Not only did the ahrimans, the rachimburgs, not form a class distinct on the one hand from that of the bond labourer 9, or slaves, on the other from that of the leudes, or vassals, but they could not fail soon to range themselves under one or other of these two conditions. How, in the house with, and by the side of, a chief who had become a great proprietor, and who was in possession of a thousand means of influence, and whose superiority increased daily, how, I say, could they long preserve that equality, that independence, which the companions of the same band formerly enjoyed? It is evident that it could not be. Those freemen who after the invasion still lived for some time with their chief, before long were divided into two classes; some received benefices, and, become proprietors in their turn, entered into the feudal association, with which we shall occupy ourselves at a later stage of our progress; the others, always fixed within the interior of the domains of their ancient chief, fell either into an entirely servile condition, or else into that of labourers cultivating a part of the land, liable to certain payments or

rents.

You see what must result from this sovereignty of the ancient Germanic tribe which I have just described. In the new territorial establishment, it experienced a profound alteration; it lost its character of the family; it could not continue to attach itself to the common sentiments, to those traditions, those ties of parentage which, in ancient Germany, united the proprietary head of the family with most of the inhabitants of his domains. This element of the organization of the Germanic tribe disappeared, or nearly so, when it vas transplanted into Gaul. The element which became Jominant was that of conquest, of force; and its predominance was the necessary result of the situation in which the proprietary heads of families found themselves in Gaul, a situation radically different from that in which they were placed in Germany.

Thus, this fusion of sovereignty and power, which we have remarked as one of the great characteristics of the feudal system, was not, properly speaking, new; it was not the result of conquest only; an analogous fact existed in Germany, in the heart of the German tribe: there also the proprietary head of the family was sovereign within his domains:

there also took place the fusion of sovereignty and property. But in Germany this fusion was accomplished under the influence of two principles; on the one hand, under the influence of the spirit of family, of the organization of clan; on the other, under the influence of conquest, of force. These two principles had, in the domestic sovereignty of the proprietary chief of the family in Germany, parts altogether unequal and which it would be difficult to estimate. In Gaul, the share of the patriarchal system, of the organization of the clan, became greatly impaired; that of conquest, of force, on the contrary took a great development, and became, if not the only, at least the dominant principle of that fusion of sovereignty and property which is, I repeat, one of the great characteristics of the feudal system.

There is therefore nothing, or at least nothing important to conclude from this fact in Germany, with regard to this fact in our country. I do not say that there is nothing remaining among us of the ancient German habits; I do not say that the spirit of the family, the idea that all the inhabitants of one domain, of one territory, are connected in some moral relations, and in a kind of parentage, had no influence in the French feudal system. I only say that this influence was very confined, very inferior to that of conquest.

Such, if I mistake not, was the transformation of this fact from the fourth to the tenth century. Thus, on its removal from Germany did it become wholly different in our country. In our next lecture we shall occupy ourselves with the third characteristic of the feudal system, that is to say, the relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves, and the hierarchical organization of their society in itself.

FOURTH LECTURE.

General association of the possessors of fiefs among themselves; third characteristic of the feudal system-From the very nature of its elements this association must have been weak and irregular-It, in fact, always was so-Fallacy of the view which the apologists of this system trace of the feudal hierarchy-Its incoherency and weakness were especially great at the close of the 10th century-The formation of this hierarchy from the 5th to the 10th century-Three systems of institutions are seen together after the German invasion: free institutions, monarchical institutions, aristocratical institutions-Comparative history of these three systems-Decline of the two first-Triumph of the third, which yet remains incomplete and disordered.

THE two first characteristics of the feudal system, the special nature of landed property, and the fusion of sovereignty and property in each fief, we are well acquainted with. We know how they were formed; we have seen them take birth and grow, from the fifth to the tenth century. Let us now leave the interior of the fief, let us examine the relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves, the progressive development of the organization which united them, or rather which was reputed to unite them in one and the same society. This, as you know, is the third of the great facts which constitute the feudal system.

I said the organization which was reputed to unite them: the union, in fact, of the possessors of fiefs among themselves, their organization into a general society was far more a principle than a fact, far more nominal than real. The very nature of the elements of such an association lead us to presume this. What is the tie, the cement of a great society? It is the need which one of the partial, local associations which compose it has of the others; the necessity in which they are placed of having recourse to one another, in order to exer cise their rights, for the accomplishment of the various publi

functions, for legislation, for the administration of justice, ot finances, of war, &c. If each family, each town, each territorial circumscription finds within itself, in its own bosom, everything of which it has any need in a political point of view; if it forms a complete, petty state, which has nothing to receive from elsewhere, nothing to give elsewhere, it will not adhere to other families, to other towns, to other local circumscriptions; there would be no society between them. The dispersion of sovereignty and government into the various parts, among the different members of the state, that it is which constitutes the state; that is, the external tie of general society, which brings and retains together its elements.

Now, the fusion of sovereignty and property, and its concentration within the domain, in the hands of its possessor, had exactly the effect of isolating the proprietor of the fief from other similar proprietors; each fief formed, as it were, a small, complete state, whose inhabitants had nothing, or almost nothing, to seek beyond it, which sufficed to itself, in matters of legislation, administration, of justice, taxes, war, &c. In a society formed of such elements, it was an inevitable consequence that the general tie should be weak, rarely felt, easily broken. The possessors of fiefs had, it is true, common affairs, reciprocal rights and duties. There was, moreover, the inclination natural to man, of continually extending his relations, of aggrandizing, or animating his social existence more and more, of constantly seeking, as it were, new citizens, and new ties with them. In fine, at the epoch with which we occupy ourselves, the Christian church, a society always one, and strongly constituted, incessantly laboured to introduce something of its unity, its entirety, into the civil society; and this work was not fruitless. But it is not the less evident that, from the nature of its elements, and especially from the fusion of covereignty and property, from the almost entire localisation of power, if such a term be allowed, the general association of the possessors of fiefs must have had very little compactness, very little activity; that but very little entirety or unity could have prevailed in it.

And such, in fact, was the case; history fully confirms the inductions drawn from the very nature of this social state Its apologists have applied themselves to the bringing promi

nently forward the reciprocal rights and duties of the possessors of fiefs; they have vaunted the skilful gradation of the ties which united them among themselves, from the weakest to the most powerful, in such a way that none were isolated, and yet that each remained free and master of himself. According to them, the independence of individuals was never more happily reconciled with the harmony of the whole. A chimerical idea, a purely logical hypothesis! Doultless, in principle, the possessors of fiefs were united to each other, and their hierarchical association appears skilfully organized. But in fact, this organization was never real and efficacious; feudalism could never draw from its bosom a principle of order and unity sufficient to form a general, and, however little, regulated society. Its elements, that is to say, the possessors of fiefs, were always in a state of disunion and war among themselves, continually obliged to have recourse to force, because no supreme, truly public, power was present to maintain between them justice and peace, that is, society; and to create such a power, to fuse all its scattered and even hostile elements into a single and true society, it was necessary to have recourse to other principles, to other institutions, to institutions and principles foreign and even hostile to the feudal system. As you already know, it was by royalty on the one hand, and on the other by the idea of the nation in general, and of its rights, that political unity has prevailed among us, that the State has been constituted; and it was always at the expense of the possessors of fiefs by the weakening and progressive abolition of the feudal system, that we have approached this end.

It, therefore, must not be expected that we shall find that systematical and general organization of the possessors of fiefs among themselves, which I have pointed out as the third great characteristic of the feudal system, clearly and entirely realized in facts. The character belongs to it, and distinguishes it from every other social state; but it has never had its full development, its efficacious and regular application; the feudal hierarchy has never been really constituted, has not lived according to the rules and forms which the publicists assign to it. The special nature of landed property, the fusion of sovereignty and property, are simple, evident facts, which are shown in history, just as they are conceived in theory. But the feudal society in its entirety