e the result was the emphasis of the individual's absolute
dominion. Not, indeed, as though it excluded the dominion of the King,
but precisely because the royal predominance could only be recognised by
the effective shutting out of the interference of the lord. To exclude
the "middle-man," the King was driven to recognise the absolute dominion
of the individual over his own possessions.

This is brought out in English law by Bracton and his school. Favourers
as they were of the royal prerogative, they were driven to take up the
paradoxical ground that the King was not the sole owner of property. To
defend the King they were obliged to dispossess him. To put his control
on its most effective basis, they had no other alternative left them
than to admit the fullest rights of the individual against the King. For
only if the individual had complete ownership, could there be no
interference on the part of the lord; only if the possessions of the
tenants were his own, were they prevented from falling under the
baronial jurisdiction. Therefore by apparently denying the royal
prerogative the civil lawyers were in effect, as they perfectly well
recognised, really extending it and enabling it to find its way into
cases and courts where it could not else well have entered.

Seemingly, therefore, all idea of socialism or nationalisation of land
(at that date the great means of production) was now excluded. The
individualistic theory of property had suddenly appeared; and
simultaneously the old group forms, which implied collectivism in some
shape or other, ceased any longer to be recognised as systems of tenure.
Yet, at the same time, by a paradox as evident as that by which the
civilians exalted the royal prerogative apparently at its own expense,
or as that by which Wycliff's communism is found to be in reality a
justification of the policy of leaving things as they are, while St.
Thomas's theory of property is discovered as far less oppressive and
more adaptable to progressive developments of national wealth, it is
noticed that, from the point of view of the socialist, monarchical
absolutism is the most favourable form of a State's constitution. For
wherever a very strictly centralised system of government exists, it is
clear that a machinery, which needs little to turn it to the advantage
of the absolute rule of a rebellious minority, has been already
constructed. In a country where, on the other hand, local government has
bee