THE NORTHERN RACES. 15 He for individual rights as opposed to the state. He never discussed their origin or extent, or treated them as having a substantive existence.* On the contrary, he acquiesced in the state's interference with his personal liberty less reservedly than his slavish Persian enemies submitted to every caprice of their king. What consequences, on the other hand, have followed from the opposite tendency of the Northern! Prizing above all things his personal independence, History represents him as only overcoming by degrees his natural repugnance to political connection. For a time he appears in direct antagonism to the necessity of government, seemingly unwilling to sacrifice any portion of his individual will for a common purpose or united effort. is thus seen rudely subverting the systems which the genius of Pepin and Otho had constructed, and relapsing into anarchy under the later Carlovingians and the Salic descendants of Conrad. The same spirit in a subdued form he exemplifies in the isolating tendencies of his feudalism, in his later struggles to preserve its privileges of private war and territorial jurisdiction. He is reluctant at first to be incorporated with the state-incorporated, he revolts at its interference with his inclinations. Variously he exhibits his jealousy of its control-in Hermandads of Castile-imperial Interregnums§-rough sessions at Runnymede or Oxfordin the charters and guarantees he has sought to exact as the price of his co-operation or the limits of his obedience. In later times he is found appealing to these past compacts for fresh concessions, persisting in the privilege of selftaxation - claiming liberty of conscience and freedom of speech-holding ominous language respecting rights of resistance-in Habeas Corpus Acts and assertions that his house &c. * Lieber's Political Ethics, pp. 393, † ἐλεύθεροι γὰρ ἐόντες, οὐ πάντα ἐλέυθεροι εἰσὶ· ἔπεστι γάρ σφι δεσπότης νόμος, τὸν ὑποδειμαίνουσι πολλῷ ἔτι pâλλovol ool oé. Herodotus, book vii., chap. 104. Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 404; Spain, chap. iv. § Koch's Revolutions of Europe, p. 49, Lond. 1839. is his castle maintaining the inviolability of his person and his home. Two consequences have followed this peculiarity of race, in addition to a greater individual freedom, neither of which was adequately comprehended in the communities of the ancient world. On the one hand, habits of seclusion, fostered by the propensity to isolation in the feudal ages, developed the importance of the Family, and its genial influence upon European civilisation. From a spirit apparently anti-social, social impulses in turn were thus furtively and indirectly quickened into life; and the national fire, no longer confined to Prytaneiums and Hearths of Vesta, might hence defy the possibility of extinction by its distribution upon innumerable domestic altars. On the other hand, out of the liking for liberty grew the respect for Law, since Law was made the instrument of its preservation. Herein we recognise the origin of that regard which legislation has shown for the "Rights of Persons," as well as those feelings. of veneration for law with which individuals have repaid the obligation. We see the anxiety to withdraw its ministers from all sinister influences and embarrassments-the early separation of the judicial from the executive power, a separation unknown to the ancient Greek*—the elevation of its judges above bias or temptation, and the significance of their robes of spotless ermine. Hence the nicety of those rules of Pleading which develope so carefully the question at issue those other rules for the discrimination of Evidence the provision against error or injustice in the application of either, in the long series of appellate tribunals -Writs of error-Exchequer Chambers-courts of Review and Cassation. And we see the result of this circumspection as distinguished from the crude legislation of antiquity, in comparing the spirit which could acquiesce in the trial of Hermann's Political Antiquities of Greece, p. 102, and references. The Greeks had nothing answering to our Law of Evidence; see Müller's Dorians, vol. ii., p. 230. + 66 the Athenian commanders at Arginusa, with the execration which followed the execution of Byng*-the popular indifference to the condemnation of Socrates,t with the zeal which would leave the sentence against Sydney to blacken in the sight, like the handwriting on the wall before the eastern tyrant, to deter posterity from outrages upon justice." Lastly, we see in their widest divergence these opposite impulses of distinct races-public opinion in the one indifferent to constitutional form-extemporising law at its need in the tumults of the Forum, or the Psephisms of the Agora; § on the other hand, the caution-the scrupulous deliberation preceding an Act of Settlement, in the crisis even of a revolution ||—that reverence for law as the safeguard of liberty, which encircles its palladium in a dense forest of prescript and precedent, and adjudges it treason in all who, on any pretext, dare break the inclosure, or presume to violate the consecrated precinct. Though the European system was tardy in its growth, owing to what we may term the centrifugal force of its component members, it thereby developed its characteristic excellence in a more assured constitutional strength and stability. It sacrificed neither the variety nor fecundity of its elements by the indisposition of individuals to merge in society. Its great men were consequently more numerous, asserted a higher independence of thought and action, made a deeper impression upon their respective generations. On the other hand, the attachment of man to man, also a characteristic of the Northern races, exhibited in the connec * See the terms in which Smollett speaks of this transaction. + Even the votes of the judges on his trial were equally divided on the question of his condemnation. Erskine's Speech on Constructive Treason. See Brougham's Statesmen of the Times of Geo. III. - Art. "Erskine." § Demosthenes contrasts the an cient constancy with the mania for "psephisms" which prevailed in his time; τότε μὲν τοῖς μὲν ὑπάρχουσι νόμοις ἐχρῶντο, καινοὺς δ ̓ οὐκ ἐτίθεσαν. In Lept. 484. 22. See an account of the Parliamentary Debates, 1688-9, in the 3rd vol. of Burnet's History of his own Time. C tion of the free warriors with their earliest military chieftains in Germany,* combated and corrected the mischievous tendencies of a too sensitive love of personal liberty. Connecting itself with the tenure of land, this sentiment cemented the Feudal system. The vassal knelt, as we know, ungirt, with head uncovered, and placing his hands between the hands. of his lord, swore, under the force of the uniting bond, to become his man, from that day forward, of life and limb and earthly worship. The same spirit animated the Clan-the same, transferred to a different relation, stimulated the loyalty the devotion to their king, which was the pride and passion of the gallant Cavaliers. And especially to this sentiment do we attribute the disposition to Voluntary Combination, which has taken a scope, and tended to results, so remarkable in modern history. The apt reliance upon personal exertion, inducing, as we have seen, a limited view of the ends and offices of the state, has combined with this spirit of free association, to work effects which the political machinery of Greece and Rome could never compass. Though the latter had also their voluntary Leagues, these were almost exclusively devoted to the purposes of faction. The "idem velle atque idem nolle" was, in this respect, a bond of union equally in the days of Mirabeau and Cæsar. But, irrespec *Guizot's Hist. de la Civ. en Europe, Lect. 2. Allen's Royal Prerogatives, p. 74. Personal Attachment of man to man.-As a tie existing in independence of the State, it is difficult to estimate its Influence in modern History, until we remark the absence of this sentiment in any intensity from the social combinations of the ancient world. In the "Gens" and "Phratria," the primitive and elemental forms of ancient society, there was a kind of union cemented, as far as we know, by a distinguishing worship and peculiar rites. But the Gens and Phratria were integral parts of the body politic-holding to the State a fixed relation, which they transmitted in the shape of political rights to each individual member. The tie which united them was not, as in Feudalism and the Clans, a purely personal one, irrespective of, and often paramount to, all other obligations. Nor was the sentiment of Loyalty adequately felt or appreciated in antiquity. The Greek historian (see Herod. viii. 119) relates the story of the self-sacrifice of the Persian nobles, to preserve the life of Xerxes, with the same incredulity with which the Burghers of Carlisle are represented as witnessing a like exhibition of devotedness on the part of the humble clansman of Mac-Ivor, in the "Waverley" of Sir Walter Scott. tive of such rapíai, antiquity knew little of the sentiment of fellowship, of the benefits it procures, or the obligations it imposes. We, on the other hand, perceive it combining with every form of European movement-erecting the first Guilds of the Anglo-Saxons*-giving a stamp and currency to chivalrous feeling in badges and orders of Knighthooddeveloping the asceticism of the east into the various shapes of medieval Monasticism-animating Masonry-instituting its counterpart among the humble Crafts and Companies of Germany+-professing even to administer justice in the Vehmegericht—and performing in countless other modes the offices and functions of the ancient state. Even in our own times we see it active in Associations promoting science, literature, art—in Societies educating-prosecuting crimeabolishing slavery—liberating trade — teaching creeds and promulgating systems-and, in the form of Company, occupying territory-founding and consolidating empire.§ To this extent at least, the characteristics of race, "altogether hypothetical" though they are now asserted to be, have coloured and illuminated each page of our history. Yet they have worked throughout in a medium, which would not admit of their excessive exaggeration, the medium, that is, of a common Christianity. In contradistinction to a varied polytheism, similarity of belief induces a conformity in political movements, and nations and races herein evince sympathies, for which their diversities afford no pretext, till modified by an influence altogether independent of language, kindred, climate, or soil. To this, in the first instance, we may ascribe the consolidation of the European System, an aspect of national relations unknown anciently in any con the proceedings of this tribunal written by Wigand. See illustrations of their nature in Scott's "House of Aspen." $ East India Company; Hudson Bay Company, &c. For an interesting account of the operations of the latter, see Washington Irving's "Astoria.” |