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  corresponding ­
  juridical  system.
In  a  profound  study  on  Liberty  and  Property,  Professor
Wagner  shows  the  decisive  influence  exercised  on  the  production ­
  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  according
  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  gesellschaftliches ­
  Eigenthum  (“  Private  Property  and  Social  Property”).