which I have described, nor that he was very successful in legitimating the connection between the inferior population and its lord. The Church had exercised a very great influence over European civilisation, but this it has done by proceeding in a general manner, by changing the general disposition of mankind. When we examine closely into the little feudal society, properly so called, we find the influence of the priest between the lord and the colonists to be hardly anything. Most frequently he was himself as rough and inferior as a serf, and very little able, either by situation or disposition, to oppose the arrogance of the lord. No doubt he was only called upon to sustain and develope some moral life in the inferior population: he was dear and useful to them on this account, and he probably diffused something of consolation and life; but he could do, and did, I conceive, very little for their fortune.

I have examined the elementary feudal society; I have placed before you the principal consequences which might accrue from it, either to the possessor of the fief himself, to his family, or to the population congregated around him. Let us now leave these narrow bounds. The population of the fief was not confined to the territory, there were other societies analogous or different to which it bore relation. What influence did this general society to which it belonged exercise over civilisation?

I will make a short observation before replying; it is true that both the possessor of the fief and the priest belonged to a general society, they had, at a distance, numerous relations. It was not the same with colonists and serfs; every time that, to designate the rural population, at this period, we employ a general word, which seems to imply one and the same society. the word people, for example-we speak untruly. There was for this population no general society; its existence was entirely local. Beyond the territory which they inhabited the colonists had no connection with any one, were neither bound to any one, nor

to any thing. There was for them no common destiny, nò common country; they did not form a people. When we speak of the feudal association as a whole, it is the possessors of fiefs only that are concerned. Let us see what were the relations of the petty feudal society with the general society with which it was connected, and what consequences these relations would probably have on the development of civilisation.

You know what ties bound the possessors of fiefs among themselves, what relations were attached to their property, what were the obligations of service on the one part, and protection on the other. I shall not enter into the details of these obligations, it is enough that you have a general idea of them. From them there were necessarily implanted in the minds of each possessor of a fief a certain number of moral ideas and sentiments ideas of duty, sentiments of affection. It is obvious that the principle of fidelity, of devotion, of loyalty to engagements, and all the sentiments connected with these, must have been developed and maintained by the relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves.

These obligations, duties, and sentiments endeavoured to convert themselves into rights and institutions. Every one knows that feudalism desired to regulate by law the extent of the services due from the possessor of the fief to his suzerain; what were the services he might expect in return; in what cases the vassal owed military or pecuniary aid to his suzerain; in what form the suzerain ought to obtain the consent of his vassals for services to which they were not bound by the simple possession of their fief. Attempts were made to place all these rights under the guarantee of institutions the object of which was to insure respect towards them. Thus the seignorial jurisdictions. were to dispense justice between the possessors of fiefs, upon claims carried before their common suzerain. Thus, every lord of any importance assembled his vassals in par

liament to treat with them on matters which required their consent or concurrence. There were, in short, a collection of political, judicial, and military powers, by which they attempted to organise the feudal system, to convert the relations of the possessors of fiefs into rights and institutions.

But these rights and institutions had no reality, no gua

rantee.

If we inquire what is the nature of a guarantee, we arrive at the perception that its fundamental character is the constant presence, in the midst of the society, of a will, a power, with the inclination and the ability to impose a law upon individual wills and powers, to make them observe the common rule, and respect the general right.

Well, this could not exist under the feudal system.

Doubtless the possessors of fiefs were not all equal among themselves; there were many more powerful than the rest; and many powerful enough to oppress the weaker. But there was not one, to begin with the highest suzerain, the king, who was in a condition to impose law on all the others, in a condition to compel obedience. Observe that all permanent means of power and action were wanting: there were no permanent troops, no permanent taxes, no permanent tribunals. The social powers and institutions were, in some sort, obliged to recommence, to be recreated each time they were needed. It was necessary to organise a tribunal for every process, an army for every war, a revenue whenever there was need of money, everything was occasional, accidental, special; there were no means of central, 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.

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 un-consciously, 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 numercus, 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 a force a guarantee.

All rights appealed unceasingly to force to insure 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.

Guizot.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. (1272—1381.)

NOTWITHSTANDING the affection and good will which, during his life, Simon de Montfort had testified for all those of Saxon origin, there still existed an immense distance between the people and the sons of the Normans. Robert Grosse Tête, bishop of Lincoln, principal chaplain to the army of the barons, who was one of the most ardent promoters of the war against the king, reckoned only two languages in England,-Latin for men of letters, and French for the uneducated, in which language he himself, in his old age, wrote pious books for the use of the laity, making no account of the English language, or of those who spoke it. The poets of the same period, even those of English birth, composed all their verses in French, whenever they wished to derive from them either profit or honor. There was then only the class of ballad-singers and writers of romances for the artisan and peasantry to admire, that employed either pure English, or that language, mixed up of French and English, which served for the habitual communication between the higher and lower classes. This intermediate idiom, the gradual formation of which was a necessary result of the Conquest, first became current in