OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. - 23 



divested themselves, at the same time, of the only means of sustain- 

 ing their regal authority hy substantial dignity and independent 

 opulence, or of securing the throne to their descendents. Indeed, 

 had this imprudent lavish custom of sacrificing their private pro- 

 perty, been followed up by subsequent princes, Germanic Europe 

 could never have assumed the appearance of union beyond that of a 

 confederacy, or enjoyed more liberty than is common to a republi- 

 can oligarchy. 



A similar fate, arising from the same quarter, might have await- 

 ed the mass of the people from the development of the feudal sys- 

 tem, had it not been for the revival of the Roman law, from which 

 the doctrines of the Regalia were borrowed. By this means a new 

 system of supreme authority was devised for the crown, the influ- 

 ence of which soon spread itself abroad throughout society, and 

 into the very bosom of practical life. 



It was at Bologna, in Italy, where the professors of jurisprudence 

 first began to teach the doctrines of monarchical prerogative, as 

 founded in the Roman law. But the German emperors were too 

 late in acting upon the principles of their newly-discovered power ; 

 and in their attempts to employ them against the rights of the ris- 

 ing and flourishing cities of Italy, the crown lost its only chance of 

 defence and support against its more powerful vassals. In France, 

 however, since the third dynasty of Hugot Capet and his successors, 

 the monarchs, being at first confirmed in the legitimate possession 

 of the throne by but a few of their vassals, were naturally driven 

 to look to their own resources and tangible strength ; and knowing, 

 at the same time, that waste or inattention in these particulars was 

 tantamount to a relinquishment of their crown, they took great 

 care, not only not to squander their estates, but to improve them by 

 all possible means, as the only certain basis of the security of their 

 usurped throne. Thus was laid the first stone of the foundation of 

 a real arbitrary monarchy, the full development of which was 

 greatly favoured by the circumstance that the administration of the 

 judicial courts and tribunals was, in consequence of the multiplica- 

 tion and complication of public and private litigious suits, yielded 

 up by the martial nobles to the more learned and persevering law- 

 yers, who, having no estates of their own to defend against the 

 crown, gradually regained for that power what had been formerly 

 wrenched from it by the selfish vassals, in putting into practice, es- 

 pecially since the reign of Louis the Saint, the legal yet novel view, 

 viz. that the most important rights formerly attached to landed 

 property were now to be transferred to the supreme authority of the 

 realm, leaving nothing to the owners of the estates beyond the en- 



