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For a long time these poor people, either from distrust, incredulity, or despair, hesitated to ask for their rights: it is said that the habit of serving had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle ages were so bold. This was a sudden revelation: the veil was torn aside, a thick bandage fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus:
La theorie en est obscurcie, les principes vagues, incertains, et qui approchent du visionnaire; mais il y a des faits embarrassants, affirmes par des hommes graves qui les ont vus; les admettre tous, ou les nier tous, parait un egal inconvenient, et j'ose dire qu'en cela comme en toutes les choses extraordinaires et qui sorteut des communes regles, il y a un parti a trouver entre les ames credules et les esprits forts."
At the age of twelve he leaves school and henceforth devotes himself wholly, instead of partly, to work on his father's farm. He begins, too, to be introduced to the work of the village commune, though he may not take any part in its control for some time yet. With great care the makers of the Bulgarian Constitution have tried to guarantee the independence of the communes.
Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, No. 10. "I notice that most of the arrests now made are farmers." Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. The town will then be burnt. All rebuilding or tillage of the soil is forbidden. The inhabitants will be apportioned among neighboring communes; nobody is allowed to leave the commune assigned to him under penalty of being treated as an emigre.
I should say that the reputation for honesty and for always selling a good article is worth to the Shakers, the Amana and other communes, at least ten per cent. over their competitors. On the moral side the gain is evidently great. In a society so intimately bound together, if there are slight tendencies to evil in any member, they are checked and controlled by the prevailing public sentiment.
The central government must take no part in the administration of the communes, nor maintain any agents of its own to interfere with their affairs. The commune, which forms the basis of the State fabric, enjoys thus a complete autonomy. It is the smallest unit in the administrative organisation of the country. Every district is subdivided into communes, which are either urban or rural.
In Brabant also the communes enjoyed the protection of the duke, but they developed later, owing to the agricultural character of the region. The importance of Louvain and Brussels dates from the twelfth century, when the Cologne-Bruges road brought commercial activity into the country and when the weaving industry began to spread in the duchy.
True, the country of each of these was like that of this valley, depopulated and wild; but, however great a solitude any land may be, it is still locally and administratively dependent on the chief town of its commune. Ruscino and its valley were dependent on San Beda; these two other communes were respectively under a little town of the Abruzzo and under a seaport of the Adriatic.
The Convention, on its side, orders the release, "provisionally, of all ploughmen, day-laborers, reapers, and professional artisans and brewers, in the country and in the market towns and communes, the population of which is not over twelve hundred inhabitants, and who are confined as 'suspects. " In other terms, physical necessity has imposed silence on the inept theory; above all things, the crop must be harvested, and indispensable arms be restored to the field of labor.
These waste lands of Western Europe, which it was impossible or unprofitable to cultivate, were, by a sound political tradition, vested in the common authority, which was the Crown. Indeed they still remain so vested in most European countries. The Cantons of Switzerland, the Communes and the National Governments of France, Italy, and Spain remain in possession of the waste.
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