28o THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY.
trade has produced an entirely new industrial law. In the
same way, modifications of the law produce modifications in
the processes \ so that Signor Minghetti could say with truth
that every great period of economic progress rests on a corre
sponding juridical system.
In a profound study on Liberty and Property, Professor
Wagner shows the decisive influence exercised on the produc
tion of wealth, and to a still greater degree on its distribution by
the different forms with which history has successively clothed
these two rights. We may thus see the intimate relations which
bind Political Economy to law, especially in the details of the
different agrarian systems in operation in different countries
and at different periods. Professor Wagner here brings out an
essential truth, too often forgotten, namely, that property is not
a right presenting always identical, and, so to speak, necessary
characteristics. It has varied at all times, according to the
social surroundings in the midst of which it is recognized,
according to the processes of labour in vogue, and even accord-
ing to the objects to which it is applied.* So long as men live
on the produce of the chase or their flocks, and even so long as
agriculture is essentially “extensive,” the soil belongs in common
to the whole tribe. In proportion as methods of cultivation
improve, become more “ intensive,” and consequently require
the employment of more capital, and as, at the same time,
cattle occupy a smaller place in the rural economy and meat in
food, private property successively extends until it swallows up
altogether the communal property of the villages, both pasture
and forest, and thus leaves nothing for the collective use. The
benefice, the fief, the mensal lands of the Church, the domain
of the convents, the holdings of the coloni, the possessions
subject to mortmain, property under all its forms, in the feudal
system, had a precarious character, either for life or at least
in some way limited, which radically distinguishes it from
* I have m^elf endeavoured to demonstrate this fact in my book, La
Propriété et ses formes primitives, Adolf Samter, a banker of Königsberg,
who found time to write some excellent books, expounds similar ideas m
a work recently published under the title Privai-Eigenthum und gesell
schaftliches Eigenthum (“ Private Property and Social Property”).
