sides, these privileges, by reason of the differences of 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 rather had never existed; each province, restrained within its particular bounds, only served to ensure the general submission; and the same causes which had reduced that 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: invested 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 caviling about the meaning of laws, the terms of which were precise, or rather disdaining the resource of sophistry, they were naturally led to examine the first principles of society; they inquired 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 circulated through the different branches of the feudal subordination, thus continued to flow through successive homogeneous channels; it forced 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 became still more tyran

nically 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 the haughty aversion with which on the continent the nobility repaid the industrious hands that 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.

CHAPTER II.

A second Advantage England had over France :-it formed one undivided State.

IT 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: he, 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 classes of the people*.

* Amongst others, the law of the Curfeu.-It might be matter of curious discussion to inquire what the AngloSaxon government would in process of time have become, and of course the government of England be at the present time, if the event of the conquest had never taken place; which, by conferring an immense as well as un