HD 

 V, 1 



PREFACE. 



" Si I'on veut lire I'admirable ouvrage de Tacite sur les mcBurs 

 des Germains, on verra que c'est d'eux que les Anglois ont tire 

 I'idee de leur gouvernement politique, Ce beau systeme a ete 

 trouve dans les bois," Thus wrote Montesquieu more tlian 

 a century ago, and though the position assumed by him in the 

 first sentence has been both strenuously attacked and defended 

 in these latter days, there are few who will deny that our 

 English Constitution originated in the forests. "Whether they 

 were those of the Gemeindes Anger of Germany, the Ager 

 Publicus of Rome, or the wastes of Britain, remains to be 

 seen ; but that our laws owed their beginning to the agricul- 

 tural polity of nomadic nationalities, when at length they 

 finally settled on ground hitherto left to nature's cultivation, 

 admits of no doubt whatever. The soil of a country was at 

 first connected with its inhabitants as a nation, and centuries 

 elapsed before it came to be transferred to individuals. As 

 long as the militar}'" spirit predominated, a contempt for every- 

 thing connected with labour prevailed, as a natural conse- 

 quence, and the land was regarded solely as a means of furnish- 

 ing warlike materials. Thus we shall find that the originators 

 of the manorial system assumed an attitude in which property 

 in people predominated over that in land, and the tenure by 

 which the land was held was of less importance than the juris- 

 diction possessed over its inhabitants, Montesquieu has also 

 shown that the laws and ethics of a nation take their character 

 from the nature of its soil. It was the barrenness of the Attic 

 soil, he asserts, which established there a popular government, 

 the fruitfulness of that of Lacedsemon which gave rise to an 

 aristocratic form of government. Fertile countries are always 



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