The EUROPEAN LEGISLATURES. 173 



reftraints and burdens to which the more ancient charters of in- 

 corporation, as well as Doomfday, prove that the inhabitants of 

 towns were fubjecled, have inferred, that they were no better 

 than flaves, and never could have had fufficient confequence to 

 refort to the diet. Other authors, again, have maintained, that 

 the miferable fituation of towns arofe only in the corruption of 

 the feudal fyftem, and that charters conferred on them no more 

 than a reftoration of their ancient liberties. Both appear to 

 have been partly miftaken in thefe opinions, and partly in the 

 right. 



THE noblefle citadins certainly once abounded in the greater 

 towns, both in Britain and on the continent. And it was na- 

 tural it mould be fo, as long as towns were places of defence, 

 and not manufacturing communities. In Germany, we have 

 frequent mention of city nobles, under the name of patricians, 

 or of hauflegenoflen and muntzer (confreres and monnoyers), 

 from being united into a fociety, to which the care of the coin- 

 age or mint was committed. In that country, it is well known 

 that this order flourifhed long before the twelfth century, when 

 HENRY V. emancipated the fervile artifans, and LOTHAIRE II. 

 granted charters of incorporation j that it long afterwards pre- 

 ferved fcrupuloufly a feparation of blood from the fimple free 

 burgefTes, endeavouring, as formerly, to monopolize the offices 

 of lagmen, echevins or jurats ; and that, from a remote anti- 

 quity till about the times of CONRAD IV. it maintained its rank, 

 and yielded military fervice on the fame footing with the nobles 

 of the country, from whom there is evidence that many belong- 

 ing to it were defcended *. In Italy, again, it cannot be difputed, 

 that, long before the reign of HENRY V. the cities were bodies 

 politic, of much confequence : And the ariflocracy which an- 

 ciently prevailed in all of them, as well as in Germany, of which 



Switzerland 



* IN 928, the emperor HENRY I. caufed a ninth part of the country noblefle to refide 

 in the towns on the eaftern frontier of Germany, in order to guard it againil the 

 Sclavonic nations. 



