The community compact or Huong Uoc was widely practiced since the Le dynasty in Vietnam. Houng Uoc in Sino-Vietnamese is the same word as Xiang Yue ic Chinese or Hyan g`yag in Korean. The French colonial government in Vietnam used the tradition of the community compact to control colonial Vietnam. And since the 1990s, the contemporary Vietnamese government revived the tradition of the community compact to develop rural villages. This paper focuses on the community compact of Vietnam before French colonialism controlled Vienam. The community compact from the Le dynasty to the Nguyen dynasty is called the old community compact (Huong Uoc Co). The old community compact is very precious resource for studying Vietnamese traditional culture and society. In this paper, the author analyzed the case of Mo Trach village in Binh Giang county, Hai Duong province in north Vietnam. The village produced many famous Confucian scholars and mandarins. Through the research on the case of Mo Trach village, the author criticized the previous interpretations of the community compact. The previous studies maintained that the community compact was a tool for the dominant class to rule the villagers. In criticizing this interpretation, the author shows that the old community compact of Mo Trach village had liberal elements of local autonomy and helped villagers cultivate the affectionate social relations(tinh cam) among themselves. Finally, the author argues that the community compact is a prototype of the third realm in East Asian society where the government and the voluntary associations meet together. However, since this argument is just based on a single case, more research on diverse cases is definitely required to discuss the characteristics of the community compact in Vietnam.