especially necessary to be aided with all the force of reason, so as to prevent, upon questions so difficult and complicated as are those which form the object of the Christian faith, the subtleties of its enemies from easily contriving to adulterate the purity of our faith."

The importance of this first attempt at liberty, this regeneration of the spirit of inquiry, was soon felt. Although occupied in reforming herself, the church did not the less take the alarm. She immediately declared war against these new reformers, whose methods menaced her more than their doctrines.

The

This is the great fact which shone forth at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century, at the time when the state of the church was that of the theocratical or monastic. At this epoch, for the first time, there arose a struggle between the clergy and the freethinkers. quarrels of Abailard and St. Bernard, the councils of Soissons and Sens, where Abailard was condemned, are nothing but the expression of this fact, which holds so important a position in the history of modern civilization. It was the principal circumstance in the state of the church at the twelfth century, at the point at which we shall now leave it.

On the other hand,

At the same time, a movement of a different nature was produced, the movement for the enfranchisement of the boroughs. Singular inconsistency of rude and ignorant manners! If it had been said to the citizens who conquered their liberty with so much passion, that there were men who claimed the rights of human reason, the right of free inquiry -men whom the church treated as heretics-they would have instantly stoned or burnt them. More than once did Abailard and his friends run this risk. those very writers who claimed the rights of human reason, spoke of the efforts for the enfranchisement of the boroughs as of an abominable disorder, and overthrow of society Between the philosophical and the communal movement, between the political and the rational enfranchisement, war seemed to be declared. Centuries were necessary to effect the reconciliation of these two great powers, and to make them understand that their interests were in common. At the twelfth century, they had nothing in common.

SEVENTH LECTURE.

Object of the Lecture-Comparative picture of the state of the boroughs at the twelfth and the eighteenth century-Double question-1st. The enfranchisement of the boroughs-State of the towns from the fifth to the tenth century-Their decay and regeneration-Communal insurrection-Charters-Social and moral effects of the enfranchisement of the boroughs-2nd. Internal government of the boroughs-Assemblies of the people-Magistrates-High and low burghership-Diversity of the state of the boroughs in the different countries of Europe.

We have conducted, down to the twelfth century, the history of the two great elements of civilization, the feudal system and the church. It is the third of these fundamental elements, I mean the boroughs, which we now have to trace likewise down to the twelfth century, confining ourselves to the same limits which we have observed in the other two.

We shall find ourselves differently situated with regard to the boroughs, from what we were with regard to the church or the feudal system. From the fifth to the twelfth century, the feudal system and the church, although at a later period they experienced new developments, showed themselves almost complete, and in a definitive state; we have watched their birth, increase, and maturity. It is not so with the boroughs. It was only at the end of the epoch which now occupies us, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that they take up any position in history; not but that before then they had a history which was deserving of study; nor is it that there were not long before this epoch traces of their existence; but it was only at the eleventh century that they became evidently visible upon the great scene of the world, and as an important element of modern civilization. Thus, in the feudal system and the church, from the fifth to the twelfth century, we have

At

seen the effects born and developed from the causes. When. ever, by way of induction or conjecture, we have deduced cortain principles and results, we have been able to verify them by an inquiry into the facts themselves. As regards the boroughs, this facility fails us; we are present only at their birth. present I must confine myself to causes and origins. What I say concerning the effects of the existence of the boroughs, and their influence in the course of European civilization, I shall say in some measure by way of anticipation. I cannot invoke the testimony of contemporaneous and known facts. It is at a later period, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, that we shall see the boroughs taking their development, the institution bearing all its fruit, and history proving our assertions. I dwell upon this difference of situation in order to anticipate your objections against the incompleteness and prematurity of the picture which I am about to offer you. I will suppose, that in 1789, at the time of the commencement of the terrible regeneration of France, a burgher of the twelfth century had suddenly appeared among us, and that he had been given to read, provided he knew how, one of the pamphlets which so powerfully agitated mind; for example, the pamphlet of M. Sieyes-"Who is the third estate?" His eyes fall upon this sentence, which is the foundation of the pamphlet: "The third estate is the French nation, less the nobility and the clergy." I ask you, what would be the effect of such a phrase upon the mind of such a man? Do you suppose he would understand it? No, he could not understand the words, the French nation, because they would represent to him no fact with which he was acquainted, no fact of his age; and if he understood the phrase, if he clearly saw in it this sovereignty attributed to the third estate above all society, of a verity it would appear to him mad, impious, such would be its contradiction to all that he had seen, to all his ideas and sentiments.

Now, ask this astonished burgher to follow you; lead him to one of the French boroughs of this epoch, to Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, or Noyon; a different kind of astonishment would seize him: he enters a town; he sees neither towers, nor ramparts, nor burgher militia; no means of defence; all is open, all exposed to the first comer, and the first occupant. The burgher would doubt the safety of this borough;

He penetrates

he would think it weak and ill-secured. into the interior, and inquires what is passing, in what manner it is governed, and what are its inhabitants. They tell him, that beyond the walls there is a power which taxes them at pleasure, without their consent; which convokes their militia, and sends it to war, without their voice in the matter. He speaks to them of magistrates, of the mayor, and of the aldermen; and he hears that the burghers do not nominate them. He learns that the affairs of the borough are not decided in the borough; but that a man belonging to the king, an intendant, administers them, alone and at a distance. Furthermore, they will tell him that the inhabitants have not the right of assembling and deliberating in common upon matters which concern them; that they are never summoned to the public place by the bell of their church. The burgher of the twelfth century would be confounded. First, he was stupified and dismayed at the grandeur and importance that the communal nation, the third estate, attributed to itself; and now he finds it on its own hearthstone, in a state of servitude, weakness, and nonentity, far worse than anything which he had experienced. He passes from one spectacle to another utterly different, from the view of a sovereign burghership to that of one entirely powerless. How would you have him comprehend this, reconcile it, so that his mind be not over

come.

Let us, burghers of the nineteenth century, go back to the twelfth, and be present at an exactly corresponding double spectacle. Whenever we regard the general affairs of a country, its state, government, the whole society, we shall see no burghers, hear speak of none; they interfere in nothing, and are quite unimportant. And not only have they no importance in the state, but if we would know what they think of their situation, and how they speak of it, and what their position in regard to their relation with the government of France in general is in their own eyes, we shall find in their language an extraordinary timidity and humility. Their ancient masters, the lords, from whom they forced their franchises, treat them, at least in words, with a haughtiness which confounds us; but it neither astonishes nor irri. tates them.

Let us enter into the borough itself; let us see what passes there. The scene changes; we are in a kind of fortified place defended by armed burghers: these burghers tax themselves, elect their magistrates, judge and punish, and assemble for the purpose of deliberating upon their affairs. All come to these assemblies; they make war on their own account against their lord; and they have a militia. In a word, they govern themselves; they are sovereigns. This is the same contrast which, in the France of the eighteenth century, so much astonished the burgher of the twelfth; it is only the parts that are changed. In the latter, the burgher nation is all, the borough nothing; in the former, the burghership is nothing, the borough everything.

Assuredly, between the twelfth and the eighteenth century, many things must have passed-many extraordinary events, and many revolutions have been accomplished, to bring about, in the existence of a social class, so enormous a change. Despite this change, there can be no doubt but that the third estate of 1789 was, politically speaking, the descendant and heir of the corporations of the twelfth century. This French nation, so haughty and ambitious, which raises its pretensions so high, which so loudly proclaims its sovereignty, which pretends not only to regenerate and govern itself, but to govern and regenerate the world, undoubtedly descends, principally at least, from the burghers who obscurely though courageously revolted in the twelfth century, with the sole end of escaping in some corner of the land from the obscure tyranny of the lords.

Most assuredly it is not in the state of the boroughs in the twelfth century that we shall find the explanation of such a metamorphosis: it was accomplished and had its causes in the events which succeeded it from the twelfth to the eighteenth century; it is there that we shall meet it in its progression. Still the origin of the third estate has played an important part in its history; although we shall not find there the secret of its destiny, we shall, at least, find its germ: for what it was at first is again found in what it has become, perhaps, even to a greater extent than appearances would allow of our presuming. A picture, even an incomplete one, of the state of the boroughs in the twelfth century, will, I think, leave you convinced of this.