22 ON THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 



not of easy accomplishment when the means of communication were 

 so few and precarious ; and even these were obstructed by the want 

 of that vivifying principle of intercourse, a freely circulating coin- 

 age. A large estate was managed as a large piece of coin, by divid- 

 ing and cutting it into little pieces for the various uses of minor 

 import, and with still greater disadvantage in the prospect of yield- 

 ing it up without the hope of ever repossessing it. For the distant 

 estates which were conferred on distinguished individuals and fa- 

 vourites of the court, the crown received in return only a certain 

 proportion of personal services — current pieces of coin scarcely being 

 known at the time — which, when the value of landed property in- 

 creased with the progress of civilization, must have been wholly in- 

 adequate and out of all proportion to the value received, to the 

 great detriment of the crown, and increased pecuniary advantage of 

 the landholder. 



The pecuniary losses thus sustained by the crown were attended 

 with yet greater grievances with regard to the royal influence in 

 practical life generally ; since all civil functions, commissions, and 

 rights of administration of public affairs, were closely connected with 

 the possession of private property, with which the favourites were 

 invested by the crown. The monarch, then, as in all anterior as 

 well as subsequent ages, after having given away his substance, and 

 in fact the only means "of sustaining his power, met from the indi- 

 viduals whom he had enriched, opposition, resistance, and protesta- 

 tions nearly on every occasion when the royal decrees clashed with 

 their individual private interest. Thus the crown suffered materi- 

 ally by its bounty to its vassals, who, grown numerous and rich, 

 and consequently powerful, were able to defy the comparatively 

 poor monarch, whose fate, in many respects, resembled that of 

 Shakspeare's Lear. 



Neither the more arbitrary proceedings of granting benefices, as 

 practiced by the Marowingians, nor the more regular mode of re- 

 warding warriors by which Charles Martel laid the second and last- 

 ing foundation of the subsequent feudal system, and which Charle- 

 magne vainly endeavoured to convert into a public affair by blending 

 it with the ancient forms of the people — neither mode of proceeding 

 was calculated to improve the domestic economy of the crown ; on 

 the contrary, these two dynasties, the Marowingian and Carolingi- 

 an, grew so poor upon the throne that they were finally obliged, 

 when nothing was left them but the crown, to yield it up to the 

 richest and the most powerful of their own servants. The German 

 kings and emperors, through the custom of investing strangers with 

 their private property as soon as they were called to the throne. 



