Switzerland is, however, by no means an exception in Europe, because the same institutions and habits are found in the villages of France, of Italy, of Germany, of Denmark, and so on.  We have just seen what has been done by the rulers of France in order to destroy the village community and to get hold of its lands; but notwithstanding all that one-tenth part of the whole territory available for culture, i.e. 13,500,000 acres, including one-half of all the natural meadows and nearly a fifth part of all the forests of the country, remain in communal possession.  The woods supply the communers with fuel, and the timber wood is cut, mostly by communal work, with all desirable regularity; the grazing lands are free for the commoners’ cattle; and what remains of communal fields is allotted and re-allotted in certain parts Ardennes—­in the usual of France—­namely, in the way.(23)

These additional sources of supply, which aid the poorer peasants to pass through a year of bad crops without parting with their small plots of land and without running into irredeemable debts, have certainly their importance for both the agricultural labourers and the nearly three millions of small peasant proprietors.  It is even doubtful whether small peasant proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources.  But the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is still greater than their economical value.  They maintain in village life a nucleus of customs and habits of mutual aid which undoubtedly acts as a mighty check upon the development of reckless individualism and greediness, which small land-ownership is only too prone to develop.  Mutual aid in all possible circumstances of village life is part of the routine life in all parts of the country.  Everywhere we meet, under different names, with the charroi, i.e. the free aid of the neighbours for taking in a crop, for vintage, or for building a house; everywhere we find the same evening gatherings as have just been mentioned in Switzerland; and everywhere the commoners associate for all sorts of work.  Such habits are mentioned by nearly all those who have written upon French village life.  But it will perhaps be better to give in this place some abstracts from letters which I have just received from a friend of mine whom I have asked to communicate to me his observations on this subject.  They come from an aged man who for years has been the mayor of his commune in South France (in Ariege); the facts he mentions are known to him from long years of personal observation, and they have the advantage of coming from one neighbourhood instead of being skimmed from a large area.  Some of them may seem trifling, but as a whole they depict quite a little world of village life.

“In several communes in our neighbourhood,” my friend writes, “the old custom of l’emprount is in vigour.  When many hands are required in a metairie for rapidly making some work—­dig out potatoes or mow the grass—­the youth of the neighbourhood is convoked; young men and girls come in numbers, make it gaily and for nothing. and in the evening, after a gay meal, they dance.