DE LOLME. revolted, he crushed both: and the new king of England, at the head of victorious troops, having to do with two nations lying under a reciprocal check from the enmity they bore to each other, and, moreover, equally subdued by a sense of their unfortunate attempts of resistance, found himself in the most favourable circumstances for becoming an absolute monarch; and his laws, thus promulgated in the midst, as it were, of thunder and lightning, imposed the yoke of despotism both on the victors and the vanquished". England divided into fiefs. 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 barons, to all the rigours of the feudal government: he even imposed on them his tyrannical forest laws *. He assumed the prerogative of imposing taxes 3. 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 establishment of the court which The Aula Regis. 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 * 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. "Vide ante, 19-21, 26-28, 30-34. 5 Ibid. 39, 40. Ibid. 21-26. himself for president, kept the first noblemen in the DE LOLME. kingdom under the same control as the meanest subject'. ments of France Thus, while the kingdom of France, in consequence Feudal governof the slow and gradual formation of the feudal govern- and England. ment, 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 analagous 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. Arbitrary power of the kings of rity of the sove In France, the royal authority was indeed inconsi- Limited authoderable; but this circumstance was by no means reigns of France. favourable to the general liberty. The lords were everything; 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, Vide ante, 28, 29, 111. DE LOLME. 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 favour, nor did it establish any principle of freedom that was applicable to them. The people, rendered desperate by oppression, attempted to revolt. 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*. At length, when by conquests, by escheats, or by treaties, the several provinces came to be reunited† 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 * 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.) + The word re-union expresses, in the French law, or history, the reduction of a province to an immediate dependance on the crown. DE LOLME. 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 tyranny; they even were compelled to associate the people in them, pators in public and make them partners of public liberty. The mode in which the people became partici liberty. Principle of primeval equality became every where diffused 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, 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 and established. 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 same spirit of liberty, after having circulated through the different |