imposed the yoke of despotism both on the victors and the vanquished*.

He divided England into sixty thousand two hundred and fifteen military fiefs, all held of the crown; the possessors of which were, on pain of forfeiture, to take up arms, and repair to his standard on the first signal: he subjected not only the common people, but even the ba rons, to all the rigours of the feudal government: he even imposed on them his tyrannical forest lawst.

He assumed the prerogative of imposing taxes. He invested himself with the whole executive power of government. But what was of the greatest consequence, he arrogated to himself the most extensive judicial power by the

* Professor Millar is unwilling to allow, that the victors were despotically ruled by William: but, though he was partial to his countrymen, he certainly did not suffer them to elude his powerful grasp, or escape the effects of his tyranny.-EDIT.

+ He reserved to himself an exclusive privilege of killing game throughout England, and enacted the severest penalties on all who should attempt it without his permission. The suppression, or rather mitigation of these penalties, was one of the articles of the Charta de Foresta, which the barons afterwards obtained by force of arms. Nullus de cætero amittat vitam, vel membra, pro venatione nostra. Ch. de Forest. Art. 10.

establishment of the court which was called Aula Regis, a formidable tribunal, which received appeals from all the courts of the barons, and decided, in the last resort, on the estates, honour, and lives of the barons themselves; and which, being wholly composed of the great officers of the crown, removable at the king's pleasure, and having the king himself for president, kept the first noblemen in the kingdom under the same control as the meanest subject.

Thus, while the kingdom of France, in consequence of the slow and gradual formation of the feudal government, found itself, in the issue, composed of a number of parts simply placed by each other, and without any reciprocal adherence, the kingdom of England on the contrary, from the sudden and violent introduction of the same system, became a compound of parts united by the strongest ties; and the regal authority, by the pressure of its immense weight, consolidated the whole into one compact indissoluble body.

To this difference in the original constitution of France and England, that is, in the original power of their kings, we are to attribute the difference, so little analogous to its original cause, of their present constitutions. This

furnishes the solution of a problem which, I must confess, for a long time perplexed me, and explains the reason why, of two neighbouring nations, situated almost under the same climate, and having one common origin, the one has attained the summit of liberty, the other has gradually sunk under an absolute monarchy.

In France, the royal authority was indeed inconsiderable; but this circumstance was by no means favourable to the general liberty. The lords were every thing; and the bulk of the nation were accounted nothing. All those wars which were made on the king had not liberty for their object; for of this the chiefs already enjoyed too great a share: they were the mere effect of private ambition or caprice. The people did not engage in them as associates in the support of a cause common to all; they were dragged, blindfold, and like slaves, to the standard of their leaders. In the mean time, as the laws, by virtue of which their masters were considered as vassals, had no relation to those by which they were themselves bound as subjects, the resistance, of which they were made the instruments, never produced any advantageous consequence in their

C

favour, nor did it establish any principle of freedom that was applicable to them.

The inferior nobles, who shared in the independence of the superior nobility, added 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 successive 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 everywhere stifled in its birth.*

* 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 gentils"hommes) against the people of Ghent," were crushed by the union of almost all the nobility of France. See Mezeray, Reign of Charles VI.

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 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. Be

* The word re-union expresses in the French law, or history, the reduction of a province to an immediate dependence on the crown.

[The points and circumstances, introduced by M. de Lolme in continuation of this note from the history of France, may be omitted without the least injury to the work, being neither usefully illustrative nor supplementally necessary.-EDIT.]