Law

and

liberty

Landowning

It might be supposed that the judges who were appointed by the king would always be on his side, if there was a contest between the king and other parties. But strangely enough they came to think much more of following the rules and customs of the realm than of doing what the king wished. The very fact that the law was common to the whole country made it a stronger defense when men relied upon it to aid them in resisting the king, just as at first it was a stronger instrument for enforcing order. The way in which the jury system came to be introduced will be described in a later chapter. But it may be mentioned here as one of the ways in which the king and the state helped on the cause of liberty, although it was not intended for this purpose and was at first stoutly resisted.

The state had a great deal to do with changing the plan of holding land. The early idea was that of holding land in common by a clan or village. Our present plan is what we call private ownership. Except in such cases as parks, public forests, school grounds, and a few other public plots, all land in this country is privately owned. By the old plan it seemed that no one really had a right to sell land, for this would be depriving the children of the clan of their rights. Today we buy and sell land freely; and this is in many ways an advantage. For it certainly stimulates a man to improve land if he knows that he himself will gain by draining, fencing, and enriching it. Moreover, when land is bought and sold freely it is more likely to get into the hands of men who will make some use of it and will not let it lie idle. How has it come about that we now own land?

We

do not talk of owning the air, and a private individual cannot own a navigable river, or a plot on the high seas.

When people lived in kindred groups or clans, Clan especially if they lived a hunting or pastoral life, each group might have a district where it hunted, or gathered fruits, or pastured its flocks. It would keep others out of this district if possible, and feel that it was on its own ground. But the individual members of the clan would not have their separate plots.

When groups settled down to cultivate the land it Village was, as we have seen, the custom to have the plow land in open fields with strips of grass between the holdings of the different dwellers. There was besides this a large area of "waste" which was a common pasture. There was then much land which was simply in common, and some which was "held" by the dwellers in the village community in the sense that they plowed it and harvested it. But they could not have sold it.

ap

of the

land

When the king and his warriors conquered a coun- Lords try, the king considered that it was his. He pointed his men to rule districts, just as the President of the United States appoints a governor of Alaska. There were two important differences, however. First the duke or baron collected his own pay from those under him. The amount which his tenants were to pay was largely fixed by custom, but he was not limited to a fixed sum. He got what he could, paid over a fixed sum to the king, and kept the rest. It was not the idea at first that he owned the land; he "held" it from the king or from some one superior to himself. In some offices called "fee offices we still have a survival of the old days when a govern

99

Landlords

ment office was a means of making an indefinite amount of money out of people. In most offices today, however, the officer is paid a fixed salary.

The second important difference is that when an American governor or judge dies he is not usually succeeded by his son. Even if the governor has lived in an executive mansion, as the old baron lived in a castle, his family expects to leave it when his term of office expires. On the other hand, the king's officer would in some cases be an old clan chief, and this office was hereditary. Or even if this were not the case, the strong chief would want to hand his power, his castle, and all his possessions down to his son, and as the king himself exercised this right, it was the natural thing for the lords to seek to exercise it also. When the son was already in possession of the castle he would have a decided advantage against other claimants. If the son or heir of the lord should always succeed him it might easily come to be thought that the county in some sense belonged to them. When the office of governor or judge is not passed down in this way there is little chance for such an idea. Hence out of these two ideas of being lord over the land and of being the hereditary lord came the idea that the landlord "owned" the land.

In the earlier years of Norman rule there was a difference between the lord's own "demesneland," from which he had the whole produce, and the parts of the manor which were cultivated by free tenants or by villeins. And there was the "waste" on which both lord and tenants pastured cattle. In one way or another, sometimes by mutual agreement with tenants, sometimes by sheer "grab," the common fields and the "waste" were inclosed. Instead of

being ruler, the landlord became the private owner. Some land, of course, came into the hands of small owners, but the larger part came under the ownership of the great landlords. In England this has survived in great measure to the present day.

In America we began, for the most part, with private Private ownership of land, and various laws have since been ownership passed to encourage this. Indeed, it is only recently absolute

that we have come to realize that some kinds of land, especially forests, ought to be kept by the public. But we have one reminder of the fact that this owning of land is not absolute. For if the city or town or state or nation needs land for public purposes, such as a school, or street, or park, or post office, the land may be taken, even if the owner does not wish to sell. In such case the owner of course must be paid a fair price, but he has to give up the land.

The state which began in such an unpromising fashion as a band of warriors, who were often in plain language robbers or pirates, came thus to be the defender of people against violence, their protector through the common law, and the means of fixing private property in land. The great power of organization and coöperation proved that it could be a benefit to the whole country although it was at first used in the interests of a few.

not

Ideals of the

warrior class

CHAPTER VII

IDEALS OF THE WARRIOR CLASS, OF KNIGHT
AND GENTLEMAN

I'

T is evident that in such a society of warriors the principal business of life would seem to be fighting.

It was not raising grain or breeding sheep or cattle; nor was it trading or manufacturing; nor was it the advance of knowledge or invention. The warriors who made slaves or serfs had found out how to make others work for them. It was far more exciting and interesting to fight or hunt than to plow or tend sheep. It was natural that a band of warriors united closely together, and forming an upper class group should have strong ideas about what a warrior should be and do. It was natural also that they should look down upon common people and slaves. It was natural that men whose chief business was to fight for the king and the state should think that this was the most important thing in the world, and should begrudge any rights or privileges to those who were not in their set. The ideals that such men built up for themselves and passed on to us show a mixture of good and evil. They were good in so far as they really embodied the new power of uniting men with their fellows. They were evil in so far as they went only halfway, relied upon force instead of upon mutual confidence and benefit, and in so far as they were the ideal of a small class only.

These ideals of the warriors were honor, courage,