of any permanent centralization of government, dependant upon special and occasional resources for all his strength, and liable to see his authority continually set at naught by individual barons or coalitions of barons, fortified in their feudal fastnesses. On the other hand, no popular voice, no public authority representing a general public will, offered itself for the control of individuals. Each baron saw himself equal in right with the rest, holding his power as a personal quality inherent in his fief, not derived from any legal will of a community, nor owing to it any accountability. So far as any concurrence of will and action had place among them, it was by means of the partial use of a federal system, the most complicated of the forms of government, that which belongs peculiarly to a state of high civilization, of general intelligence, of the habit of legal action, and which was least of all capable of assuring peace and order in a barbarOf course, the characteristics of this period, the tenth and eleventh centuries, are the independent spirit of the barons, their frequent practice of private war upon each other as well as upon their common head, their proneness to the unlicensed gratification of revenge and selfishness, and the general prevalence of outrage and bloodshed: - the reign of force, as distinguished from the reign of law. ous age. Taking all these facts into consideration, we see that the influence of feudalism upon the individual was good, its influence upon the public, bad. Noble sentiments, lofty characters, exaltation of aim, generosity, honor, courage, fidelity to engagements, all these are prominent traits of the feudal age. Chivalry, with so many splendid aspirations, flourished in its bosom. The baronial castle, the seat of the domestic pleasures and affections, was also the cradle of the poetry, music, fiction, — and, in common with the convents, of the intellectual tastes in general, where they first began to be relished in modern Europe. At the same time, the feudal system was radically hostile to the authority of princes on the one hand, and to the liberties of the -- с ing numerous other points in common with him; an Arab sheikh, and the tribe he governs, live together in the simplicity of pastoral life and of patriarchal relations; but the connexion of the feudal lord and of the vassals at the foot of the castle is in its nature essentially repulsive, having scarcely any properties fitted to reconcile the cultivator to the galling chains he wears. Hence the extreme aversion of the European peasantry to this form of authority, and their perpetual efforts to shake it off, at various periods in the history of Europe. Finally, as to the relation of the possessor of a benefice with other fief-holders, or with his suzerain. It is perfectly well known that the mutual obligations of the parties, originally founded on and defined by considerations of an honorary nature, came at length to form a complicated code, detailing the duties to be performed by the respective parties to the obligation. In a word, a prescribed organization, military, deliberative and judicial, was communicated to the feudal system. It was, however, to fief-holders only, not to the cultivators, the population of the fiefs, that the system attached. Now the marked peculiarity of the institution was the absence of political guaranties, of a controlling power, by means of which individual wills and forces might be made to observe a common rule of conduct. In the institutions, of which we have experience, there is either some one will so far superior to all others as to be able to exact obedience at pleasure, or there is a public will, an aggregate of the wills of a community, which possesses the same power; there is the public security, either of the despotism of one man or body of men, or there is a free government acting through its appointed agents. But neither of these conditions intervened in the feudal system. Undoubtedly there was the suzerain, and there were great inequalities in the power of different barons; so that, one might think, the means of enforcing obedience were at hand. But the suzerain, after all, was only a baron more wealthy than the rest, destitute of any permanent centralization of government, dependant upon special and occasional resources for all his strength, and liable to see his authority continually set at naught by individual barons or coalitions of barons, fortified in their feudal fastnesses. On the other hand, no popular voice, no public authority representing a general public will, offered itself for the control of individuals. Each baron saw himself equal in right with the rest, holding his power as a personal quality inherent in his fief, not derived from any legal will of a community, nor owing to it any accountability. So far as any concurrence of will and action had place among them, it was by means of the partial use of a federal system, - the most complicated of the forms of government, that which belongs peculiarly to a state of high civilization, of general intelligence, of the habit of legal action, and which was least of all capable of assuring peace and order in a barbarous age. Of course, the characteristics of this period, the tenth and eleventh centuries, are the independent spirit of the barons, their frequent practice of private war upon each other as well as upon their common head, their proneness to the unlicensed gratification of revenge and selfishness, and the general prevalence of outrage and bloodshed: - the reign of force, as distinguished from the reign of law. Taking all these facts into consideration, we see that the influence of feudalism upon the individual was good, its influence upon the public, bad. Noble sentiments, lofty characters, exaltation of aim, generosity, honor, courage, fidelity to engagements, all these are prominent traits of the feudal age. Chivalry, with so many splendid aspirations, flourished in its bosom. The baronial castle, the seat of the domestic pleasures and affections, was also the cradle of the poetry, music, fiction, and, in common with the convents, of the intellectual tastes in general,· where they first began to be relished in modern Europe. At the same time, the feudal system was radically hostile to the authority of princes on the one hand, and to the liberties of the с people on the other; it stood in the way of order and of freedom alike; and it was only by the coalition of the kings and people that it was first disarmed, and then overthrown. Having traced the developement of the feudal system, the characteristic institution of the Barbarians, let us now advert to the municipal principle, saved from the wreck of the Roman institutions. Suppose a townsman of the feudal age to have risen to life in 1789, at the opening of the French Revolution, and to have heard the definition of his own rank and class in life given by Sieyes. Le tiers-état, c'est la nation française, moins la noblesse et la clergé.' In the first place, he would not understand what was meant by 'la nation française ;' in the second place, if the words were explained to him, the proposition would seem incredible, monstrous: it would communicate the idea of no state of things of which he had practical knowledge. He would have no conception of such a degree of power held or claimed by the bourgeoisie. Carry him into the interior of one of the great towns of France, on the other hand, and when he saw it without fortifications, without a civic force, subject to taxation imposed and to municipal magistrates appointed from without, he would be as much astonished in view of the dependance and feebleness of the burghers, as he had previously been at the idea of their partaking of the national sovereignty. Now to comprehend the situation of things in the feudal age, we have to reverse the picture. In reference to the general affairs of the country, its government, its political organization, the burghers were nothing: - they were not mentioned or thought of in that connexion. But enter within a town, and you would find yourself in a citadel defended by armed men, taxing themselves, electing their own magistrates, making war on their own account. Rome, as we have already remarked, was properly speaking a municipality; and it was over municipalities like itself, exercising all the powers of sovereignty, political as well as municipal, that the Roman Empire was extended. The rights of peace and war, of legislation, an of taxation were of course taken from them, to be concentraten kome leaving to them nothing but the powers of municipa. adm istration: and in this state they were found by tin harderiaus. In the chaos of the invasion. ther cantial. D course, was precarious, uncertain, shifting like every THINK around them -it became settled ut a certain point o with the establishment of the feudal system, int which they of necessity entered, each as part of a fef he some one of the conquerors. Flere begar a series of ap gressions, of acts of extortion or oppression of the part of the lord, tempted by the valuable products of the mustry an skill of the burghers; and a series of struggles of the part of the towns to escape from the arbitrary power of ther inmediate feudal superiors. These mutual injuries finally brought on, in the eleventh century, a general state of warfare between the communes and the barons; not organizer. warfare of the order of barons as a body against the order of burghers as a body, but separate independent contests, aftertimes of long duration, between a single baron and a towi within his fief; and such separate contests going on as a were contemporaneously in all parts of Europe. It will be recollected that the principle of individuality of personal independence, was characteristic of the era The burghers saw the barous around them warring agains: one another, and against their suzerain, at will, and sustain-ing their real or fancied rights by the armed hand; and they caught the spirit of resistance from the examples of reliance upon individual energies, which everywhere met their eyes. The burghers fortified their towns; they enroliec themselves in a civic militia; they constructed their befrøi. with its watch tower and its bell to summon them to arms. Each man's dwelling, being built like a tower and flanked at the angles with turrets, was a genuine fortress. The course of things was regular enough in its irregularity. On occasion of some act of extortion practised by the agents of the |