great principle to be dealt with in these days is identical
with that which had to be dealt with originally. It must, however, be
applied under the circumstances existing now, as it had to be under
the circumstances existing then. It is the principle that the land of
the country ought to be so held as to ensure the production of the
greatest amount of food, possible under the conditions of the time,
for the people of the country. Any arrangement which now excludes from
the land the application to it of capital, the great modern agent of
production, contradicts this principle. The old system therefore of
holding the land in common contradicts it. It has also to be considered
now, how what must be done for carrying out the paramount principle,
can be done on a footing that is fair to all. A system which excludes
a large part of the population from the chance of becoming owners of
land contradicts this requirement. That is to say, the old system,
which was in its day beneficial to the community, and fair to all, is
now the reverse of beneficial to all, and the reverse of fair to all.
Those who are now under the necessity of attempting to work it are
beset with much the same kind of difficulties in which a general would
find himself involved, if he were obliged to attempt to carry out a
campaign with the commissariat and the tactics of the Homeric age. Much
would be lost, much would be hindered, and the attempt, after all,
could not be anything but unreal and mischievous; or their antiquated
methods and position may be compared to what would be those of a colony
of Esquimaux, who, having been settled in the genial climate, and amid
the abundant resources, of a temperate region, were endeavouring to
maintain inviolate the practices and the ways of living that had been
necessary in their old Arctic home.
The administration of the common forests is, under existing
circumstances, hampered with similar difficulties, though not quite to
the same extent. Their produce for fuel, for building, and for repairs,
was distributed in accordance with the size of the house. Now, however,
there are large mansions, and very small tenements; and, if the old
rule of distribution be maintained, the owners of the large mansions,
who can very well afford to pay for their fuel, will receive half a
dozen or more klafters of fuel, and timber in proportion, while the
owners of small tenements may be receiving only one klafter of fuel,
and timber in proportion to that. In some places, where the population
has largely increased, the produce of the common forests is all sold,
and the proceeds are applied to the maintenance of the destitute, or
to some other public purpose.
As to the garden-ground, the increase of population has in many places
reduced the share of each _usager_ to an almost uselessly small plot of
ground: the occupation of which must often prove a real detriment, by
indisposing him to turn to some trade or employment, by which he might
readily obtain the competency, with the hope, or appearance only of
which, his few rods of land are now mocking him.
* * * * *
M. Emile de Laveleye, a learned writer, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
on the social and political relations of agriculture, thinks that he
has discovered in the old Swiss system a remedy for the social and
political maladies under which France has long been suffering. He
advocates its adoption. Of course the adoption of anything of the
kind is impossible. This is a matter in which the arrangements of
the time can be engendered only by the circumstances of the time. As
well might he advocate a reversion to bows and arrows as a scheme for
enabling Europe to get rid of its costly armaments; or to domestic
distaffs and looms as a remedy for the evils of the factory system. In
these matters there can be no reversions. Even in Switzerland, where
exceptional causes, the character of the country, and centuries of
dearth of capital, so long maintained the system we have endeavoured to
describe, and which he would fain endeavour to reproduce in France,
it is seen by the more intelligent part of the nation that now, even
in its remote and secluded valleys, in consequence of the increase of
population and accumulation of capital, it is going, and must go. The
holding of land in common they acknowledge to be, as things now are,
an evil, and to be no longer capable of defence. The old ideas cannot
now be carried out, the old objects cannot now be secured, by the old
methods. Society has now needs, and has assumed a form, and has within
it an agent, which renders some other arrangement more conformable to
existing conditions, more workable, and more productive of the elements
of moral and intellectual, as well as of material well-being; and,
too, more fair for all. Those among the Swiss themselves who are in
a position to take a view of the whole subject, now recognize what
time has established among them--that land is no longer, as formerly,
the only means of maintaining a family; that in the case of many it
is not the best means; that more can be made of it that is to say,
that it can be made to produce more food, which is the equivalent
of its being made to support a greater number of families, by its
being allowed to pass into the hands of private owners possessed of
capital, than by its being kept as the common property of communes,
or of corporations; and by its acquisition being made by the way of
the results of any kind of industry, equally open and possible to all.
They regret the difficulties which stand in the way of the removal of
those antiquated shackles which now limit its uses and produce, and
which do this mischief, ridiculously, in the name of equality; as if
the perfection of equality were to exclude rigidly the majority of the
community from all chance of ever acquiring any share in the property
of the land. In this matter, the true equality for these days is to
make the ownership of the land--the chief instrument of production, and
participation in the produce of the land, as far as possible equal to
all by the thousand ways of the thousand forms of industry society now
requires. What is now wanted is that all should have the chance of such
an education as would properly qualify each for some form of industry,
and enable him by perseverance, thrift, and cultivated intelligence to
turn it to good account. This would enable all, and each according to
his merits, which should be the first aims of society in the era of
capital, to participate in the produce of the soil. Make the produce
as abundant as possible, and at the same time make that, as far as
possible, common to all, in proportion to the exertions, which mean the
intellectual and moral merits, of each. Of these times these are the
requirements, which so far from being promoted, can only be thwarted
by the system of common land, or by that of the minute division of the
land. Both of these systems carry us in a thoroughly wrong direction.
So soon as facts oblige us to see these points, the existing system,
so far as it is opposed to them, is demonstrated to have become
antiquated and false. It begins therefore to be undermined, and to
totter to its fall; no matter how unquestioned, varied, and great the
services it was capable, under other circumstances, of rendering, and
had rendered, to society. It was for the sake of those circumstances
that it existed. When they are gone the reasons for its existence
have gone with them. As it, itself, formerly superseded some other
system, so must some other system now supersede it. This is the
law of nature. In such matters gratitude for what once did good
service, respect for the past, the charm that memory flings about old
arrangements, have nothing to do with the settlement of the questions
in debate, except in the way of securing ample time for their complete
discussion. The governing consideration must always be, What under
existing circumstances will be best for society? That is to say, in
this particular case, What, as things now are, will give the community
the best supply of food, and in such a manner as will be fairest
and best for all, all the wants of society that are affected by the
ownership and the produce of the land having been duly attended to?
These are the old questions, which, from the beginning, advances in the
conditions of society have reopened again and again, and which have
been resettled again and again, always in conformity with the existing
conditions of the epoch. They are questions that have relative as well
as absolute elements, and which therefore, like that of government,
and of almost everything belonging to the domain of human affairs, can
never be settled once for all by the aid of some abstract theory. The
circumstances, however, and events arising out of the circumstances,
which are what force them into debate, always, sooner or later, force
upon us a corresponding settlement of them.
A word more. Property, which, as we have seen, existed from the
beginning, because it is an incident of life, is not theft. On the
contrary, the worst theft is that of the highest property. And the
highest property a man can have, and that, too, of which, in these
days, the political and economical well-being of society requires
that he should have as unrestricted use as of his capital and of his
labour, is his capacity for moral and intellectual improvement; the
point has now been reached at which these ideas are beginning to form
themselves in the general mind; and the theft of this capacity is in a
sense committed against those who are debarred from the opportunities,
now possible, for its culture and development. We are beginning to see
that it is a kind of theft to hinder a man from attaining to what,
while it would be of advantage to him, is fairly within his reach;
and, if this be just what would make him most truly a man, and enable
him to discharge his duties to society as well as to himself, the
theft is very far from being an insignificant one. It is, in fact, the
very theft against which the Christian Church has all along been,
or ought to have been, the protest of humanity: this was its _raison
d’être_: though very naturally, but quite wrongly, so soon as it came
to be an hierarchical organization, that part of the protest that
had reference to what was intellectual was hushed, and, from obvious
motives, knowledge and reason were thenceforth denounced. But so far it
had falsified its purpose, abdicated its position, and ceased to be a
Church, having become in its stead only an hierarchical organization.
Society it is that is now unconsciously committing this theft, against
which it is the highest duty of the true Church to protest. And it is
society only, acting in its organized form, and through its accredited
agent, the state, that can effectually make the restitution; and so far
as the state attempts to do this, that is to say, to make the moral and
intellectual improvement of the community its aim, it becomes the ally
of the true Church.
The progress of society may be measured by the degree in which it
enables larger and larger proportions of its members to enter upon
a serviceable possession of this, their highest property. It will
have attained a very high degree of progress when it shall have given
to every member of the community opportunities and means for doing
this: everyone will then have some chance of being able to turn his
mental endowments to some account, to stand alone, and to take care of
himself. That each should have this chance is now as necessary for
society as it is for the individual. When the old Swiss system was
established it was the material life only of small, poor, uncommercial
communities that had to be thought about. Its originators therefore
made such a portion of their land common as would be sufficient for
this purpose. That arrangement only, then and there, could give the
means for material existence; and no other kind of existence was or
could have been at that time taken into consideration. All beyond this
the Church took charge of, and attended to in accordance with its own
ideas and in its own fashion. But now man can live a higher life; and
for the requirements of his material life the possession, or direct
participation in the use of land is not necessary: indeed, a better
material life can, in many cases, be lived without its possession or
use than with it. But these new conditions require that a man should be
enabled to turn to good account his moral and intellectual capacities:
they it is that must now be so cultivated as to enable him to obtain a
livelihood by their exercise in the new world in which his lot has been
cast.
This is what the present Swiss system of education aims at doing for
every man in the country. Their old agrarian system gave to each, when
that was what was necessary, a share in the common land. Life with
them has now risen into a higher stage. It has moral and intellectual
possibilities, which are also requirements, formerly not needed, nor
dreamt of. The Swiss recognize this, and give to each opportunities for
participating in the knowledge and moral training, as they conceive
it, now possible. Having already freedom and political equality, they
were able to rise to the idea of humanity. Their old agrarian system,
too (morally it had acted in the very opposite direction to ours with
its necessary supplement of a communistic poor law) had made industry,
thrift, honesty, and foresight traditional and instinctive among them.
There was therefore nothing to obscure their perception of, or weaken
their desire for what ought to be done under the altered circumstances
of the times. Formerly, in conformity with the possibilities and
requirements of the age, the community had made some material provision
for all; as much as it could, and as fairly as it could; and which
would be enough, if turned to the best account by the industry of the
individual, for a competent living in the fashion of those days. Time
has rendered those arrangements antiquated and inapplicable. This
landed provision cannot any longer be made for all. There are too many
people and not enough land for that. But contemporaneously with this
increase of numbers, which is the same thing as relative decrease and
failure of the old landed means for living, a great variety of other
means have been opened on all sides; and the stage upon which these
may be turned to account has been expanded in the case of each from
a small mountain-locked valley to, practically, the whole world. For
these reasons, just as their old agrarian system made land, so their
new educational system is making intellectual training, and some amount
of moral training (though already they have much of that) common to
all. The powers these confer are now in a sense common pastures, upon
which all may keep flocks and herds; common forests, from which all
may get fuel and building materials; and common garden-ground, by the
cultivation of which all may supply their minor wants.
They have endeavoured to apply the old principle to a new, a better,
and a higher world. The identity of principle, and the differences of
application, are analogous to those that exist between the caterpillar
and the butterfly. In both life, with its imperative requirements
of food, air, light, warmth, &c., and its essential principles of
assimilation, circulation, &c., is the same. But in the caterpillar
this life has to be maintained by, and spent upon a leaf. Everything
therefore is adapted to this condition. Its powerful jaws, its vigorous
stomach, its restricted powers of locomotion, the tenacious hold of its
feet, its sluggish disposition, its dull colours, are all referable
to the leaf, that is to say, to its habitat and means of living. So
with the butterfly. Its life is to be spent in the air, and among the
flowers, and upon the honey distilled from the flowers. Hence its large
powers of locomotion, its beautiful colours, its lively temperament,
its sensitive antennæ, its fastidious stomach, its flexible proboscis.
Everything in it has been readapted to the new conditions. So, too,
with the Swiss. While they were in the earlier stage of their national
existence, what was needed for each was a little bit of land, a cow
or two, a spade, a manure basket, and a wife to carry it. This was
their caterpillar stage. They are now passing into the butterfly
stage. All their arrangements and provisions therefore have now to be
reaccommodated to the new conditions in the required fashion. They must
now be endowed with the capacity for collecting and turning to account
capital, the distilled essence of all property, without which even the
land cannot be made much of now. This life does not require the tough
hide, the strong sinews, the gross stomach, the adstriction to a single
spot, of the old life; but on the contrary, a vastly enlarged mobility
both of body and mind, a readiness for turning anything to account, and
for entering on any opening. They must be quick in thought and quick
in action. If they cannot find what they want at home, they must be
able and disposed to go to seek it elsewhere--here, there, anywhere.
They must have scientific and technical knowledge; must be capable of
appreciating new facts, and of taking large views; must be patient
and painstaking; must have the power of working mentally for distant
objects; must have an instinct of submission to law, both to the laws
of society, which aim at justice to all, and at order, and to the laws
of nature, submission to which enables a man to use effectually his own
powers, and to turn to account the powers of nature. These are moral
and intellectual qualities. And it is with these that the Swiss school
system, like that of their North German neighbours, would fain endow
the whole people.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
Inde, ubi prima quies, medio jam noctis abactæ
Curriculo, expulerat somnum, quum femina primum,
Cui tolerare colo vitam tenuique Minervâ,
Impositum cinerem et sopitos suscitat ignes,
Noctem addens operi; famulasque ad lumina longo
Exercet penso; castum ut servare cubile
Conjugis, et possit parvos educere natos--_Æn._ viii. 407-413.
I take the liberty of rejecting the ruling of Heyne, and of the late
Professor Conington, that ‘impositum’ is the regimen of ‘tolerare.’
(1) It is not necessary. (2) ‘Impositum’ gives importance and meaning
to ‘cinerem,’ which would be too meagre without it. It does also, as
it were, balance ‘sopitos.’ (3) It brings before the eye the pictures
of the way in which the fire had been made up over night, to keep it
alive till the morning, and of the way in which in the morning it is
resuscitated. Where wood is the fuel, the ashes are heaped up, for the
night, over the live coals. This excludes the air. In the morning, the
heaped up ashes are removed, and the fire fed. Everyone has seen this
done in Italy, and elsewhere. Virgil had seen it done; and this is what
he describes.
I also suppose that ‘ad lumina’ means at the first dawn. The good woman
herself rises before dawn, ‘noctem addens operi.’ But it would be hard,
and unnatural, to set her women to work before dawn. That they should
work through the whole day, beginning at dawn, is a sufficiently long
task for them. I even doubt whether spinning and weaving could have
been carried on with the feeble light of the lamps of those days; and,
too, whether, if possible, it would have paid to do it for the short
time before dawn. At all events by my interpretation of ‘ad lumina’ the
good woman’s motives and early rising are thrown into strong relief;
and this is done without making her treat her women harshly.
[2] I was reminded of the Anacreontic to the Grasshopper, and of
Cowley’s rendering of it:--
Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing,
Happier than the happiest king.
Thou dost innocently enjoy,
Nor does thy luxury destroy.
To thee, of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect! happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know.
But when thou’st danced, and drunk, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among
(Voluptuous, and wise withal,
Epicurean animal,)
Sated with thy summer feast,
Thou retir’st to endless rest.
[3] Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. pp. 198 and 255.
[4] And may I not be allowed to say here in passing, that our
observation of this fact must have a good effect upon our treatment of
our dumb fellow-workers, and of every creature that breathes? Indeed,
if they were not dumb, as has been suggested in an earlier part of this
volume, they would probably be able to show us, that in the highest
gift also of all, that of reason, their approximation to ourselves
is much closer than many of us suppose at present. And may not this
eventually prove a new, and very striking instance of the way in which
an increase of knowledge enlarges and elevates religion? I say religion
rather than the sense of duty, because if such knowledge should bring
us to treat the lower animals with kindly interest and consideration,
it will not be because we feel in the matter responsibility to them, or
to our fellow men, but to the common Author of all.
INDEX.
Agrarian evolution, 305.
Village community, 322
Agriculture, prehistoric, 315.
In New Caledonia, 317
Airolo, 63, 87
Aletsch Glacier, 242, 260, 264, 267
Aletschwald, 260
Allotments, 260
Allmends, 2.
Of Stanz, 35.
Of Glarus, 165.
Of Switzerland, 297.
Causes that maintained them, 330.
Unsuitable to existing conditions, 345-354
Alpes, at Am Stag, 48.
Of Oberalp, 95.
Of Waldnacht, 109.
Statistics of, 301.
Why common, 336.
Relation to prairies, 337
Alpbach, 131
Alpnach, 34, 204
Altorf, 43.
No bookseller at, 44
American puzzled at Lugano, 78.
Medical students, 93.
An angler, 104
Ammer, 14, 44, 51, 59, 98.
His portrait, 208-213
Am Stag, 46.
Intellectual condition of, 47.
Common rights at, 48.
La Croix Blanche of, 103
Andermatt, 58, 87, 102
Animal life, scarcity of, 207
Animals, domestication of useful, 312
Association, primæval, 310.
Among lower animals, 311, 314
Beisassen, Why excluded from common rights, 340, 342
Barber, the, of Brieg, 274
Beckenried, 122-127
Bekker, Dr., 176, 347
Bellaggio, 79
Bell Alp, 264-271.
View from, 268
Bellinzona, 68, 85
Berne, 7
Black Virgin of Einsiedln, 147
Blue of glacier ice, 263
Boats, Swiss, 31
Bocketobel, 108
Böningen, Allmends of, 14
Bookseller, none at Altorf, 44
Boots for walking, 232
Bretzwyl, 1-6
Brieg, 272
Brünig, 23, 207
Brunnen, 188
Buochs, 36, 40
Burgers, without cows, 48.
Old and new, 297, 340, 342
Canterbury, why no pilgrimages to, 143
Capital incompatible with common land, 349
Carriages at Andermatt, 89.
At Am Stag, 104.
At Alpnach, 204
Carving in wood, 28
Cenere, view from Monte, 74, 83
Cereals, first culture of, 315
Cheese, its value to the Swiss, 331
_Christo in pauperibus_, 32
Church of Rome, present position of, 151.
The, a protest, 357
Cities, English, 203
Classical studies, why advocated, 138
Climate, favourable to grass and forests, 134
Cloud banner, 114, 170
Common, how produce of land now, 325
Commune, Swiss, 298
Como, Mass at, 81.
Shores of Lake, 82
Conversation spoils society, 65
Corporations, 175
Cowley, 238
Culture, moral and intellectual, a means of living, 358-362
Dazio Grande, 64
Delta of Lütschine, 11-14
Deschwanden, M., 122
Devil, Ammer on the, 51.
Devil’s Bridge, 57.
Forms assumed by the, 66
Differences not seen by pilgrims, 145
Diligences, 92
Disappointment, a common, 84
Education, aims of Swiss, 358-362
Eggischhorn, hotel at, 236.
Storm at, 239.
Ascent of, 240.
View from, 242
Einsiedln, 135-160
Endowments, 177
Engelberg, 117-120
Englishman, in Italy, 105
English virtue, 125
Ennetburgen, 36
Enjoyment, science of, 292.
Knowledge necessary for, 296
Etruria, perhaps two races in ancient, 20
Evening at Engelberg, 118, 119
Excursion, the kind of, 15.
How described, 288.
Plan of the, 290.
Pleasures of, 295
Exertion, Is--a pleasure, 129
Expression results from mind, 33, 122
Faido, 65
Flies, the Devil in the form of, 66
Föhn, the, 171
Forest Cantons, a point in history of, 333
Forest, common, 50, 339.
Care of, 133
Forget-me-nots on the Surenen, 111
French _homme de lettres_, 187
Fruit, failure of, 279
Fuel, decrease of, 132
Garden, common ground, 341
Gaststube, 29
Geese, about, 90
German anglers, 126
Gersau, 40
Gibbon, 281
Glacier, Rhone, 228.
Aletsch, 242, 260
Glarus, 164-182
Göschenen, 55
Grace, decay of female, 19
Grammar, Public School Latin, 65
Grasshoppers, 238
Grimsel, 125
Hacken Pass, 128-134
Heusler, Professor, 1
Honey, artificial, 208
Horse, unruly young, 86.
End of Bourbaki’s, 206
Hotels on Eggischhorn and Bell Alp, 269
Hunting stage, 307
Impetuosity out of place, 117
Infallibility, 152, 155, 234
Intellectual life at Am Stag, 47
Interlaken, 8
Interpretation of what is seen, 265
Inscription at Einsiedln, 141
Instinct, 261
Italian, a cultivated, 16-21
Italy, land in prehistoric, 37.
Quick-pulsed, 79
Kirchet, the, 220-224, 226
Klönthal, 187
Klus, 107
Knowledge, the perception of differences, 145.
Ignorance protected against, 234.
Necessary for enjoyment, 266, 295.
Advances religion, 312 (note)
Lake, Thun and Brienz, 10.
Lungern, 24.
Sarnen, 31.
Lucerne, 39.
Maggiore, 74.
Lugano, 77.
Como, 78-83.
Zurich, 161.
Wallenstadt, 163.
Geneva, 281
Land, its object to supply food, 308, 323.
Lammas, 324.
Affected by circumstances, 326.
Lords’ committee on, 329.
What affected tenure of, in Switzerland, 330
Lausanne, 280
Laveleye, M., 352
Liberty, 22.
Tree of, 71
Linththal, 179
Locarno, 74
Lombach, 10
Lucerne, 202
Lugano, 76.
Lake of, 77
Lungern, 24
Lütschine, 10
Maggiore, Lago, view of head of, 74
Maidenhair fern, 126
Manufactures, effects of, 169
Märjelensee, 244
Mass in cathedral of Como, 81
Menaggio, 78
Middle-class travellers, 190
Morality, 73.
Relation of, to religion, 156
Munster, young lady of, 235
Muotta, 187
Mysteries, the old, 138
Nature, a workshop of, 53
New Caledonians, 317
Oberalp alpe, 95
Obergesteln, 230
Object, disadvantage of an, 52
Oleanders in flower, 79
Ott, Jean, 225, 342
Ouchy, 280
Panier, the Bretzwyl, 6
Pantenbrücke, 179
Parasite, Switzer the, of the cow, 333
Paray le Monial, why pilgrimage to, urged, 153
Pass, St. Gothard, 55, 64, 87.
Surenen, 107-117.
Hacken, 128-134.
Pragel, 183-187
Pastoral stage, 313
Pauperism, English, 338
Phenomena not isolated, 300
Phœnicia an autonomous dependency of Egypt, 19
Pilgrimages, 149-160
Pilgrims support Einsiedln, 140.
Defect of knowledge in, 145
Pragel, 183-187
Prairies, their history, 334.
Relation to alpes, 337
President, letter from the, 7.
Of Glarus, 173
Priest’s Leap, 51.
Of Upper Valais, 233
Progress, a measure of, 357
Property, primæval, 309.
Among lower animals, 309, 313.
Agriculture implies, 321.
Highest form of, 356
Railway under St. Gothard, 56, 63
Rapperswyl, 162
Reason in animals, 261
Religion and morality, 156
Rent at Meiringen, 214
Reverie, a, 53
Rhone Glacier, 228.
Valley of the, 275
Richisau, 185
Rieder Alp, 247
Rigi, two views from the, 194-201
Ritualism at Meiringen, 215-220
Rose of the Alps, Ammer’s bouquet of, 98
Sacheln, 28
Saint Gothard, 61, 87
Saint Nicholas von der Flüe, 29
Sarnen, 33
Scholarship, 20
Schöllinen, 56
Schwyz, 128
Science of enjoyment, 292
Scopas, view from Mount, 75
Sidelhorn, 229
Soil, shallowness of, 206
Spider-like, the mind, 56
Stanz, 35, 121
Storms, 8.
Effects of, 26, 27, 40.
At Como, 79, 80.
In the Hacken Pass, 131.
At Brienz, 208.
At Eggischhorn, 239.
At Bell Alp, 268
Sugar-cane, culture of, by New Caledonians, 317-320
Suggestion, a, 255
Surenen, 107-116
Swiss justice, 123. Virtue, 125
Switzerland, wealth of, 344
Ticino, valley of the, 67
Time reckoning lost, 127
_Times_, possibility of existence without the, 81.
At Glarus, 172
Titlis, 116
Todensee, 228
Travellers, a mob of, 205.
English, 256
Trieb, 128
Uri, Bay of, 42.
Census of, 45
Urseren Thal, 58
Valais, Upper, priests of, 233.
Climate of, 235
Val Tremola, 62, 87
Verriéres, 287
Village, English, community, 322
Vineyards, English, 278
Virgil’s good woman, 72
Voiturier, a roguish, 122.
A good, 182
Vorauen, 184
Waldnacht, 109
Walking in Switzerland, 231
Wallensee, 163
Warped, the Delta of the Lütschine might be, 13
Wasen, 52
Water, 32.
Effects of running, 64, 68
Wealth, distribution of, 70.
No disqualification for office, 174.
In modern Switzerland, 344.
Disturbing effects of, 345
Weather-battle, 94.
At Glarus, 171.
Of the excursion, 288
Wet afternoon at Andermatt, 88-92
Women, young, in the Catholic Cantons, 46.
Old woman mending road, 54.
Good, at Bellinzona, 72.
Head-dress of, of Unterwalden, 118.
Middle-aged endure fatigue, 135.
Strong-minded, 270
Working classes, 192
World, carrying the, about with one, 172.
Modern, its interest, 287
Worldly Wise on men and women, 267
Zurich, museum at, 6
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
A MONTH
IN
SWITZERLAND.
BY THE REV. F. BARHAM ZINCKE.
Crown 8vo. 5_s._
A SELECTION of NOTICES by the PRESS.
‘Those who care to read Mr. Barham Zincke’s works will gladly
welcome another from his hand, and will know pretty well what to
expect in it. They will look for occasional pages of vivid and
humorous description, interspersed with a much larger allowance
of trains of reflection on a great variety of topics, which are
always sensible, often new, and never dull. These expectations
will be fully realised in reading “A Month in Switzerland.”...
There is one remarkable chapter of a hundred pages, very well
written, which is a little lecture on the various forms of land
tenure, and the social and moral results that flow from them. Mr.
Barham Zincke, in spite of the attractive aspect which industry
wears in the Valley of the Visp, is not in favour of peasant
proprietorship. It is not, he thinks, in harmony with the spirit
of the age, which recognises capital and not land as king.’
GUARDIAN.
‘We part from these results of a month in Switzerland with
imperfect sympathy, indeed, in some points, but with satisfaction
in most, and with respect in all.’
SATURDAY REVIEW.
‘There is quite enough in this little volume to arrest the
attention of anybody who cares for an hour’s intercourse with
the mind of one who has carefully pondered some of the deepest
problems which affect the physical well-being of his fellow
creatures.’
SPECTATOR.
‘The preface to Mr. Barham Zincke’s holiday notes on Switzerland
warns “those who may have read his ‘Egypt of the Pharaohs and of
the Khedivé’ that this little book belongs to the same family.”
We are thus prepared for the same features of thought, the same
observant eye, the same cast of mind, at once penetrative and
receptive, that were displayed so conspicuously in Mr. Zincke’s
former work; nor are we disappointed.’
EXAMINER.
‘Mr. Zincke’s dissertation on this most important subject (the
land question) deserves careful attention, coming, as it does,
from a man whose previous works have thoroughly established his
reputation as a thoughtful and original writer. Indeed, Mr.
Zincke’s book is well worth reading for the fourth chapter alone.’
DAILY TELEGRAPH.
‘It is eminently a thoughtful book.’
DAILY NEWS.
London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ.
BY THE REV. F. BARHAM ZINCKE.
Second Edition, much Enlarged. With a Map. Demy 8vo. 16_s_.
_SELECTION from NOTICES by the PRESS._
‘We have in this volume a thoughtful, almost exhaustive,
treatment of a subject too often handled by mere _dilettante_
writers, who dismiss as unworthy of notice the problems with
which they are unable to cope.... We heartily commend Mr.
Zincke’s delightful book as a fresh pleasure to the thoughtful
reader.’
SPECTATOR.
‘A more independent and original volume of Egyptian travel
than at this time of day we should have thought possible. Mr.
Zincke has a quickness of eye, a vigour of judgment, and a
raciness of style which place him far above the ordinary run of
travellers.... Readers will lose much if they do not make some
acquaintance with this truly remarkable volume.’
LITERARY CHURCHMAN.
‘Each chapter takes some one topic, treats it in sharp piquant
style, and generally throws some new light upon it, or makes it
reflect some new light upon something else. If these bright and
sparkling pages are taken as containing suggestions to be worked
out for oneself and accepted or rejected in the light of more
mature knowledge, they will be found full of value.’
GUARDIAN.
‘Mr. Zincke speaks like a man of rare powers of perception,
with an intense love of nature in her various moods, and an
intellectual sympathy broad and deep as the truth itself.’
SATURDAY REVIEW.
‘A very pleasant and interesting book.... Mr. Zincke tells his
readers exactly such facts as they would wish to know. The style
is captivating.
WESTMINSTER REVIEW.
‘A series of brilliant and suggestive essays.’
EXAMINER.
‘Mr. Zincke’s personal observations, original remarks, and
practical views, make him worthy of being consulted by all who
desire to have something more than a picturesque and sentimental
description of the peculiarities belonging to modern Egypt.’
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.
* * * * *
London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.