i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



middle of the thirteenth century there began in England a mitigation 

 of villanage, by limitation of labor-services and commutation of them 

 for money, and that in the fourteenth century the transformation of 

 a servile into a free population had in great measure taken place ; 

 while in France, as in other Continental countries, the old condition 

 survived and became worse. As Mr. Freeman says of this period, " In 

 England villanage was on the whole dying out, while in many other 

 countries it was getting harder and harder." Besides this spreading 

 substitution of contract for status, which, taking place first in the indus- 

 trial centers, the towns, afterward went on in the rural districts, there 

 was going on an analogous enfranchisement of the noble class : the 

 enforced military obligations of vassals were more and more replaced 

 by money payments of scutages, so that, by King John's time, the 

 fighting-services of the upper class had been to a great extent com- 

 pounded for, like the labor-services of the lower class. After di- 

 minished restraints over persons, there came diminished invasions 

 of property by the charter, arbitrary tallages on towns and non- 

 military king's tenants were checked ; and, while the aggressive ac- 

 tions of the state were thus decreased, its protective actions were 

 extended : provisions were made that justice should be neither 

 sold, delayed, nor denied. All which changes were toward those 

 social arrangements which we see characterize the industrial type. 

 Then, in the next place, we have the subsequently-occurring rise of a 

 representative government ; which, as shown in a preceding chapter 

 by another line of inquiry, is at once the product of industrial growth 

 and the form proper to the industrial type. But in France none of 

 these changes took place. Villanage remaining unmitigated, con- 

 tinued to comparatively late times ; compounding for military obliga- 

 tion of vassal to suzerain was less general ; and, when there arose 

 tendencies toward the establishment of an assembly expressing the 

 popular will, they proved abortive. Detailed comparisons of subse- 

 quent periods and their changes would detain us too long : it must 

 suffice to indicate the leading facts. Beginning with the date at which, 

 under the influences just indicated, parliamentary government was 

 finally established in England, we find that for a century and a half, 

 down to the Wars of the Roses, the internal disturbances were few 

 and unimportant compared with those which took place in France ; 

 while at the same time (remembering that the wars between England 

 and France, habitually taking place on French soil, affected the state 

 of France more than that of England) we note that France carried on 

 serious wars with Flanders, Castile, and Navarre, besides the struggle 

 with Burgundy ; the result being that, while in England popular power 

 as expressed by the House of Commons became settled and increased, 

 such power as the States-General had acquired in France dwindled 

 away. Not forgetting (hat by the "Wars of the Roses, lasting over 

 thirty years, there was initiated a return toward absolutism, let us 



