as to render the kingly office inefficient for the proper discharge of its political functions. The warlike nature of baronial authority was the chief cause of this; for the monarch was but a very helpless creature, both for maintaining peace at home, and for carrying on wars abroad, unless zealously seconded and supported by his lords and their vassals. Nothing was more uncertain and capricious than an armed force, headed by such a number of independent chiefs.* Personal quarrels and jealousies, different interests and family connections, and the sturdy maintainers of individual humours and opinions, made every kingly or national enterprize, however praiseworthy or justifiable, a matter of uncertainty as to its movements and results.

This warlike character which constituted the leading element in the feudal system, was completely antagonistic to all the civil, and social improvements and advantages of life. When it flourished in its original rankness, nothing valuable would grow under its poisonous shade. The founders of it were the most reckless and blood-thirsty of men. They were called in their day, "the scourge of God," "the destroyers of nations." Long after the fever of general conquest and indiscriminate and barbarous devastation, had subsided, the arts of peace, refinement, and social harmony, were despised, and scornfully thrust aside, as being effeminate and degrading pursuits, unworthy of the manly courage of a knight and his retainers. Physical strength and bold adventure were the only admitted differences between one man and another.

There were 1115 Baronial Castles in England in the twelfth century.

Society was torn asunder by party rivalships, animosities, feuds, and disputes; so that the human mind was perpetually kept in a state unfit to prosecute those objects, which alone can lead it to unfold its own innate dignity, worth, and importance. On this point, Lord Brougham justly and forcibly observes, "The barbarous manners and tastes of the barons disdained, like those of their German ancestors, any profession but that of arms, as they knew no wealth but that of the soil. Hence the arts of peace were everywhere despised and discouraged. Mercantile occupations continued till nearly our own times to be almost everywhere, but in England, looked down upon as unbecoming a gentleman; and even with us at this day men of rank very seldom engage in them. * Landed property having such prerogatives and immunities attached to it, and conferring the only estimation recognised in the community, acquired an exaggerated and almost exclusive value; and all connected with the ownership became invested with peculiar claims to respect. The feudal aristocracy was an adjunct of land. Hence the ideas so inveterately rooted in modern of landholders above men as rich, and as well educated, and as well bred, whose property comes from other sources, or whose income is derived from trades and fessions. The effects of this prejudice are still felt far and wide in the society of every country at this day."*

Europe of the superiority

pro

That which in modern times goes under the denomination of aristocratic influence, and which forms such an important element, both in practical and theoretical politics, took its rise from the feudal system. It fully

* Polit; Phil: vol. 1, p. 310.

and firmly established a privileged class in every European state, and implanted ideas of superiority and assumption in certain family alliances and descent, totally irrespective of personal qualifications, genius, or endowments. When this system was in the height of its glory and power, men were every way invested with legislative and judicial authority of the most sweeping character, solely because they were the offspring of particular families. The life, property, and freedom, of the entire community were placed in their hands, without the least check of public responsibility or obligation. This unnatural order of things for unnatural it really was-continued for many centuries; and it is only in very recent times that the system has been broken in upon in a few countries,—such as Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, &c., and has undergone such modifications and curtailments, as to make it somewhat reasonable and bearable, and less injurious to the common rights and interests of the people.

The short abstract we have now given of the nature of the feudal laws, naturally suggest to our minds a few general observations, on the nature of that tenure by which land is held in all civilized countries, and the species of burdens it is, under all circumstances, fixed upon to bear.

It is quite obvious, from universal history, that mankind have always looked upon the land as the original source of the mass of their wants; and that whenever any great disarrangement has taken place in the social and political relations of a nation, they have uniformly looked towards it, as a permanent source of relief. The community have invariably viewed

landed possessions as always burdened with providing subsistence and shelter for the bulk of the nation; whatever might be the modes adopted for their general distribution. And this principle of obligation lies at the root of all theories of landed tenures in every country, which enjoys any regular form of civil polity. The soil is held in trust for the wants of the community. There never is, nor never can be, any absolute property in land; because no form of civil government will allow the practical operation of such a tenure. We are furnished with abundant evidence of the truth of this general principle, in the history of the early stages of the Roman government, when its agrarian laws were enacted by Spurius Cassius; in its more advanced state of refinement and luxury, during the reign of the Emperors; and still more pointedly in its decline and final subjugation by barbarian enterprise and force. We may also refer to the various codes of laws which, for several centuries, supplied the place of the Roman system of jurisprudence. In more modern times, we also find many similar illustrations of this conditional tenure of landed property. In France there was, for several centuries before the revolution, an evident attempt to act upon the absolute right in the soil, by the great landed proprietors of that country; and the effect was, that when the revolution took place, this yoke was thrown off the neck of the nation; the mass of the people's right to the usufruct of the ground was established, and a more equal law of inheritance enacted. In our own country we find the same elemental notions of a right in the soil, pervading the public mind, whenever great national distress prevails.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF FREE CITIES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON POLITICAL LITERATURE

AND SENTIMENT.

POLITICAL sentiment is so often powerfully stimulated, or retarded by the external conditions and fortunes of a nation, that we are apt to imagine that the mere intellect has little to do with the matter, either in the way of development or illustration of great social truths and systems of polity. The fact is, however, that mental suggestions and external circumstances act, and re-act on each other, in certain indefinable proportions. In the political history of mankind we find a concurrence of remarkable events at stated periods, which either greatly expanded their views on the nature of government generally, or tended to suspend inquiry and stifle thought for perhaps a long and indefinite period. Ideas of permanent utility, the exigencies of the day, the clashing of particular interests in the state, the subtilty of intrigue, and the blindness of brute force, enter so largely as constituent elements into the formation of every actual form of polity, that it requires some nicety and skill to separate the mental agents of national progress,