Third Hyde Lecture Yesterday

M. d'Avenel delivered the third Hyde lecture yesterday at 4.30 in Sanders theatre. The next lecture will be given tomorrow at 4.30 instead of at 8 o'clock as previously announced, and hereafter all the lectures will be held in the afternoon.

M. d'Avenel said that the great revolution of modern times is the change in opinion, first about things which can be possessed and second, about the extent of possession. Individual ownership in the Middle Ages was less complete than nowadays. Ownership was taken for use and special formalities were performed to make possessions secure. All land was the common property of anyone who could use it, sometimes gratis, sometimes for a trivial payment.

But owners of fields had no legal right to them except during the periods when crops were being raised and harvested. The rest of the time, the field was common property, and anyone might pasture cattle upon it. An owner could not sow his soil oftener than once in three years. No pasture land could be ploughed because by so doing it was ruined as pasture land. Cattle lived but did not prosper under this system.

But in the nineteenth century artificial meadows were made, ownership became precise, and hunting restrictions were enforced. The Revolution did away with collective ownership, without which it would have been impossible to supply the wants of the population. Progressive civilization is a conquest of the present, which has done away with individual ownership.