quiry. It has induced a strong predisposition to find, amidst whatever complexity of circumstance, some settled rules to which all is conformable. It has prepared us to find order and law amidst apparent confusion. To the application of this strong scientific faith to the intricate affairs of trade and commerce, we owe our modern political economy; the merit of which lies in the recognition of certain general principles of human nature by which social industry is directed and propelled, and in the confidence it teaches us to repose in such principles rather than in the artificial regulations of a legislature prompted by views of casual advantage. In the great work of Adam Smith, we see the spirit of scientific arrangement moving over the multifarious pursuits of civilized life, and out of the common transactions of the market place and the exchange, become difficult to comprehend from their very familiarity, buying and selling, money and bills, and all the jargon of the merchant's ledger, creating for us an orderly plan and a comprehensible scheme of things. How much our science of psychology, (if we may yet venture to pronounce it a science,) is indebted to the example of successful enquiry in physics, it were long to tell, and out of place. Jurisprudence, also, the slowest to be set in motion, has received an influence from this quarter. Here, also, the scientific spirit is manifestly at work, scrutinizing, methodizing, discarding with utter contempt that mere historical reason for the existence of a law which has so often been made to pass as a reason for its continuance, and demanding for jurisprudence that it be released from its connexion with feudal times, and from traditionary maxims, and find the sole ground for its principles in the actual benefit of society. On the study of history the operation of the same spirit is notice able, though its effects here are not so striking, and this general discipline of mind may be traced in our manner of reviewing the past.

It used to be a favourite style of lucubration, to account for great historical events by the mere accidents of biography; and writers delighted in raising our wonder at the tenuity of that thread on which the fate of empires was shown to be suspended. Thus, to refer to a familiar instance

if Luther had been gratified by the Pope, no Reformation in Germany-if Anne Boleyn had been less or more virtuous, none in England. This method of viewing things must needs be displeasing and repulsive to minds at all trained in science, and accustomed to contemplate an adequacy and uniformity of causation. Reflective men have learned other habits, and shrink from that wonder which results only from some apparent enormity, some departure from all rational expectation. They desire to trace, as far as possible, an orderly progression of affairs, to find for great national events great national causes. They prefer to seek those causes in the wants, and passions, and notions of the people at large, rather than in the fortune or even the wisdom of individuals. They are led to see in political revolutions, not the success of a conspirator or a patriot, but a change produced, perhaps slowly and by many circumstances, in the popular opinion. They detect in the institutions of a country not merely the sagacity of the single legislator, the Lycurgus or the Solon, called in to promulgate laws, but the expression of public wants and public sentiments. To Luther and Henry VIII. they give their due share in the Reformation, and acknowledge that their character and conduct served to guide its course, and modify its nature, both in Germany and England; but the Reformation itself they have learned to trace to many and extensive influences acting on the general mind.

Instead of raising a foolish wonder at the accidental character of historical transactions, there appears more frequently an ambitious desire on the part of the writer to deduce, if possible, some law or order in that development of our nature, through great national events which history records. A difficult task it is to find a method in a scene which astonishes and perplexes by its extreme intricacy. Yet, doubtless, there is some true theory, could we attain to it. There is an order in the splendid confusion of the historic phenomena, could we unravel it. There is a divine plot, though we cannot follow it; for only half may be yet revealed. Of this at least we may be sure, that God's government, which acts in general by general laws, has never been dethroned a moment, whatever disaster, or confusion, or caprice,

or folly, has prevailed upon the earth that it stands even when all other governments are fallen and despised, and is as punctually and steadfastly obeyed amidst the tempestuous uproar of the revolutionary city, as in the stillness of retired hamlets.

It is another symptom of an improved and scientific method of reviewing the annals of the past, that, instead of exaggerating the personal qualities of some great and distinguished individual, and separating his character as much as possible from that of the multitude that surrounded him, those who write or discourse on his tory rather strive to collect from the hero of remote times some knowledge of that neglected multitude. The temper and feelings of the people, in every age, are the first subjects of curiosity, and it is the habit of our times to read the minds of the multitude in the conduct of the few who towered above it. At our first approach to them, the records of remote periods seem, indeed, to give but little insight into the feelings and opinions of the forgotten crowd. Heroes and legislators, monarchs and their ministers, the great conqueror or the great conspirator these stand out in bold and solitary relief from the disregarded level of humanity. These shine forth, the scattered luminaries, the bright wonders, of the historic firmament; and it seems as hopeless here as in the midnight depth of the natural firmament, to detect what lies between in the wide "interstellar spaces." But, like as the astronomer learned all he has revealed to us of the nature and vastness of remote space by observation of the luminous bodies that revolve in it; even so, and to a still greater extent, the moral observer, by a patient study of these disconnected examples of character and events, learns to estimate those distant times in which they moved and had their being. And if we reflect on it, how could a nation reveal itself to posterity in more faithful colours, than in the simple narrative of its great men and great events, the first examples and the highest products of its own thoughts and feelings?

But still more important than the history of individuals, however conducted, is the history of institutions. These embody the public mind, and render it operative; they give consistency to numbers, and make of a mul

titude a people; and their origin and decay are as distinct eras in the life of a nation. It is a frequent and obvious remark, that while they make effective the present convictions of men, they render change and a new conviction perilous and difficult. To oppose or to deny, becomes rebellion or heresy. Institutions are conservative by their very nature. But while this resistance to change, this tendency to fix and render stationary, rv. is matter of common observation, it has not been as distinctly observed that institutions form the stepping-stones in a nation's intellectual progress. The new idea to which they offer resistance has often sprung from themselves; and the parent institution has only kept the junior from the seat of authority till it had grown strong enough to occupy it with effect. Sometimes the form of an institution has even suggested the principle which it was afterwards to embody. The institution has been found to involve ideas very imperfectly recognised, and not at all appreciated by those who, on some emergency, or for a very limited purpose, had constructed it; and an after age, contemplating the scheme that had been transmitted to it, has extracted from this a theory which it sets about forthwith more fully to exemplify. Such has been the origin of our theory of representative government, which grew out of institutions very faintly shadowing it forth, and which themselves were the offspring of feudalism, the plain and palpable antagonist to the principle of representation.

In illustration of some of these remarks, and because it will afford an opportunity for offering others on the same subject, we propose to take a glance at the dark ages-to make a rapid survey of the principal institutions which distinguish the middle ages. Of course, it is not presumed here to give a complete delineation of these times; but only to touch upon what is peculiar to them, and which may interest us their successors. In the middle ages, embracing as they do the history of Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century, there is nothing one may not meet with-no form of government, and scarce any system of manners, of which some example might not be given; but there are also someinstitutions exclusively their own. The Italian cities conquered their rustic nobility, and framed commonwealths in all their varieties;-there was life beating still, it seemed, at the heart of the old Roman republic; but such institutions may be studied also, and to more advantage, on the shores of Greece. The feudal monarch and the feudal noble, these were peculiar to the times. So too religion, or superstition, has every where prevailed, and every people has had its priesthood;

but here alone is the spectacle presented of many independent nations under one common hierarchy. Wars, and wholesale massacres, and malignant assassinations, abound in these as in all barbarous ages, but their chivalry is their own. Nor are there wanting other peculiarities, whether in their polity or jurisprudence, which will continue to furnish perpetual to. pics of curiosity and discussion.

Let us attempt to characterise feudalism as a system of polity; though, as one striking peculiarity lies in the complication it presents of political and public functions with private and proprietary rights, it is almost impossible to view it steadily for any length of time as a system of polity, without regarding it also in its juridical aspect. To defend the country against its enemies, and bear arms in the common cause, is a public duty; it was here also the personal bond or obligation by which the individual held his land, and which marked out the nature of his property. To administer justice is a public function; it was here seized on as a private right, and handed down as such with the hereditary

estate.

In describing the feudal system, a language is sometimes used which would imply, that at the conquest of Europe by the barbarians, the soil was divided amongst the several chiefs, with a stipulation that they should be prepared to join in a common defence of the common conquest; which gave origin to the tenure-the holding land on the bond of fealty and military service. But we need hardly say that the feudal system was no immediate result of the conquest. It grew up afterwards. It grew from the encroachment of the baron, or military landowner, under the monarchies established by the barbarians. His fealty was not a fresh bond of subordination entered into by the noble with the monarch, but rather the last thin thread to which his obedience was worn. Thus in France, it is not under Clovis, or Charlemagne, but under Hugh Capet, the head of its third dynasty of kings, that the feudal system is seen flourishing in all its rude and anomalous perfection. As a general statement, which will leave no false impression of the course of events,

(which varied in different parts of Europe,) we may describe the feudal system as a compromise between the love of independent power and the sense of common danger. The great proprietors of land, through the weakness of the monarch, elevated themselves into petty princes; but care for their own security deterred them from altogether breaking the link of connexion. They willingly professed an allegiance to a common sovereign, yielding, however, just so much obedience, as, under varying circumstances, could be enforced from them. While they preserved their fealty to a superior, they were still more solicitous to strengthen themselves by their own clients or retainers, who held land under them, and with similar obligations to those by which they were bound to their sovereign. Thus grew up feudalism, which is distinguished by its spirit of independence, combined with subordination-a subordination, however, which was never regulated by any views of public welfare, but by the necessity or power of the parties immediately concerned in the treaty.

How novel a spectacle did the feudal polity present! Europe had been the scene of the free municipal governments of Greece and Rome, and the great central empire of the Cæsars_what did it now exhibit ? There was no municipality, no centralization; government was cast forth from towns; the seat of power was in the country, in the forest, in the solitary castle of the baron. The town, impoverished and half depopulated, sunk into a private property, and became part of the lord's domain. Speculative politicians have marked out the several stages in the progress to civilisation, and described the ascending scale from the huntsman to the shepherd, from the agriculturist to

the citizen. Here the first was ruling over the last-the huntsman over men congregated into cities. The country was dominant over the town. The tyrant-as in the language of Greece he might be called-was a rude warrior, who, even in his love of dominion, loved chiefly the independence it secured to him; whose passion, next to war, was the chase; who, when he took possession of his territory, looked first for his hunting field, and made a waste if he did not find one. The hall of his forest-castle was the seat of justice; his bailiff or his seneschal administered the law, and the law became such as his bailiff or seneschal could administer.

How different, in its very spirit, was this feudal polity from either the municipal government which Rome, in its freedom, had extended over the nations of Europe, or that centralized empire under which, in later times, it had collected them! In these, the good of the commonwealth or of the public was the reason or at least the avowed reason for placing political power in the hands that held it. The public good was professedly paramount. If an emperor ruled, and ruled despotically, and gave the law from his own lips, it was still contended, and perhaps believed, that this aggrandizement of one individual was for the benefit of all. But here, in feudal Europe, the individual was paramount in the state. His rights, which indeed were whatever his power had been able to make good, were unblushingly proclaimed as independent -as first to be considered and protected; while the public welfare, its peace and order, were to follow as they might, from the compromise of personal and rival claims. Every thing was property or privilege. Offices, whether judicial or administrative-which in every theory of government are held for the public, and supposed to devolve, through whatever channel, by a course prescribed by the public will were here claimed as property, were converted into personal and hereditary rights. Property was more sacred than power, or rather power became itself a species of property.

In this curious system, made up of the sturdy advancement of individual

rights, the monarchy itself was compelled to find its first support, the basis of its power, on its own private possessions, in its territorial domain - its share in the proprietorship of the soil. The king stood upon his rights much in the same spirit that the barons did on theirs; and, if he exceeded his own, or infringed on theirs, it was a case, as is well known, for legitimate war; and the contest was decided by arms which placed both parties on a level. In the privileges, or, as they were called in his case," the prerogatives which the sovereign claimed, he had frequently as little in view as his barons, the public good, or any pretence of the public good. In the general confusion that prevailed, he snatched at privileges quite personal, and some utterly at variance with the high duties of his station as preserver of the peace. While the feudatory was seen jealously shutting out the king's judges from his own little principality, the chief magistrate contrived a source of revenue in the sale of charters of pardon to criminals who did not surely purchase till they needed them.

The share of power which a feudal monarch possessed, depended greatly

on

his personal qualifications-his sagacity and courage. His throne was no couch for regal repose; it was not only the seat of the highest functionary in the land, but of the most laborious, and whose duties it required the greatest energy and ability to perform. He often needed that his sceptre should be an "iron rod," to bruise and break the disobedience of his turbulent subjects. Yet there were in the feudal system, and in feudal times, certain steady influences which greatly favoured the monarchy, and which rendered it ultimately triumphant. The sovereign had a claim on the fealty of his nobles which they could not be disposed to dispute, because it was founded on the same principles on which they in their turn claimed obedience from their retainers. They had no hostility to the institution of monarchy, but an interest in preserving it, though at as little expense to themselves as possible. When, therefore, they did confederate against the crown, the want of a decisive object,

:

and the speedy entrance of jealousy and division amongst a number of independent and self-willed nobles, gave the king a manifest advantage, who, by watching his time, could fall upon his enemies singly. Our Richard II., not the most formidable of princes, but by no means deficient in craft and simulation, and that species of courage necessary to practise them with effect, after having suffered all but deposition by a confederacy of nobles, obtained, in this way, over all of them a complete predominance and a sanguinary revenge. The monarch, too, was generally popular with the multitude and the inhabitants of towns, who looked on him as the preserver of the peace, and a refuge from the tyranny of the barons. The Church and the lawyers both exalted regal power, in the strength and stability of which they saw the only chance for the equal administration of the laws. The monarchy had made common cause with good government, and steadily advanced with the peace and quiet of the kingdom. That notion of a sacred right which the Church sanctioned, was even supported by a feudal analogy. It was said that, as the lesser baron held of the greater, and the greater of the king, so the king held of God. How far this fanciful analogy gave additional weight to the doctrine of a "divine right" of kings, we leave to conjecture. The regal function gained a more certain advantage from another quarter. The oath of fealty sworn by the feudal vassal, when it came

afterwards to be still more confirmed, and still more widely extended, by the institution of chivalry, gave rise to that spirit of loyalty so peculiar to the monarchies of Europe; so peculiar, that we feel the word loyalty to be altogether inapplicable to any relationship under an Eastern despotism. The feudal subject took his oath of allegiance, and when that feudal subject became a knight, it grew to be a point of sacred honour to be faithful to that allegiance. The bond of subjection being in a manner self-imposed, it was reconciled with the highest sense of personal dignity; and Europe has seen her proudest sons associate their honour with obedience to one who had no means of rewarding or compelling it. An Asiatic prince is surrounded by prostrate slaves ejected from his throne, he is a slave himself: this country has witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of many noble families adhering, at all hazards, in their allegiance to a wandering outcast, of hostile religion, and endowed with talents neither for war nor peace.

We shall not stay at present to discuss how much of the spirit of feudalism has descended to our times, and whether, in its subdued and controlled condition, it continues to act for good or for evil; we are desirous of showing how it acted on other contemporary institutions. It may be described as standing in a collateral relationship to the Church, and in an ancestral one to the system of representation.

Whilst Europe was being divided and subdivided into kingdoms and principalities by feudalism, it was still kept united by an antagonist force, and preserved, in one sense, entire under its common ecclesiastical government. Just in proportion as this division in the civil polity proceeded, did his unity of the ecclesiastical power become more manifest, for it became more valuable. That elevation which the Roman see obtained in the middle ages, so very different from what had been conceded to it in the Church of the empire, is not so much to be traced to the ambition of its Gregories, or to any concerted scheme, as to the political condition of those

governments through which the Church extended. The same clergy were spread over countries now torn asunder by the irruption of the barbarians. To preserve their power, their influence, and possessions, they must continue united; to continue united they must have some head, some common centre-the authority of the Roman pontiff was already the highest in the Church-they willingly exalt bis supremacy for the protection and consistence of the whole order. The patriarchs of the Greek Church were not deficient in ambition, and could not possibly be wanting in theology to support it; yet they never attained a power resembling that of the Roman