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,

from what is merely accidental and transitory. Some particular event happens to a nation, probably of little or no abstract importance, and forthwith its public mind is immediately directed into some new channel of thought or action; novel views of political and domestic interests present themselves; general discussions ensue, and the field of political literature becomes eventually extended, and rendered more fruitful and prolific. It is thus that mere historical events and incidents are found so indissolubly interwoven with written systems; and to separate, by analysis, the several ingredients of the compound, is often both an elaborate and uncertain experiment.

The origin of free cities is one of those external events, which, though at first considered merely in the light of an ordinary social arrangement or privilege, has proved a fruitful source of much of that popular liberty which many nations at present enjoy. The gradual consolidation of these burgher institutions, though slow and stealthy, rescued the people out of a state of savage ignorance; conferred upon them the power of breaking the chains which then bound them to tyrannical and feudal superiors; and of inspiring them with that self-reliance and force of character, which ultimately conducted them to freedom, wealth, and happiness. These free cities or communes afford a striking illustration of human nature, and of the growth and adaption of means to an end, and must ever be pregnant with peculiar interest to the philosophical politician.

In instituting an inquiry of this kind, it is requisite to remark at the outset, that communes or free cities. are commonly divided into two classes, arising chiefly

from the nature of their origin, and certain particular ingredients which formed elementary principles in their civil constitutions or charters of incorporation. The first class are those free cities of Roman, and the second of German origin. This distinction appertains more directly to France, and to the Low Countries, which at one time formed part of Roman Gaul. In the South of France, embracing the country situated between the Loire, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, there were many cities which had preserved nearly entire, all the municipal regime, and civil privileges of the Roman states. The lay lords, Bishops, and other influential classes, had never interfered with the rights of the citizens, nor made any inroads whatever on their commercial institutions. On the other hand, the cities in the North of France partook more of German feeling, were composed of more rude and boisterous materials, and were subjected to greater vicissitudes and sufferings, than those of the Southern part of the Continent.

From the fifth to the tenth century, the generality of the cities and towns in Europe, were in a sort of mixed position, partaking equally of a state of slavery and independence. In some, particularly in the South, the liberal municipal institutions which formed the chief strength of the Roman power had never been lost; while in other sections of the Continent the majority of cities enjoyed a clerical establishment, commonly headed by a Bishop, which in those days of increasing wealth and importance of the Church, contributed greatly to create and foster a species of popular liberty and independence of thought. But the condition of this last class of towns was materially