there were intermediate stages following each other in a certain regular order and succession. Civil equality is observed almost invariably preceding and antedating political. In other words, the recognition of a right to an equal administration of the existing laws was prior to a share in the power which enacts them. Thus, we find the Roman Plebs enjoying a civil equality with the Populus, before the Comitia Centuriata of Servius admitted them to a share in the government of the state. Subsequently, when the constitution of Servius had been overthrown, and by the pressure of the laws relating to debt the Commons were again reduced to dependency, the secession to the Mons Sacer virtually recovered for them civil equality, long before the passing of the Publilian laws terminated the struggles which secured them political. Thus, the emancipation of the Serfs in the middle ages preceded their admission to the rights of citizenship in the boroughs to which they gathered for protection. A half century elapsed between Magna Charta, the guarantee of civil rights to all classes of freemen, and the first summoning of representatives for cities and boroughs to Simon de Montfort's parliament of Oxford.+ Nevertheless, this succession has been occasionally interrupted by circumstances which prove the rule from its special exceptions. Extraordinary conjunctures-political evils, long endured and late corrected-have exhibited the movement, as in the efforts of Valerius and Licinius at Rome,§ or the Florentine revolution of 1378,|| proceeding simultaneously under both its aspects. The necessity of strengthening a frontier outpost or colonial settlement, such as Heraclea,¶ or the towns of Leon and Castile taken from the Moors,**

*Arnold's Rome, vol. i., p. 27, &c. + Arnold's Rome, vol. i., p. 147; vol. ii., p. 158.

See Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii., pp. 108, 148. English Constitution, chap. viii.

§ Arnold's Rome, vol. i., pp. 318, 326-333; vol. ii., pp. 34, 75, &c.

Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 297; Italy, chap. iii., Part II.

For mention made of the part taken by the Pericci in the foundation of Heraclea, see Thucyd., book iii., chap. 92.

**Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 373; Spain, chap. iv.

CONTEST OF NUMBERS AND WEALTH.

11

may have introduced at once a high degree both of civil and political freedom. But in all ordinary aspects of history, and these declare best its essential principles, the movement is seen to proceed in successive stages, and to follow the conditions of this natural sequence.

Yet, although we may trace the tendency to equality as existing under a like form in ancient and modern History, we arrive at a limit precluding a perfect comparison. Investigation ceases where facts are wanting, and the European world has not yet supplied the facts, which are necessary to illustrate the contest which supervenes on the concluded. struggle between property and birth. The ancient world thoroughly accomplished a revolution which the modern is now only in its turn approaching. Like its precursor, this contest in almost all the states of antiquity exhibited certain characteristic features. It was commonly sudden-terrible— convulsive-coincident with deeper moral depravity, and a more ferocious recklessness in the contending parties. Above all, we are told that in no known instance did it terminate favourably for the public good.* The source of this difference from the earlier contest is thus revealed to us by the same high authority. While in the one case the contending parties approached each other, as the Commons grew daily in wealth and intelligence, their consequent assimilation in sentiment and interest, and the ultimate absence of all real disparity, facilitated the removal of factitious distinctions. The ascendency of birth passed into the ascendency of wealth by easy and natural transitions. It was accompanied comparatively with so little violence, that inquiry may be at times perplexed, both in ancient and modern history, to fix upon any definite period as the precise moment of its consummation. On the other hand, the contest between wealth and numbers was not assisted and mitigated by the same gradual stages of approximation, whereby the one might ascend

Arnold's Thucyd., vol. i., Appendix I., p. 633.

socially to the level of the other. It was a warfare between extremes of the most opposite nature, with few points of contact to attach sympathy or to induce a mutual intelligence or good-will. The prospect of violent collision increased the more as the interval between them was more and more widened; and not forewarned by previous approximation, it became the more desperate from their increasing estrangement. The characteristics of this contest in the ancient world were exhibited in the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla, and the bloody factions of the Peloponnesian war; whereas modern history, if we except the momentary fury of the first French Revolution, has not yet produced its parallel examples. We may, indeed, add one such, since the above words were written, in the mitigated afterclap of this Revolution, in 1848, and we may distinctly see such threatening our future, when the waste places of the earth shall be filled, and indigence and wealth pressed together with no further outlet for their exasperating contests. It remains, however, to be seen whether the prospects of the modern world include no hope of bettering the experience of the ancient world in this respect. Of this, indeed, we may be certain, that its confidence ought not to rest on the possible relaxation of what seems to be throughout History an inevitable law. Though circumstances may veil its operations or accidents adjourn them, though the tendency may seem for a season to be even borne back, or may demand a geologic epoch for its complete manifestation, it is idle to question its existence or persistency. The tendency to Equality must still proceed. The stream of History will roll towards the plain. If there is a promise for modern civilisation, its assurance must be sought in the main source of all other difference between ourselves and antiquity, the elements peculiar to the nations paramount in either. For these contain the principal germs of life-the vital essence of their respective systems; and it is only by measuring

THE FOUR CHIEF ELEMENTS.

13

their strength, with the circumstances of their development in time and place, that we can calculate the variations in the equalising movement, or the possible difference in its final result.

IV. In estimating these elements, we are forced, for the sake of convenience, to accept the commonly recognised division of History. Yet we must guard against the misconception into which we may be led by its arbitrary separation into Ancient and Modern at the epoch of the dissolution of the Roman empire, as if that were a point at which all existing institutions were swept away, and an entirely new order of things was established in their place. There was in

fact no such severance of the historic unity, no such marked separation of the old world from the new. Civilisation needed not to commence its career, to repeat from the very starting point the course it had already run. Though much was then destroyed which time had ripened to a merited destruction, the inner principle of ancient life, the spring and source of its historic worth, like the olive of the Acropolis unscathed by the fire, remained to put forth vigorous shoots under more propitious circumstances. The majesty of the Imperial name survived the overthrow of the Imperial power, and awed and impressed its barbarian invaders. The Municipal system, which the centralising force of Rome had bound in a network of administrative dependence, remained, when the bond which constrained it was broken. The towns themselves were not destroyed, though they ceased to constitute an aggregate unity, and the idea of Empire, and the fact of Municipality, entered at once the new combination.* All which was superadded to them then, of any eminent novelty, was a new religion and an untried race. From the introduction of these was imparted fresh vigour to a system otherwise depraved and exhausted. Race-Religion-Empire

* Guizot's Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe, Lect. ii.

-the Municipal spirit, principal elements of our modern civilisation, these are the four

"Which in quaternion run, And mix and nourish all things."

From these, as subject to the law of development, comes our chief likeness or unlikeness to antiquity; from the two former, and the appropriate distinctions they include, come the main aspects of difference in all our revolutions.

From the character of the Northern races-the barbarian germ alone-how wide an aftergrowth expands into history! From their earliest proportions, as depicted by Cæsar and Tacitus, how vast is the shadow cast into the future! Apart from the distinguishing traits of certain sections or tribes, so clearly to be identified, for example, as in the Gauls of nineteen centuries, a love of liberty-a sense of personal independence-actuating the countrymen of Arminius and Civilis, was developed through the descending line of their posterity. Amid the marshes and pine-forests of Germany— in their earliest European settlements-through their latest constitutional changes-under various aspects, it modified their system, and has been their characteristic from that day to our own. In no respect did the Northern races, the Celts and the Teutons, differ more remarkably from Classic nations than in the readiness with which the latter could sacrifice their liberty to their eager desire for political organisation. When Aristotle asserted that the notion of a state was antecedent to that of an individual,* he was merely giving philosophic expression to a natural sentiment of the Greek mind. To the Greek's lively and social temperament avτáρкeta—independence-was the greatest of evils; a condition befitting only gods or beasts,† and, as happiness was impossible apart from a community, he was ready to surrender everything to its welfare. Thus he had no regard

*Politics, book i., chap. 2. See also Hermann's Political Antiquities of Greece, p. 97.

+ Onpiov Ocós. Politics, book i., chap. 2.