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permanent, independent government. It is clear that, in such a system, no individual was capable of imposing his will on others, or of causing the general right to be respected by all.

On the other hand, resistance was as easy as repression was difficult. Shut up in his castle, having to do with a small number of enemies, easily finding, among the vassals situated in the same way as himself, means of coalition, and of assistance, the possessor of a fief had every facility for defending himself.

Thus then the first system of political guarantees, the system which places them under the intervention of the most powerful, is proved to be impossible in feudalism.

The other system, that of free government, of a public power, was equally impracticable; it could never have arisen in the midst of feudalism. The reason is simple. When we speak, in the present day, of a public power, of what we call the rights of sovereignty, the right of imposing laws, taxes, and punishments, we all know, and think, that these rights belong to no individual, that no one has, on his own account, the right to punish others, to impose on them a burden, or a law. These are rights that pertain only to society in general, which are exercised in its name, which it holds, not of itself, but of the most High. Thus, when an individual comes before the power which is invested with these rights, the sentiment which moves him, perhaps unconsciously, is that he is in the presence of a public, legitimate authority, which has a mission to command him, and he is in a manner submissive, naturally and involuntarily. It was quite otherwise in feudalism. The possessor of the fief was invested with all the rights of sovereignty in his domain, and over the men that occupied it; they were inherent to the domain, and formed part of his private property. What we now call public rights, were then private rights; what are now public powers, were then private powers. When a holder of a fief, after having exercised sovereignty in his own name, as proprietor, over all the population among whom he lived, went to an assembly, to a parliament held in the presence of his suzerain, a parliament not at all numerous, generally composed of his equals, or nearly so, he neither carried there, nor

brought away with him, an idea of public power. Such an idea was a contradiction to his whole existence, to all his acts in his domains. He only saw there men invested with the same rights and in the same situation as himself, acting as he did, in virtue of their personal will. Nothing led or obliged him to recognise, in the highest department of the government, in the institutions which we call public, that character of superiority and generosity, inherent to the idea which we form of political powers. And if he was discontented with the decision made there, he refused to concur in it, or appealed to force to resist it.

Force was, under the feudal system, the true and habitual guarantee of right, if we may call force a guarantee. All rights appealed unceasingly to force to ensure their being recognised and respected. No institution succeeded in doing this. This was so much felt, that institutions were never applied to. If the seignorial courts, and parliaments of vassals had been in a condition to act, we should meet with them in history more frequently than we do; their rarity proves their uselessness.

Accession of Henry II.

HUME.

The extensive confederacies, by which the European potentates are now at once united and set in opposition to each other, and which, though they are apt to diffuse the least spark of dissension throughout the whole, are at least attended with this advantage, that they prevent any violent revolutions or conquests in particular states, were totally unknown in ancient ages; and the theory of foreign politics in each kingdom formed a speculution much less complicated and involved than at present. Commerce had no yet bound together the most distant nations in so close a chain : wars, finished in one campaign, and often in one battle, were little affected by the movements of remote states. The imperfect com

munication among the kingdoms, and their ignorance of each other's situation, made it impracticable for a great number of them to combine in one project or effort and above all, the turbulent spirit and independent situation of the barons or great vassals in each state gave so much occupation to the sovereign, that he was obliged to confine his attention chiefly to his own state and his own system of government, and was more indifferent about what passed among his neighbours. Religion alone, not politics, carried abroad the views of princes, while it either fixed their thoughts on the Holy Land, whose conquest and defence was deemed a point of common honour and interest, or engaged them in intrigues with the Roman pontiff, to whom they had yielded the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and who was every day assuming more authority than they were willing to allow him.

Before the conquest of England by the duke of Normandy, this island was as much separated from the rest of the world in politics as in situation; and except from the inroads of the Danish pirates, the English, happily confined at home, had neither enemies nor allies on the continent. The foreign dominions of William connected them with the king and great vassals of France; and while the opposite pretensions of the pope and emperor in Italy, produced a continual intercourse between Germany and that country, the two great monarchs of France and England formed, in another part of Europe, a separate system, and carried on their wars and negotiations, without meeting either with opposition or support

from the others.

On the decline of the Carlovingian race, the nobles in every province of France, taking advantage of the weakness of the sovereign, and obliged to provide each for his own defence, against the ravages of the Norman freebooters, had assumed, both in civil and military affairs, an authority almost independent, and had reduced within very narrow limits the prerogative of their princes. The accession of Hugh Capet, by annexing a great fief to the crown, had brought some addition to the royal dignity; but this fief, though considerable for a subject, appeared a narrow basis of power for a prince who was placed at the head of so great

a community. The royal demesnes consisted only of Paris, Orleans, Estampes, Campaigne, and a few places scattered over the northern provinces. In the rest of the kingdom, the prince's authority was rather nominal than real. The vassals were accustomed, nay entitled, to make war without his permission, on each other. They were even entitled, if they conceived themselves injured, to turn their arms against their sovereign. They exer

cised all civil jurisdiction, without appeal, over their tenants and inferior vassals. Their common jealousy of the crown easily united them against any attempt on their exorbitant privileges; and as some of them had attained the power and authority of great princes, even the smallest baron was sure of immediate and effectual protection. Besides six ecclesiastical peerages, which, with the other immunities of the church, cramped extremely the general execution of justice, there were six lay peerages, Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, Flanders, Toulouse, and Champagne, which formed very extensive and puissant sovereignties. And though the combination of all those princes and barons could, on urgent occasions, muster a mighty power; yet was it very difficult to set that great machine in movement; it was almost impossible to preserve harmony in its parts; a sense of common interest alone could, for a time, unite them under their sovereign against a common enemy; but if the king attempted to turn the force of the community against any mutinous vassal, the same sense of common interest made the others oppose themselves to the success of his pretensions. Lewis the Gross, the last sovereign, marched at one time to his frontiers against the Germans at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men; but a petty lord of Corbeil, of Pinset, of Conci, was able, at another period, to set that prince at defiance, and to maintain open war against him.

The authority of the English monarch was much more extensive within his kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the most powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large, compared to the greatness of his state he was accustomed to levy arbitrary exactions on his subjects: his courts of judicature extended their jurisdiction into every part of

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the kingdom: he could crush by his power, or by a judicial sentence, well or ill-founded, any obnoxious baron: and though the feudal institutions which prevailed in this kingdom, had the same tendency as in other states, to exalt the aristocracy and distress the monarchy, it required in England, according to its present constitution, a great combination of the vassals to oppose their sovereign-lord, and there had not hitherto arisen any baron so powerful as of himself to levy war against the prince, and to afford protection to the inferior barons.

While such were the different situations of France and England, and the latter enjoyed so many advantages above the former; the accession of Henry II., a prince of great abilities, possessed of so many rich provinces on the continent, might appear an event dangerous, if not fatal to the French monarchy, and sufficient to break entirely the balance between the states. He was master, in the right of his father, of Anjou and Touraine; in that of his mother, of Normandy and Maine; in that of his wife, Guienne, Poictou, Xaintogne, Auvergne, Perigord, Angoumois, the Limousin. He soon after annexed Brittany to his other states, and was already possessed of the superiority over that province, which, on the first cession of Normandy to Rollo the Dane, had been granted by Charles the Simple in vassalage to that formidable ravager. These provinces composed above a third of the whole French monarchy, and were much superior in extent and opulence to those territories which were subjected to the immediate jurisdiction and government of the king. The vassal was here more powerful than the liege lord. The situation which had enabled Hugh Capet to depose the Carlovingian princes seemed to be renewed, and that with much greater advantages on the side of the vassal: and when England was added to so many provinces, the French king had reason to apprehend, from this conjuncture, some great disaster to himself and to his family: But in reality, it was this circumstance, which appeared so formidable that saved the Capetian race.

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