iaeval times which exercised itself over the same social
questions, but visaged them from an entirely different angle. This was
the great brotherhood of the law, which, whether as civil or canonical,
had its own theories of the rights of private ownership. It must be
remembered, too, that just as the theologians supported their views by
an appeal to what were considered historic facts in the origin of
property, so, too, the legalists depended for the material of their
judgment on circumstances which the common opinion of the time admitted
as authentic.

When the West drifted out from the clouds of barbaric invasion, and had
come into calm waters, society was found to be organised on a basis of
what has been called feudalism. That is to say, the natural and
universal result of an era of conquest by a wandering people is that the
new settlers hold their possessions from the conqueror on terms
essentially contractual. The actual agreements have varied constantly in
detail, but the main principle has always been one of reciprocal rights
and duties. So at the early dawn of the Middle Ages, after the period
picturesquely styled the Wanderings of the Nations, we find the
subjugating races have encamped in Europe, and hold it by a series of
fiefs. The action, for example, of William the Norman, as plainly shown
in Domesday Book, is typical of what had for some three or four
centuries been happening here and on the Continent. Large tracts of land
were parcelled out among the invading host, and handed over to
individual barons to hold from the King on definite terms of furnishing
him with men in times of war, of administering justice within their
domains, and of assisting at his Council Board when he should stand in
need of their advice. The barons, to suit their own convenience, divided
up these territories among their own retainers on terms similar to those
by which they held their own. And thus the whole organisation of the
country was graduated from the King through the greater barons to
tenants who held their possessions, whether a castle, or a farm, or a
single hut, from another to whom they owed suit and service.

This roughly (constantly varying, and never actually quite so absolutely
carried out) is the leading principle of feudalism. It is clearly based
upon a contract between each man and his immediate lord; but, and this
is of importance in the consideration of the feudal theory of private
property, whatever rights a