tion 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 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.*

*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

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At length, when by conquests, by escheats, or by treaties, the several provinces came to be re-united* 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 the cities had been able to preserve were little respected by a sovereign who had himself entered into no engagement for that purpose; and as the re-unions were made at different times, the king was always in a condition to overwhelm every new province that accrued to him, with the weight of all those he already possessed.

As a farther consequence of these differences between the times of the re-unions, the several parts of the kingdom entertained no views of assisting each other. When some reclaimed their privileges, the others, long since reduced to subjection, had already forgotten theirs. Besides, these privileges, by reason of the differences of the governments

hommes) against the people of Ghent," were crushed by the union of almost all the nobility of France.-See Mereray, Reign of Charles VI.

The word re-union expresses in the French law, ar history, the reduction of a province to an immediate dependence on the crown.

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 cavalling 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