Common land

“ Each family cannot hope to own a small piece of cultivated land as in France—no inaccessible mountain-ranges exist for our people to learn to love as in Switzerland—but it may be that in our common-land we are meant to learn an even deeper lesson:—something of the value of those possessions in which each of a large community has a distinct share, yet which each enjoys only by virtue of the share the many have in it ”

“ Of the three kinds of land the common mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords in the days of feudalism, has generally remained public property to this day. The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of towns and cities in England and the United States most probably originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the new aggregate. ”

“ The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community in land has not yet been historically proved. Here are scholars who have maintained that they could prove from original authorities that nations originally cultivated the soil in common ”

“ The question of the appropriation of the common land of England is one which is of great importance now, and which will be of increasing importance as time goes on. The matter is not simply one of providing a public park or common in the near neighbourhood of cities which are now large and rapidly increasing, nor of securing a cricket or recreation ground and an acre or two of cottage gardens to a few villagers. ”

“ The land basis is always present, in spite of Morgan's artificial distinction between a theoretically landless societas, held together only by the bond of common blood, and the political civitas based upon land.82 Though primitive society found its conscious bond in common blood, nevertheless the land bond was always there, and it gradually asserted its fundamental character with the evolution of society. ”

“ What I would propose is, that common land should be divided into sections of five acres or thereabout, to be conferred in absolute property on individuals of the laboring-class who would reclaim and bring them into cultivation by their own labor. ”

“ Is the influence of the rich and powerful so slight that we should let it be thus silently strengthened? Is the knowledge just brought so prominently before us that one quarter of the land in England is owned by only seven hundred and ten persons so satisfactory that we will stand by and see quietly absorbed those few spots which are our common birthright in the soil? ”

“ If it were true that land had always been treated as private property, that would not prove the justice or necessity of continuing so to treat it, any more than the universal existence of slavery, which might once have been safely affirmed, would prove the justice or necessity of making property of human flesh and blood. Wherever we can trace the early history of society, whether in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, or in Polynesia, land has been considered as common property. ”

“ To revert to the parallel of the disposition of land made by the owner of an estate, who certainly would not place his kitchen - garden in the loveliest part of his park, do not let the Nation surrender forest or hillside, but, preserving them intact, apportion for purposes of cultivation the less beautiful, flatter, and probably more productive ground. Let the public watch how many of the schemes brought forward relate to regulation, not inclosure. ”

“ Land, which was the principal means by which each family made its living, was not individually owned, but held in common by the village, and so it was necessary to tightly control the use of land and water, and the distribution of agricultural implements and labor. ”

“ Efforts have been made, and not with very great success, to define the principle which governed the more ancient races with regard to the possession of land. While unoccupied or unappropriated, it was common to every settler. It existed for the use of the whole human race. ”

“ Land, especially grazing land, appears to have been held in common by communities, but there are indications that cultivated plots and houses were owned by families and ultimately by individuals, the father in such cases being the supreme authority. ”

“ The owner of a piece of land, who had built a house or inclosed 20 or 40 acres of it, had the benefit of this universal custom, as well as the party who owned no land. Everybody used the open, uninclosed country which produced nutritious grasses as a public common or which their horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep could run and graze. ”

“ The division of land between the industrial units, whether families, joint families, or369 individuals, went only as far as was necessary for that purpose, pasture and forest lands being retained as common, and equality as to agricultural land being secured, either by a periodical re-division, as among the Teutonic races, or by the prohibition of alienation, as in the law of Moses. ”

“ With the small holdings, is there to pass away from our people the sense that they have any share in the soil of their native England? I think the sense of owning some spaces of it in common may be healthier for them than even the possession of small bits by individuals, and certainly it now seems more feasible. ”

“ Again, all land in England is increasing in value. Why should the ignorant agricultural labourer be induced, by the gift of a few poles of land, to part with the valuable inheritance of his descendants? ”

“ Apprehension of land as common property The doctrine of eminent domain, which makes the sovereign theoretically the only absolute owner of land, springs from nothing but the recognition of the sovereign as the representative of the collective rights of the people. ”

“ This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full recognition of the particular and exclusive right in things that are the result of labour, nor was it abandoned when the development of agriculture had imposed the necessity of recognizing exclusive possession of land in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of the results of the labour expended in cultivating it. ”

“ It is, then, very evident that these common repasts, whose meaning or object we need not here try to discover, have not the slightest connection with a common life and certainly not with community in land. ”

“ And there is a reason why even, the still more distant rural commons should if possible be saved from inclosure. Every year, in many country neighbourhoods, population is increasing, and houses for letting are being built ”

“ When two neighbours having a common boundary have a dispute, if the land marks are not clear, the one says, ‘My ancestors possessed the land as far as this line, and left it me by inheritance:’ and the other protests and maintains that the land belonged to his ancestors as far as some other line ”

“ Even if they formed a slightly different estimate of the relative advantages of a few more rooms and a garden, I own to an amazed sorrow that the Quakers rejected a scheme by which the land might have been rendered a blessing to the living, without doing violence to what seems to me to be a natural instinct of reverence, ineradicable in every human heart, for whatever has been associated with the loved, or the great and noble who are no longer with us. ”

“ Permanent settlement encourages accumulation in every form, and under growing pressure of population slowly reveals the possibilities of every foot of ground, of every geographic advantage. These are the fibers of the land which become woven into the whole fabric of the nation's life. ”

“ A covenant to repair is commonly supposed to be a pure matter of contract. What is the difference between a duty to repair, and a duty to fence? The difficulty remains almost as great as ever of finding the dividing line between the competing principles of transfer,—succession on the one side, and possession of dominant land on the other. If a right in the nature of an easement could be attached to land by prescription, it could equally be attached by grant. If it went with the land in one case, even into the hands of a disseisor, it must have gone with it in the other. ”

“ It is true that in some instances equity does what is called compelling specific performance. But, in the first place, I am speaking of the common law, and, in the next, this only means that equity compels the performance of certain elements of the total promise which are still capable of performance. For instance, take a promise to convey land within a certain time, a court of equity is not in the habit of interfering until the time has gone by, so that the promise cannot be performed as made. ”

“ It will give a sense of a common possession to succeeding generations. It will give a share in his country to be inherited by the poorest citizen. It will be a link between the many and through the ages, binding with holy happy recollections those who together have entered into the joys its beauty gives—men and women of different natures, different histories, and different anticipations—into one solemn joyful fellowship, which neither time nor outward change can destroy—as people are bound together by any common memory, or common cause, or common hope. ”

“ He asks himself how much of it he will devote to arable land and kitchen garden; some small part he may set aside for his children, that they may dig in it and plant it in their spare time; and a part of it he will devote probably to a flower-garden or a park; for he knows that the family has need of enjoyment and of rest, and that beauty sustains in them some higher life than the mere material one. ”

“ To us the Common or forest looks indeed crowded with people, but to them the feeling is one of sufficient space, free air, green grass, and colour, with a life without which they might think the place dull. ”

“ The Use of Land the Foundation of Social Order.—The manner in which tribes and nations have attached themselves to the soil has determined the type of social organization. Before the land was treated as property of individuals or regarded as a permanent possession by tribes, the method in which the land was held and its use determined the quality of civilization, and the land factor became more important as a determiner of social order as civilization progressed. ”

“ Why should the lord absorb to himself alone the "unearned increment of the land?" It ought not to be left to any private person to make such terms with his tenants, still less ought he to be allowed to decide, by high-handed erection of fence, how much is his and how much is theirs. Yet there are numbers of such inclosures silently going on throughout England in districts where there is no one powerful enough, rich enough, or with knowledge enough to carry the matter into a court of law, or watch effectually that justice be done. ”

“ Now, have you ever paused to think what Londoners would do without this holiday, or what it would be without these open spaces? Cooped up for many weeks in close rooms, in narrow streets, compelled on their holiday to travel for miles in a crowded stream, first between houses, and then between dusty high hedges, suddenly they expand into free uncrowded space under spreading trees, or on to the wide Common from which blue distance is visible; the eye, long unrefreshed with sight of growing grass, or star-like flowers, is rejoiced by them again. ”

“ At present, our whole land system is constructed to prevent their working. It is Nature's way alternately to gather together and to disperse abroad Our land laws are all on the side of gathering together. ”

“ Hence we may lay down the rule that change in areal relations, both of the individual to his decreasing quota of land, and of the state to its increasing quota of the earth's surface is an important index of social and political evolution. ”

“ And this is true whether we consider the compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and human sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples in the lower stages of civilization have contracted spacial ideas, desire and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may change that territory often ”

“ So anthropo-geography must see its world in motion, whether it is considering English colonization, or the westward expansion of the Southern slave power in search of unexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, or the early advance of the trappers westward to the Rockies after the retreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining Indian tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. ”

“ The land for the people, first of all. As clear as daylight was the right of the people to the land: let the State assume possession, and manage it—its mines and minerals, its agriculture, its public grounds and parks—for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a pampered few. ”

“ Also, oh, you rich people, to whom the squares belong, some few of whom too own private gardens actually in London, adjoining Hyde Park or Regent's Park, or saved on some great estate round the landowner's house, I think you might have a flower-show or large garden-party, once a year, for the poor of your neighbourhood, while you are in town to meet them. I have seen such things done in squares with delightful results. A whole district gathered together, old friends and new, in happy fellowship under the trees, the band playing, and the place looking its gayest. ”

“ It is possible—nay, probable—that in our first attempts to put charity on a right footing, we may have to spend more than we did before, and make larger demands on the purses of the wealthy. A few substantial gifts, wisely bestowed, may easily make up a larger sum than a multitude of petty careless doles. A weekly pension, a grant of a few pounds to help a family to migrate, is more than the money-equivalent of many a random shilling. But if, on reflection, we decide to withhold gifts of any kind whatsoever, it is only to be done for the sake of the people themselves. ”