III. The Budgets of Germany, France, and England.

(a) Germany. We have just seen that in the principal States of the Empire there is still an extensive amount of collective property. In Prussia, for instance, besides forest land, there are nearly 1,500,000 acres of arable land, an area equal in extent to one of the smaller departments of France.

(b) France. Of the old collective property of France only forest land remains, all grazing and arable land having long since been alienated.

The budgets of modern times, however, still exhibit traces of the old feudal system. The State, for instance, up to the last few years, continued to receive quit-rents for properties under the old system.1 1 The budget shows an annual decrease in these receipts, having fallen from 100,000 francs in 1857 to 32 francs in 1869. In 1876, however, there was a rise to 2000 francs.

(c) England. Here the decline of collective property is still further exhibited. In the Statistical Abstract published in 1877, the net revenue from Crown lands for Great Britain and Ireland figures at £40,000 net. Among the "miscellaneous receipts" we find only £200,000 which can be regarded as revenue derived from collective property, i.e. 15 millions in a budget

1 Leroy-Beaulieu, Traité de la science des finances, i., p. 35.

receipt of 1,956,000,000 francs. Later on, in 1884-1885, these revenues became rather larger (principally owing to the purchase of the shares in the Suez Canal which had belonged to the Viceroy of Egypt), but the proportion remains the same- -22 to 23 millions in a budget of 2 milliards 300 millions. We see, then, that in all the financial systems of modern Europe the progressive evolution of the modern system is taking the place of the more or less rapidlydegenerating feudal system.

§ 2. Modification of similar institutions in different social groups.

According to the primitive constitution of things, the land occupied by a tribe or clan was regarded as res nullius, and consequently at the free disposal of all the members of the community (the FeldWalt- und Weidegemeinschaft of V. Maurer).

With the increase of population, the value of land rose, and the state of things became modified, the rights of groups and individuals becoming consolidated and at the same time limited. Then arose gradually or simultaneously the following various forms of landed property :-(1) Land held by families; (2) by villages; (3) feudal property; (4) communal or public property; (5) property belonging to corporations; (6) private property.

Family, village, and feudal property represent,

among certain peoples, three successive stages in the evolution of property. When the old system of land tenure was abolished, private and communa] or public property began to develop simultaneously.

While certain lands which were free to all the inhabitants became transformed into collective property, other such lands lost their public character and became private property. In the first case, the communes, on being called upon to fulfil functions of increasing complexity, proceeded to transform all or part of the properties concerned into patrimonial property or property for the use of the people (communaux, allmenden).1

In the second case the property of the old community became the joint but undivided property of the members of the corporation; when, however, for purposes of cultivation it became necessary to divide it, the corporative property became transformed into private property.

1 Giron, Le droit administratif de la Belgique, No. 683. "There were three kinds of communal property :

"(a) Property directly appropriated to the use of the public such as public squares, streets, churches, &c.

"(b) Communal property properly speaking-i.e. the real estate and rights belonging to the tribune and to which the people were entitled to a personal share. These consisted of the forest land, rights of appanage, waste land, moorland, and the rights of pasturing.

"(c) Patrimonial property, i.e. that held by the commune, the revenue from which went to the commune to defray the expenses of administration. It included timber land, arable land, house property, market places, &c."

On reviewing in succession these various phases in the evolution of landed property, it will clearly be seen that modification has everywhere been attended by degeneration.

1. Family property (Montenegro).—Of all the Balkan States, Montenegro-owing to the natural barriers which separate it from the rest of Europehas best preserved its archaic institutions. Here, side by side with modern institutions, may be found the old system of division into forty-two tribes (pleme) which are sub-divided into clans or confraternities (brastvo) and into patriarchal families (zadrugas and inokosnas).1 The development of modern political and judicial institutions has, however, considerably lessened the importance of the plemes and the brastvos, so that progression in this direction has not been effected without accompanying degeneration.

With regard to property, the two different forms of family tenure have been substituted for what was formerly the tribal or clan system. former collective property of the clan, there only Of the remain the following traces :

1. Property rights held over certain portions of
land-generally forest or waste land.

2. The right of pre-emption in favour of mem-
bers of the brastvo or of those related to

For information about the common or differential characters of the zadruga and the inokosna see Ardent, La Famille zougoslave au Monténégro. (Réforme sociale, 17th October 1888.)

a member within the first six degrees of lineal descent.1

3. The right of allotting to relatives their share in the duties of helping widows and paupers in their work. The workers in this case receive no payment, neither have they any right to demand maintenance.

Still rarer are vestiges of the collective property of the pleme. A few portions of land, however, still belong to that body, and it is probably a survival of this ancient condition of things that foreigners are

1 Article 48 of the Civil Code of 1888, drawn up by Bogisic in all possible accordance with "the excellent customs' of Montenegro, begins with the statement that "the right of pre-emption, a privilege which has so long been enjoyed by the members of the brastvo, by persons whose lands adjoin, and by the members of the village and pleme, still flourishes, and will probably continue to do so."

Bogisic adds that, in accordance with this right, "any person desiring to sell his land, or any kind of real estate belonging to him, is constrained, according to the established custom in such cases, to first offer it in legal order to those persons who enjoy the right of pre-emption, in order to give them an opportunity of purchasing it at the price at which it is to be offered to the public. Article 49, sec. 1, gives a list setting out the order of precedence of those who enjoy the right of pre-emption.

1. Members of the brastvo within the first six lineal degrees of descent.

2. Persons owning adjoining lands. 3. The other members of the village.

4. The other members of the pleme.

Transference, of recent origin, to neighbours of rights originally confined to relatives.

If none of those entitled to the first offer desire to purchase, the

owner may then sell his property to any other Montenegrin