What can be more artificial than such a system? Its object is to bring into concurrence the most various modes of choice the nomination by the ancient magistrates themselves, election by the population and lot. It is evidently to weaken the empire of the popular passions, to struggle against the perils of an election accomplished by a numerous and changeable multitude.

We find, in the municipal system of the middle ages, many precautions and artifices of this kind. These precautions, these artifices clearly show what principle predominated therein. They endeavour to refine, to restrain, to correct, election, but it is always to election that they address themselves. The choice of the superior by the inferior, of the magistrates by the population, such is the dominant characteristic of the organization of modern boroughs. The choice among the inferiors by the superiors, the renewing of the aristocracy by the aristocracy itself, such is the fundamental principle of the Roman city.

You see whatever route we take we arrive at the same point, despite the influence of the Roman municipal system over the municipal system of the middle ages; despite the uninterrupted tie which unites them, the difference is radical. The aristocratic spirit predominates in the one, the demoeratic spirit in the other. There is a union and a revolution at the same time.

There are still some scattered facts which will confirm, clear up, and illustrate this result, at which we arrive from all sides. Which are the towns in France which, in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, present the most aristocratic aspect? They are the towns of the south, that is to say, the boroughs of Roman origin, where the principles of the Roman municipal system had preserved the greatest influence. The line of demarcation, for example, between the burghers and the possessors of fiefs, was much less profound in the south than in the north. The burghers of Montpelier, of Toulouse, of Beaucaire, and of many other cities, had the right of being created knights as well as the feudal lords, a right not possessed by the burghers of the northern boroughs, where the struggle between the two classes was much more violent, and where, consequently, the democratic spirit was much more ardent.

Let us for a moment leave France: what do we see in

Italy? the constitution of many towns there appears very analogous to that of the ancient Roman city. Why is this? First, because the Roman municipal system was there more alive, and exercised more influence; next, because feudalism having been very weak in Italy, we do not see that long and terrible struggle between the lords and the burghers, which holds so much place in our history.

In the French boroughs, and particularly in those of the north and the centre, it was not within the city itself that the combat was established between the aristocracy and the democracy, there the democratic spirit prevailed. It was against an external aristocracy, against the feudal aristocracy, that the burgher democracy strove. Within the Italian republics, on the contrary, there was a struggle between a municipal aristocracy and a democracy, because there was no external struggle which absorbed all the forces of the cities.

It is needless, I think, to insist farther: these facts are sufficient. The distinction between the Roman municipal system and that of the middle ages is clear and profound. Doubtless, Roman municipality has contributed much to the modern borough; many towns have passed, by an almost insensible transition from the ancient curia to our bourgeoisie; but although the Roman municipality has not perished, although we cannot say that at any particular epoch it ceased to exist, in order at a later period to be replaced by other institutions; although, in a word, there has been no solution of continuity, yet there has been veritable revolution; and, while perpetuating themselves, the municipal institutions of the Roman world were transformed in order to give rise to a municipal organization founded upon other principles, animated with another spirit, and which has played an entirely different part in general society, in the state, than that which the curia played under the empire.

This is the great fact hitherto overlooked, or ill comprehended, which I engaged to bring to light. In our next lecture, I shall endeavour rapidly to place before you the revolution which the modern municipal system experi nced in the feudal period, from the moment when the boroughs first appear and are constituted, to the moment when the reign of feudalism ends; that is to say, from the end of the tenth to the commencement of the fifteenth century.

NINETEENTH LECTURE.

History of the third estate from the 11th to the 14th century-Vicissitudes of its situation-Rapid decay of boroughs, properly so called-By what causes-1. By the centralization of feudal powers-2. By the patronage of kings and great suzerains-3. By the internal disorders of towns→→ Decline of the borough of Laon-The third estate did not fall at the same time as the borough; on the contrary, it developed and strengthened itself-History of the towns administered by the officers of the kingInfluence of royal judges and administrators over the formation and progress of the third estate-What is to be thought of the communal liberties and their results ?-Comparison of France and Holland-Conclusion of the course.

You have been present at the formation and at the first development of the third estate. I have endeavoured to make you understand the situation, whether amidst society in general, or in the interior of towns, during the feudal period. But that period lasted for three centuries, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. For this long interval, the third estate did not remain immovable, identical. A social condition still so precarious, a class still so weak, and so rudely tossed about among superior forces, must have been subject to great agitations, to frequent vicissitudes. We shall study them in the present lecture.

It is here especially that the distinction of which I have spoken. between the third estate and the commons, becomes important. When in arriving at the end of the feudal period and at the commencement of the fourteenth century, one inquires where was that middle population which was called the bourgeoisie, we see with surprise that the boroughs, properly so called, are on the decline, and that still the third estate, considered as a social class, is in progress; that the bour

geois is more numerous, more powerful, although the boroughs Lave lost much of their liberty and power.

A priori, and considering the general state of society at this epoch, this fact is very easily explained. You see what boroughs, properly so called, were: towns, having a jurisdiction of their own, making war, coining money, almost governing themselves; in a word, petty republics, nearly independent. The expression, although extravagant, gives a sufficiently exact idea of the fact. Let us seek for a moment what these boroughs might, what they must have become, amidst society from the twelfth to the fourteenth century; we shall see that they must almost necessarily and rapidly have declined.

The boroughs were petty societies, petty local states, formed by virtue of that movement which burst forth about the middle of the ninth century, and which tended to destroy all social organization in any way extensive, all central power in order to leave standing only very limited associations, purely local powers. In the same way, as the society of the possessors of fiefs could not be constituted in a general manner, and reduced itself to a multitude of petty sovereigns, each master in his domains, and but just united among themselves by a weak and disordered hierarchy, so it happened in towns. Their existence was entirely local, isolated, confined within their walls, or in a very narrow territory. They had escaped, by insurrection, from the petty local sovereigns upon whom they had formerly depended; they had in this manner acquired a true political life, but without extending their relations, without attaching themselves to any common centre, to any general organization.

If things had always remained in the same state, if the boroughs had never had to do with any but the lords who lived by their side, and from whom they had conquered their independence, it is possible that they might have preserved all that independence, that they might even have made new progress. They had, against a neighbouring master, given proof of force, and taken guarantees of liberty. If they had never had to do with any other but him, they would probably have maintained the struggle with more and more advantage, and seen at once their force and liberty then increase.

This is what happened in Italy. The cities, the Italian

I

republics, after having once conquered the neighbouring lords, were not long before they absorbed them. These found themselves obliged to come and live within their walls; and the feudal nobility, the greater part at least, was thus metamorphosed into a republican bourgeoisie. But whence came this good fortune of the towns of Italy? From the fact that they never had to do with a central and very superior power; the struggle was almost always between them and the private, local lords, from whom they had conquered their independence. In France, things took an entirely different course. You know (for the fact was recognised when we were occupied with feudal society itself) that most of the possessors of fiefs, of these petty local sovereigns, gradually lost, if not their domains and liberty, at least their sovereignty, and that there was formed, under the name of duchy, viscounty, county, suzerainties, much stronger and more extensive, real petty royalties, which absorbed the principal rights of the possessors of fiefs dispersed over their territory, and, merely by the inequality of forces, reduced them to a very subordinate condition.

Most of the boroughs, then, soon found themselves face to face, no longer with the simple lord who lived by their side, and whom they had once conquered, but with a suzerain far more powerful, far more formidable, who had usurped, and exercised to his own profit, the rights of a multitude of lords. The borough of Amiens, for example, had forced a charter and efficacious guarantees from the count of Amiens. But when the county of Amiens was united to the crown of France, the borough, in order to maintain its privileges, had to struggle against the king of France, and no longer against the count of Amiens. Assuredly, that struggle was more severe and the chance far less favourable. The same fact took place in numerous directions, and the situation of the boroughs was seriously compromised.

There was but one way for them to resume their ground, and to struggle with any hope of success against their new and far more powerful adversaries. All the boroughs dependent upon one suzerain should have confederated, and formed a league for the defence of their liberty, as the Lombard cities lid against Frederic Barbarossa and the emperors. But confederation, of all systems of association and government,