OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. 19 



immediate chief of their own. These divisions with their chiefs, 

 though still acknowledging the supreme authority of their kingj 

 whose face they seldom saw, and with whose distant residence they 

 seldom came in contact, gradually became estranged, and silently, 

 with the change of their own condition, revolutionized that of the 

 monarch. The right of government, too, seems to have been little 

 heeded, that is, in the present sense of the term ; for the generals 

 of troops in times of war — the most eminent personages among the 

 Germanic tribes, next to the king — were not chosen by the latter, 

 but actually elected by the people from among the most worthy, 

 though least noted, candidates. — (Reges et nobilitate, duces ex vir- 

 tute sumunt. — Tacit. De Mor. Germ., c. 7). 



The expeditions of the northern lords, commonly called the emi- 

 graiions of nations, were, in fact, not so numerous and general as is 

 usually believed ; and, further, they were not so much the affair of 

 the nations, as of the chiefs who undertook such expeditions. Nei- 

 ther was the number which, in the first instance, marched from 

 their country, large. The chiefs appear to have gone forth at the 

 head of comparatively a few followers, but whose ranks were 

 swelled, in the course of their progress, by a host of adventurous 

 volunteers. Whoever the leader may have been, whether princes 

 of the royal blood (as with the Franconians), or individuals elected 

 from the midst of the people, this is certain, that the great bulk of 

 the numbers which formed the expeditions consisted chiefly of the 

 servants and dependents of the leaders ; since it can scarcely be sup- 

 posed that t\iQ freemen — i. e. the landholders — would abandon their 

 quiet possessions at home, and seek an uncertain fortune in foreign 

 countries : a supposition which is even contradicted by the fact that 

 the names of the modern nations which had settled in the subdued pro- 

 vinces of the ancient Roman Empire occurred also, for many subse- 

 quent centuries, in ancient Germany or Scandinavia ; a circumstance 

 from which we may reasonably suspect of exaggeration those reports of 

 the emigrations of the northern nations. The spoils of landed proper- 

 ty which were made in these wars, and which were wrenched, in the 

 provinces, either from private individuals or from the Roman fiscal, 

 were divided, of course, among those invaders, in proportion to the 

 part they took in the conquest, or rather to the number of warriors 

 they brought into the field. Thus it happened that extensive es- 

 tates fell to the lot of many a leader of these freebooters, over which 

 they ruled in the ancient spirit of Germanic independence and right 

 of landed property, almost as unlimited as the monarch himself; and 

 although the owners of minor estates were as independent within 

 their territories as those of the more extensive ones, yet the in flu- 



