The Bund

“ Look around! there lie the fields, the vineyards,—whose are they? There stand stones, boundary-stones, placed here and there over the land, as points of legal division between mine and thine; no one can step over the boundary of another, or encroach on another's domain; they are the scattered stones, which, in the eye of the imagination, help to form the great temple of law which protects humanity. Not so evident, but not less firmly fixed, are the boundary-stones throughout life; you may not encroach on what belongs to another, on the results of his labor and of his natural powers. ”

“ And again in the canton Vaud, he says, "the kiltgang, or nightly wooings, are the universal custom with the universal consequences, but in general the wife is treated with marked respect, is made keeper of the treasury, and consulted as the oracle of the family."
Among the amatory customs of various
SAVAGE NATIONS
and tribes, there are certain which somewhat resemble bundling, except in the greater degree of freedom allowed—a freedom which, in the eyes of civilized nations, is absolute immorality. ”

“ THE BOND. Be it known to every one, that the men of the Dale of Uri, the Community of Schwytz, as also the men of the mountains of Unterwald, in consideration of the evil times, have full confidently bound themselves, and sworn to help each other with all their power and might, property and people, against all who shall do violence to them, or any of them. That is our Ancient Bond. Whoever hath a Seignior, let him obey according to the conditions of his service. We are agreed to receive into these dales no Judge who is not a countryman and indweller, or who hath bought his place. ”

“ No, not for Venice.
PORTIA. Why, this bond is forfeit:
And lawfully by this the Jew may claim
A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off
Nearest the merchant's heart. Be merciful;
Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond.
SHYLOCK. When it is paid according to the tenour.
It doth appear you are a worthy judge;
You know the law, your exposition
Hath been most sound; I charge you by the law,
Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar,
Proceed to judgment: by my soul I swear,
There is no power in the tongue of man
To alter me: I stay here on my bond. ”

“ The bond is transmitted by the officer taking it to the district attorney of the state from which he has fled. That officer sees that the bond is executed, and that the slave is taken before the court. Perhaps, before the slave reaches home, he will acknowledge that he is a slave; there is an end of the bond and an end of the trouble about the master. Is this unreasonable? Is it not a proper and rational concession to the prejudices, if you please, which exist in the non-slaveholding states? Sir, our rights are to be asserted; our rights are to be maintained. ”

“ So after all that has been said of the practice of bundling in our country, by foreign writers, travelers, and reviewers—after all the reproach that has been heaped upon us, now that we are able to get at the plain truth, it appears to be, though certainly a bad practice, not half so bad as the junketing and sitting up courtships that are known elsewhere. Nay, more. Though in the present state of society it is a practice that should be utterly discountenanced everywhere, still it would seem to have grown up out of the peculiar circumstances of our first settlers ”

“ In 10 years more, probably, the bond class will no longer exist, having been exhausted by death, or by the termination of penal sentences, and the distinction between bond and free be a remembrance of the past. ”

“ And in every plantation in all the colonies much the same thing prevailed. The treatment of these bond servants varied not so much according to the laws of the different countries or states, as according to the tempers and feelings of their different owners for the time being. If a man was merciful he treated them well and fed them well ”

“ Bundling, as now practiced in these kingdoms, is merely a matter arising from the ignorance, or the poverty of the inhabitants; and, while not salutary in its moral or physical influence, is, at all events, less abused than we might reasonably expect. ”

“ Any man that knew his right hand from his left, and who could follow a ridge, and not get off of it to cross any water flowing to the right or the left, could trace the boundary, and establish it in the very words of the treaty. ”

“ You call upon the man who was guiding his plough to take the management of your principality before his daily work is finished. Ah, would that the plough had surrounded the field with its furrows as far as the boundary stone, for then Bohemia would have been an independent land for ever! Now that you have too soon disturbed the work of the ploughman, the boundaries of your land will be the portion and inheritance of a neighbour, and your remote posterity will cleave to him in indissoluble union. ”

“ If any member of the Commune shall have entrusted his money to some one of the city, and he to whom the money has been so entrusted takes refuge in some strong castle, the seigneur having been notified, shall either return the money, or drive the debtor from his castle. If the seigneur does neither, justice shall be enforced upon his goods and his men. ”

“ For many a bondman the gamble proved to be a losing venture because he found himself unable to rise out of the state of poverty and dependence into which his servitude carried him. For thousands, on the contrary, bondage proved to be a real avenue to freedom and prosperity. ”

“ These affrays are by convention termed duels; and, in fact, as on our borders a century [Pg 130] back, each man rights with his own hand his wrongs "wherever given," in street or forest, in the court of justice or within the house of prayer.
In the mean time, notwithstanding all this, the frontiers flourish; trade yearly increases; and, as well as I can learn, civilization and security also slowly but steadily march onward; but, from the very nature of the country, it must be long before the wild spirits congregated here can be subjected to the wholesome rule of well-administered laws. ”

“ States and governments intrigue, make wars, for the sake of property, for the possession of the banks of the Rhine, of land in Africa, China, the Balkan Peninsula. Bankers, merchants, manufacturers, land-owners, labourers, use cunning, torment themselves, torment others, for the sake of property; government functionaries, artisans, struggle, deceive, oppress, suffer, for the sake of property; courts of justice and police protect property; penal servitude, prisons, all the terrors of so-called punishments,—all is done for the sake of property. ”

“ I am more and more convinced—the federation of the provinces, each independent as to itself, but mutually united by the common bond of their common interests, like the Republic of the Swiss cantons, is the sole guarantee of freedom. ”

“ Which being now, by God’s blessing, finished,—we think we have as much right to demand, and desire to see, a happy Settlement, as we have to our money and “to” the other common interests of Soldiers which we have insisted upon. We find also the ingenuous and honest People, in almost all parts of the Kingdom where we come, full of the sense of ruin and misery if the Army should be disbanded before the Peace of the Kingdom, and those other things before mentioned. have a full and perfect Settlement. ”

“ And Bruin asked: “But how shall we divide it afterwards?” “How shall we divide it?” said the peasant, “Well, you take all the tops and let me have all the roots.” “All right,” answered Bruin. So they sowed some turnips, and they grew beautifully. And Bruin worked hard, and gathered in all the turnips, and then they began to divide them. ”

“ The series of measures to which I have alluded are regarded by me as a settlement in principle and substance—a final settlement of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embraced. Most of these subjects, indeed, are beyond your reach, as the legislation which disposed of them was in its character final and irrevocable. ”

“ The plunder of the provinces intensified the wealth of the wealthy. The largesses pauperized and proletarianized the populace of the great city. [4] They drew away citizens from the country and from honest industry, to swell the mob of the city. If a band of robbers should split into patricians and plebeians and divide the plunder unequally, it is plain that, as time went on, they must separate into two great factions, one immensely rich, the other miserably poor. ”

“ The settlement of that province had lately been begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen, accustomed to labour, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was with families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors, many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the jails, who, being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for. ”

“ There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, upon which to divide. Trace through, from East to West, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated thickly upon both sides ”

“ It comprehends the innumerable requisitions demanded and enforced, whether as loans, or in provisions or merchandise, or in money as an equivalent for both; the levies of men, of horses, oxen, and carriages; corvees of all kinds; the emptying of magazines for the service of our armies; in short, whatever was required for the maintenance, a portion of the pay, and divers wants of those armies, from the time they had posted themselves in Brabant, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and on either bank of the Rhine. ”

“ In England this would be esteemed extremely imprudent, and attended with dangerous consequences; but, after what I have related respecting bundling, I need not say, in how innocent a view this is looked upon. Apropos, as to that custom, along the sea coast, by a continual intercourse among Europeans, it is in some measure abolished; but they still retain one something similar, which is termed tarrying. When a young man is enamored of a woman, and wishes to marry her, he proposes the affair to her parents (without whose consent no marriage, in this colony, can take place) ”

“ So the settlers met in grave council once more.
That a guard was needed was plain to all;
But nobody answered the Governor's call
For a volunteer watch. They were only a few,
And their wild young farms gave plenty to do;
And the council of settlers was breaking up,
With a dread of the sorrow they'd have to sup
When the savage, unawed, and for vengeance wild
Lay await in the wood for the mother and child. ”

“ The axiom, that “Union is Strength,” the necessity of providing for casualties by mutual assistance, in other words, assurance on its broadest and most rational basis, was practised in the Saxon guild, the origin of which was very simple: Every freeman of fourteen being bound to find sureties to keep the peace, certain neighbours, composed of ten families, became bound for one another, either to produce any one of the number who should offend against the Norman law, or to make pecuniary satisfaction for the offence. ”

“ W. Bingley, in 1804, [8] we also find the following description of this custom: "The peasantry of part of Caernarvonshire, Anglesea, and Merionethshire, adopt a mode of courtship which, till within the last few years, was scarcely even heard of in England. It is the same that is common in many parts of America, and termed by the inhabitants of that country, bundling. The lover steals, under the shadow of the night, to the bed of the fair one, into which (retaining an essential part of his dress) he is admitted without any shyness or reserve. ”

“ Here I beg leave to observe to your Lordship that if settlers are sent out, and the convicts divided amongst them, this settlement will very shortly maintain itself, but without which this country cannot be cultivated to any advantage. At present I have only one person (who has about an hundred convicts under his direction) who is employed in cultivating the ground for the publick benefit, and he has returned the quantity of corn above mentioned into the publick store. ”

“ The calling together knights of the shire, representing the class of small land-owners, which preceded on several occasions the calling together deputies from towns, implied the growing importance of this class as one from which money was to be raised; and, when deputies from towns were summoned to the Parliament of 1295, the form of summons shows that the motive was to get pecuniary aid from portions of the population which had become relatively considerable and rich. ”

“ Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert that the decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced throughout France?—for instance, that the requisitions of the Convention for men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in the depths of Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at the great centres of social life? ”

“ And this sacrifice was supposed to secure safety against evil spirits encountered in crossing the boundary line.
Thus it would seem that, from the beginning, on the national threshold, as on the threshold of the temple and of the home, sacrifices were offered, and boundary marks were set up, in recognition of a peculiar sacredness of the border line,–which is in itself a foundation and a limit. These boundary marks were commonly a pillar or a tree, in apparent symbolism of a fructifying or a fruit-bearing agency, of the transmission or the continuance of life. ”