Distinctions betw2en Conqueyor and Conquered. 129 



arts, and he left commerce and trade to tlie despised citizens or 

 detested Jew. The music that he had learnt to love was the 

 clash of arms ; that of chinking coins was to be scorned as 

 vulgar. His education, therefore, combined with his mode of 

 life to endow him with a savage energy and despotic will, 

 which only blood-letting could abate, and which involved the 

 company of more than half the able-bodied male population 

 that composed his barony, whenever opportunity or insult 

 drove him forth to gratify these qualities in the tented field. 



The essential feature of feudalism was the use of every kind 

 of land tenure as a source of warlike materials, and it was a 

 system which stamped itself into the character of the nation. 

 The glory of successful warfare was the Norman's profits of 

 proprietorship. When we come to treat of feudalism in detail, 

 we shall find that every landed proprietor had tc supply his 

 particular quota to the national military chest. These might 

 range from the special care of the king's person in battle to a 

 horn's alarm note in some exposed border-land ; from the gar- 

 risoning of a fortress to the interpretation of a hostile people's 

 dialect ; from the equipment of a squadron to the supply of a 

 war pennon. In fact, it was to the land and its produce that 

 Norman war ministers invariably resorted whenever the 

 national defence wanted funds. Similarly in ancient Rome it 

 was thus that all military expenditure was financed. There 

 is a close parallel in the pontium et viarum refectio, arcuum 

 munitio, and tirorum productio of theEoman, to the Brycgbote, 

 Burhbote and Fyrd of the Anglo-Saxon Trinoda Necessitas. 

 But here is a coincidence to which we must not give undue 

 importance. In every primitive fiscal system there would 

 naturally be an overwhelming preponderance of land taxation. 

 The finance officer of any rude Civil Service would discover 

 every facility in the assessment and collection of taxes on land 

 or produce, but the greatest possible difficulty in scheduling a 

 fiscal tariff on other sources of national wealth. Even the 

 Portoria tax of the Roman was an indirect charge on the soil. 

 All that we have said is opposed to any marked progress in 

 the development of landed property or husbandry of the soil. 

 The area of unreclaimed bog or forest waste was not likely to 



