The EUROPEAN LEGISLATURES. 







THE leading propofition in the foregoing hypothecs is, that 

 the diets of the European Mates were originally national aflein- 

 blies, containing, dejure, the whole warriors belonging to them, 

 conduced by their local chiefs or magifbrates, who, together 

 with the king and dignified ecclefiaftics, formed a fenate or 

 council that, in general, directed the common refolves. I pro- 

 pofe, in this part of the paper, to confider the grounds of this 

 proportion, in the firfl place ; and then, chiefly with a view to 

 our own country, examine the evidence relative to the delibera- 

 tive council which I have afcribed to the diets, and to the 

 fituation of towns, in order to juflify the hypothecs, in dating 

 that the former was an aflembly of the magiftracy, and that the 

 latter reforted to the diets, in the fame manner as the country 

 diftrids. 



CONSIDERING how certainly we know, that the warriors or li- 

 ber I homines of every tithing and hundred were bound to attend 

 perfonally, not only on the meetings of thefe diflricts, but in the 

 general meetings of the province or mire, where they not only- 

 were reviewed by the chief magiftrate, but aflifled in the judicial 

 and political deliberations which the bufinefs of their quarter 

 reqxiired, it might have been imagined, that a natural analogy 

 would have led authors to agree in the fuppofition, that the na- 

 tional diet was nothing more than an aggregate of the provin- 

 cial diets, in the fame manner as the provincial diets were ag- 

 gregates of thofe of lefler -diftricls. The difficulty we feel in 

 accommodating our rcafonings to a period, when both the bu- 

 linefs and the amufement of a freeman confided in making- 

 war, and when the habits of the migratory life of fhepherd 

 tribes were ftill recent, and rendered the manners of fociety ex- 

 tremely different from our own, is the only reafon I can offer 

 for this opinion having met with little attention or regard. 

 Strong arguments in favour of it, from the hiftory of the an- 

 cient German nations, I flatter myfelf, will be fuggefled from 

 what has been flared in the former parts of this paper. Thofe 



