The law of May 7, 1850, which regulates the civil organization of the Military Confines, completely adopted the principlesof the national institution. There is, however, one point which is peculiar to the Military Confines, the obligation to carryarms imposed on all those who have a right to an undivided part of the soil as members of the communities. This is exactlythe basis of the feudal system. The soil belongs to men alone, because they only obtain a grant of it on the condition ofmilitary service. In the Slav countries subject to Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia, the civil law paid no regard to nationalcustoms respecting these communities. In Servia, on the contrary, the code gave them the force of law, but not in all caseswithout admitting certain principles, borrowed from the Roman law, which, had they been enforced, must inevitably have ledto the destruction of the institution. Thus, by art. 515, a member of the community may hypothecate his undivided share inthe common property as guarantee for a debt contracted by him personally, and the creditor may pay himself out of thisportion. This article is diametrically opposed to traditional custom and to the preceding articles of the same code, whichensure the indivisibility of the patrimonial domain. (6)In Bosnia, Bulgaria and Montenegro, the national custom has not been regulated by law, but their populations have onlyshewn themselves the more attached to it, the more the severity of the oppression, to which they were exposed, increased.
Men instinctively associate together to resist whatever threatens their existence. The family group was far more capable ofdefending itself against the severity of Turkish rule than were isolated individuals. Accordingly, it is in this part of thesouthern Slav district that family communities are best preserved, and still form the basis of social order.
In Dalmatia, Venice had taken advantage of this agrarian organization to establish in the rural districts a militia for thepurpose of repelling Turkish invasion. When France occupied the Illyrian coast, after the treaty of Vienna in 1809, theprinciples of the civil code were introduced into the country, and the legality of the system of communities no longerrecognized. They continued to exist nevertheless, and in the interior of the country have lasted to the present day, althoughbeyond the protection of the law, so deeply has the custom thrust its roots into the national modes of thought. In theneighbourhood of the towns the more varied life has weakened the ancient family sentiment. Many communities have beendissolved, their property divided and sold, and their members have degenerated into mere tenants or proletarians. Yet, evenin the towns, great and wealthy families can be named, who still live under the associated system of the zadruga . TheVidolitch family, for instance, in the island of Lussin Piccolo, consists of more than fifty members, who carry on a largebusiness and shipping trade. It is a curious example of the ancient agricultural community transplanted into an entirelydifferent sphere.
In the Slav provinces of Hungary, about l848, a spirit of liberty and insubordination seized on the whole population, and ledto the dissolution of many communities. The young couples wished to live by themselves independently, and demandedpartition, to which there was no legal obstacle. The common patrimony was cut up, and a class of small cultivators sprangcap, whose condition from the first was one of much misery. Neither the wealth nor the population of the country wassufficient to allow of the success of the small intensive culture of Lombardy or Flanders. Austria had a crisis to overcome;taxes were suddenly nearly doubled, and the young and active labourers carried off as recruits. Many of these smallindependent cultivators were obliged to sell their parcel of soil, and to work for wages as day-labourers. To put an end tothe subdivision, which it was feared would ruin the soil, it was enacted that in case of partition the farm should belong to`the eldest; and at the same time a minimum was fixed beyond which no one could divide the parcels of arable land. Theconstruction of railways, the ever-growing extension of commercial relations, the new ideas which find their way into thecountry districts; in fine, all the influences of Western civilization, help to destroy the family communities of Croatia,Slavonia, and Voivodia. In the Confines they continue to exist, because the law has made them the basis of militaryorganization; and also to the south of the Danube, because in these remote regions they are in harmony with the sentimentsand ideas of the patriarchal epoch, which still survive there in all their vigour.
The moat eminent men among the southern Slave, such as the Ban Jellatchich, Haulik, Archbishop of Agram, Strossmayer,the eloquent bishop of Diakovàr, and especially M. Utiesenovitch and M. Mate Ivitch, (7) have all boasted of the advantagesof the agricultural system of their country. These advantages are real. The system is not opposed to permanentimprovements and to the employment of capital, like the village community with periodical partition. Each family has itshereditary patrimony; and is as much interested as the owner in severalty in rendering it productive. Under this system everycultivator has a share in the ownership of the soil. Every one can boast, in the words of the Croatians, that he is domovit and imovit , that is, that he owns his dwelling and his field.
