736 



BOROUGH. 



Borough, with high walls, forms a kind of citadel, and is built 

 v in a corner of the town. Provisions are sold in pub- 



lic markets within the city ; but for other articles, a 

 weekly market is held, as in Barbary, without the 

 walls. Near this city there runs a small river, which 

 falls into the Bahr-el-gazalle. East Long. 23 10', 

 North Lat. 19 45'. (i) 



BOROUGH, or Burgh, (Sax. Borge, Borgh, 

 or Borhoe ; Germ. Burg ; Lat. Burgus,) is a term 

 frequently used to denote a corporate town, which is 

 not a city ; but, at present, it is more commonly ap- 

 plied to a town, whether corporate or not, which 

 possesses the privilege of sending representatives to 

 Parliament. 



By some etymologists and antiquarians, the term 

 borough is supposed to have been primarily applied 

 to a tything, or small community, consisting of ten 

 families, who were mutually bound as pledges for the 

 good behaviour of each other ; and this conjecture 

 derives some plausibility from the subdivision of the 

 counties in England into hundreds, and tythings, or 

 towns, which appears to owe its origin to Alfred, 

 (Hume's Hist. ch. ii.), and from the similarity of 

 the term to the word in the Teutonic dialects, (biirge, 

 burg-shaft, ) signifying, pledge or security. In fact, 

 these tythings, decennaries, or fribourgs, afterwards 

 received the name of frank-pledges. It may be ob- 

 served, however, that, to this day, the word burg in 

 the German language, signifies a castle or place of 

 strength ; which seems to confirm the observation of 

 Verstegan, that the term borough denotes a town, 

 having a wall or some kind of inclosure about it ; so 

 that all places which, among our ancestors, had the 

 denomination of borough, were, in one way or other, 

 fenced or fortified. Indeed, it is evident, that, at the 

 period when towns began to be formed in modern 

 times, they must either have been in some manner 

 fortified themselves, or placed within the protection 

 of a nobleman's castle or residence. 



But, leaving the obscure labyrinth of etymologi- 

 cal conjecture, it is of more importance to inquire in- 

 to the origin and progress of towns and communities, 

 which have had such a decided influence on European 

 government. 



During the wild and lawless periods which imme- 

 diately succeeded the subversion of the Roman em- 

 pire, the proprietors of land, (that is, the nobility,) 

 seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on 

 their own estates, in the midst of their tenants and 

 retainers. Many other individuals, too weak, singly, 

 to defend themselves against the restless and rapaci- 

 ous spirit of the feudal chiefs and their dependants, 

 % sought protection from the caprice and violence of 



their more powerful cppressors, by combining toge- 

 ther, and inhabiting within the precincts of some for- 

 tified place. There they industriously cultivated the 

 useful arts and manufactures ; and when united in 

 6uch situations, were the more easily enabled to de- 

 fend their persons and properties against the attacks 

 of invaders. For some time, however, their political 

 condition was but little different from that of the en- 

 slaved peasantry. They were, for the most part, 

 obliged to court the protection or patronage of some 

 powerful prince, nobleman, or ecclesiastic, near whose 

 castle or residence they had established themselves ; 



under whose clientship they accordingly stood, and Borough, 

 to whom they were obliged to pay a considerable an- 

 nual tribute, as the price of the protection which they 

 enjoyed. Some conception may be formed of the 

 degraded state in which the inhabitants of towns 

 were then placed, from an enumeration of the privi- 

 leges which were afterwards successively conferred 

 upon them. The people, as Dr Smith observes, 

 (Wealth of Nations, b. iii. ch. 3.) to whom it is 

 granted as a privilege, that they might give away their 

 own daughters in marriage without the consent of 

 their lord ; that, upon their death, their own chil- 

 dren, and not their lord, should succeed to their 

 goods ; and that they might dispose of their own ef- 

 fects by will ; must, before these grants, have been 

 either altogether, or very nearly in the same state of 

 villanage with the occupiers of land in the country. 



There were dther analagous causes which also con- 

 tributed to the increase of towns, during the dark 

 ages. In those turbulent times, when law and go- 

 vernment were only respected, in so far as they were 

 seconded by the immediate application of constrain- 

 ing force, the princes of Europe found it extremely 

 dimcHlt to protect their remote subjects, and particu- 

 larly those who inhabited the frontier provinces. On 

 this account, they found it necessary to encourage 

 the formation of towns, which should at once serve as 

 a protection against domestic disturbances, and as a 

 bulwark against foreign invasion. In Germany, 

 for instance, in addition to the towns which already 

 existed, the Emperor Henry I. founded several others 

 in Saxony, Thuringia, &c. which he caused to be forti- 

 fied ; and, at the same time, conferred upon the inhabi- 

 tants several important privileges. The same policy was 

 pursued by his successors, and their example was imi- 

 tated by the nobility. In England, even the princi- 

 pal cities appear, by Domesday-book, to have been, 

 at the time of the conquest, little better than villa- 

 ges : but under the first princes of the Norman line, 

 the towns and boroughs gradually rose to import- 

 ance; and in the reign of King Henry II. they were 

 so highly privileged, that if a bondman or servant 

 remained in a borough a year and a day, such resi- 

 dence entitled him to the rank of a freeman. 



During the 1 2th and 13th centuries, a remarkable 

 revolution took place, in regard to the condition of 

 towns, which powerfully operated upon political go- 

 vernment, throughout the whole of Europe. This 

 slow and silent revolution was partly a natural con- 

 sequence of the riches acquired by the inhabitants of 

 towns, by their application to industry and com- 

 merce, and was also partly owing to a new line of 

 policy which the princes of Europe found it expe- 

 dient to adopt. They had, at first, endeavoured to 

 make use of the influence of the clergy, in order to 

 repress the overgrown and formidable power of the 

 nobility; but having, at length, gradually lost the 

 greater part of their authority over the church, they 

 were forced to look round for some other means of 

 diminishing the weight of their powerful vassals. 

 Such a counterbalance naturally presented itself in 

 the increasing wealth and importance of the towns, 

 and accordingly we find, that during the period above 

 mentioned, the inhabitants of towns began, by de- 

 grees, to emerge out of that state of dependence and 



