.

selves bound as subjects, the resistance, of which they were made the instruments, never produced any advantageous consequence in their favour, nor did it establish any principle of freedom that was in any case applicable to them.

The inferior nobles, who shared in the independence of the superior nobility, added also the effects of their own insolence to the despotism of so many sovereigns; and the people, wearied out by sufferings, and rendered desperate by oppression, at times attempted to revolt. But, being parcelled out into so many different states, they could never perfectly agree, either in the nature, or the times of their complaints. The insurrections which ought to have been general, were only successsive and particular. In the mean time the lords, ever uniting to avenge their common cause as masters, fell with irresistible advantage on men who were divided; the people were thus separately, and by force, brought back to their former yoke; and liberty, that precious offspring which requires so many favourable circumstances to foster it, was every where stifled in its birth.i

At length, when by conquests, by escheats, or by treaties, the several provinces came to be re-united* to the extensive and continually increasing dominions of the monarch, they became subject to their new master, already

i It may be seen in Mezeray, how the Flemings, at the time of the great revolt which was caused, as he says, "by the inveterate hatred of the nobles (les gentilshommes) against the people of Ghent," were crushed by the union of almost all the nobility of France. See Mezeray, Reign of Charles VI.

The word re-union expresses in the French law, or history, the reduction of a province to an immediate dependence on the crown The French lawyers, who were at all times remarkably zealous for the aggrandisement of the crown, a zeal which would not have been blameable, if it had been exerted only in the suppression of lawless aristocracy, always contended, that when a province once came into the possession of the king, even any private dominion of his before he acceded to the throne, it became re-united for ever the ordonnance of Moulins, in the year 1566, has since given a thorough sanction to these principles. The reunion of a province might be occasioned, first, by the case just mentioned, of the accession of the possessor of it to the throne: thus at the accession of Henry IV. (the sister of the late king being excluded by the Salic law) Navarre and Bearn were re-united.

trained to obedience. The few privileges which the cities had been able to preserve, were little respected by a sovereign who had himself entered into no engagement for that purpose; and as the re-unions were made at different times, the king was always in a condition to overwhelm every new province that accrued to him, with the weight of all those he already possessed.

As a farther consequence of these differences between the times of the re-unions, the several parts of the kingdom entertained no views of assisting each other. When some reclaimed their privileges, the others, long since reduced to subjection, had already forgotten theirs. Besides, these privileges, by reason of the differences in the governments under which the provinces had formerly been held, were also almost every where different: the circumstances which happened in one place, thus bore little affinity to those which fell out in another; the spirit of union was lost, or

Secondly, by the felony of the possessor, when the king was able to enforce by dint of arms, the judgment passed by the judges he had appointed: thus the small lordship of Rambouillet was seized upon by Hugh Capet, on which authors remark that it was the first dominion that was re-united; and the duchy of Normandy was afterwards taken in the same manner by Philip Augustus from John king of England, condemned for the murder of Arthur duke of Britanny. Thirdly, by the last will of the possessor: Provence was re-united in this manner, under the reign of Lewis XI. Fourthly, by intermarriages: this was the case of the county of Champagne, under Philip the Fair; and of Britanny under Erancis I. Fifthly, by the failure of heirs of the blood, and sometimes of heirs male: thus Burgundy was seized upon by Lewis XI. after the death of Charles the Bold, duke of that province. Lastly, by purchases: thus Philip of Valois purchased the barony of Montpellier; Henry IV. the marquisat of Saluces; Lewis XIII. the principality of Sedan, &c.

These different provinces, which, with others united, or reunited, after a like manner, now compose the French monarchy, not only thus conferred on their respective sovereigns different titles, but also differed from each other with respect to the laws which they followed, and still follow the one are governed by the Roman law, and are called Pays de Droit écrit; the others follow particular customs, which in process of time have been set down in writing, and are called Pays de Droit Coutumier. In those provinces the people had, at times, purchased privileges from their princes, which in the different provinces were also different, according to the wants and temper of the princes who granted them.

rather had never existed: each province, restrained within its particular bounds, only served to insure the general submission; and the same causes which had reduced that warlike, spirited nation, to a yoke of subjection, concurred also to keep them under it.

Thus liberty perished in France, because it wanted a favourable culture and proper situation. Planted, if I may so express myself, but just beneath the surface, it presently expanded, and sent forth some large shoots; but having taken no root, it was soon plucked up. In England, on the contrary, the seed lying at a great depth, and being covered with an enormous weight, seemed at first to be smothered; but it vegetated with the greater force; it imbibed a more rich and abundant nourishment; its sap and juice became better assimilated, and it penetrated and filled up with its roots the whole body of the soil. It was the excessive power of the king which made England free, because it was this very excess that gave rise to the spirit of union, and of concerted resistance. Possessed of extensive demesnes, the king found himself independent; vested with the most formidable prerogatives, he crushed at pleasure the most powerful barons in the realm: it was only by close and numerous confederacies, therefore, that these could resist his tyranny; they even were compelled to associate the people in them, and make them partners of public liberty.

Assembled with their vassals in their great halls, where they dispensed their hospitality, deprived of the amusements of more polished nations, naturally inclined, besides, freely to expatiate on objects of which their hearts were full, their conversation naturally turned on the injustice of the public impositions, on the tyranny of the judicial proceedings, and, above all, on the detested forest laws.

Destitute of an opportunity of cavilling about the meaning of laws, of which the terms were precise, or rather disdaining the resource of sophistry, they were naturally led to examine into the first principles of society: they enquired into the foundations of human authority, and became convinced, that power, when its object is not the good of those who are subject to it, is nothing more than the right of the strongest, and may be repressed by the exertion of a similar right.

The different orders of the feudal government, as established in England, being connected by tenures exactly similar, the same maxims which were laid down as true against the lord paramount in behalf of the lord of an upper fief, were likewise to be admitted against the latter, in behalf of the owner of an inferior fief. The same maxims were also to be applied to the possessor of a still lower fief: they farther descended to the freeman, and to the peasant; and the spirit of liberty, after having circu. lated through the different branches of the feudal subordination, thus continued to flow through successive homogeneous channels; it forced to itself a passage into the remotest ramifications, and the principle of primeval equality became every where diffused and established. A sacred principle, which neither injustice nor ambition can erase; which exists in every breast, and, to exert itself, requires only to be awakened among the numerous and oppressed classes of mankind.

But when the barons, whom their personal consequence had at first caused to be treated with caution and regard by the sovereign, began to be no longer so, when the tyrannical laws of the conqueror hecame still more tyrannically executed, the confederacy, for which the general oppression had paved the way, instantly took place. The lord, the vassal, the inferior vassal, all united. They even implored the assistance of the peasants and cottagers; and that haughty aversion with which on the continent the nobility repaid the industrious hands which fed them, was, in England, compelled to yield to the pressing necessity of setting bounds to the royal authority.

The people, on the other hand, knew that the cause they were called upon to defend, was a cause common to all; and they were sensible, besides, that they were the necessary supporters of it. Instructed by the example of their leaders, they spoke and stipulated conditions for themselves: they insisted that, for the future, every individual should be entitled to the protection of the law; and thus did those rights with which the lords had strengthened themselves, in order to oppose the tyranny of the crown, become a bulwark which was, in time, to restrain their own.

C

CHAP. II.

A SECOND ADVANTAGE ENGLAND HAD OVER FRANCE: IT FORMED ONE UNDIVIDED STATE.

Ir was in the reign of Henry the first, about forty years after the conquest, that we see the above causes begin to operate. This prince having ascended the throne to the exclusion of his elder brother, was sensible that he had no other means to maintain his power than by gaining the affection of his subjects; but, at the same time, he perceived that it must be the affection of the whole nation : le, therefore, not only mitigated the rigour of the feudal laws in favour of the lords, but also annexed as a condition to the charter he granted, that the lords should allow the same freedom to their respective vassals. Care was even taken to abolish those laws of the conqueror which lay heaviest on the lower class of the people.*

Under Henry the second, liberty took a farther stride; and the ancient trial by jury, a mode of procedure which is at present one of the most valuable parts of the English law, made again, though imperfectly, its appearance.

But these causes, which had worked but silently and slowly under the two Henrys, who were princes in some degree just, and of great capacity, manifested themselves, at once, under the despotic reign of king John. The royal prerogative, and the forest laws, having been exerted by this prince to a degree of excessive severity, he soon beheld a general confederacy formed against him:

a Amongst others, the law of the curfeu. It might be matter of eurious discussion to inquire what the Anglo-Saxon government would in process of time have become, and of course the government of England be at this present time, if the event of the conquest had never taken place; which, by conferring an immense as well as unusual power on the head of the feudal system, compelled the nobility to contract a lasting and sincere union with the people. It is very probable that the English government would at this day be the same as that which long prevailed in Scotland, where the king and nobles engrossed, jointly, or by turns, the whole power in the state, the same as in Sweden, the same as in Denmark, countries whence the Anglo-Saxons came.