OP ENGLISH LIBERTY. 21 



ing themselves up to a level with their masters, issued forth as vo- 

 lunteers in new expeditions, in the hope of grasping some land, as 

 their lords had done. Thus a sort of moral revolution occurred, and 

 the landholders found themselves involved in its vortex ; and 

 though rich and powerful as far as the possession of wealth went, 

 yet they could not fail of being convinced that their wealth and 

 numbers were but as a breath of air compared with the physical 

 strength of the host to which they were opposed. In this emer- 

 gency, all parties were willing to appeal to the crown, which, as we 

 have before observed, was looked up to at least as the nominal head 

 in political and judicial affairs. Under these circumstances, the mo- 

 narch, like the ancient Romans, soon transformed himself from an 

 impartial judge into an arbitrary master, and so ordered his policy 

 as to reduce, under the classification of nobles and peasants (freemen 

 and slaves), the whole population to the condition of subjects to the 

 crown. Thus the unwary multitude, in its negotiation with the 

 nominal head of the realm, lost its actual independence ; and the 

 monarch, seizing the favourable opportunity, converted the nominal 

 into real power, affecting at once public liberty in general. Hence- 

 forth the whole of the population was bound to perform service to 

 the crown, according to their capacity, in times of war and peace ; 

 while the monarch swayed over the mass of the people, like the /wz- 

 perators of old, in the full power of despotism, rendering all classes 

 subservient to their will, converting the private right of a lord over 

 his dependents into that of government, and palliating the services 

 which the freemen were bound to perform by some gaudy title and 

 distinction, which, in fact, only marked their degree of dependence 

 on the crown, and the kind of service expected from them at court. 



The origin of our modern social relations, as well as our pedi- 

 grees, are lost, certainly in darkness, not in the clouds, as some 

 court chroniclers would have us believe ; but rather in that earthy 

 mass of the mother evil from which they sprung. The social ties 

 of the middle ages were wrought by the hand of slavery and bond- 

 age ; and the actual human nature of all classes, from the haughty 

 liveried vassal of the crown down to the humble soccager, was in- 

 delibly stained and imprinted with the stamp of abject servitude. 



The compass of the rights and privileges of the crown pointed 

 still, despite their reforms, to the source from whence they sprung 

 — to the immunity of landed property, and which contained in it- 

 self the germ of its own destruction. At that early period of civili- 

 zation no notion was entertained as to the management of estates 

 in distant countries, without disposing of them at once into other 

 hands. Indeed, the control and regulation of distant estates was 



