32 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [^330 



smaller groups were left, . . . absolute property of their masters, 

 . . . inheritable chattle of the manor.^s 



Thus we seek in vain for anything that might be con- 

 strued as a precedent for the application of the principle of 

 popular consent in the practical international relations of 

 those early states and peoples who, in the inner affairs of 

 their political life, were the most jealous of popular rights 

 and prerogatives, at least as far as they, as freemen or 

 citizens, were concerned. 



The earliest recorded manifestations of popular consent 

 or refusal in the case of the transfer of sovereignty or 

 allegiance we find in France, 



Soliere enumerates as plebiscites a number of cases where 

 peoples, by public expression, give or withhold their consent 

 to changes of allegiance proposed by their feudal lords, or 

 choose or reject a new lord by the assertion of their own 

 will. The cases cited belong to a time when feudalism in 

 France had long ceased to be in its prime, but they are sup- 

 posedly based on what Soliere calls the droit fcodal, or the 

 ancien droit. " We do not fear to affirm," he writes, " that 

 in the 14th century and at the beginning of the 15th cen- 

 tury, it is a rule generally enough admitted, that no an- 

 nexation can be pronounced without the assent of the people 

 or the notables." And in the last chapter he says : " it is a 

 rule generally admitted and founded on the principles of the 

 droit ancien, that in the 12th and 13th centuries no annexa- 

 tion can be pronounced without the assent of the people 

 and the notables."^" 



Soliere does not, in substantiation of his affirmation, ad- 

 duce documentary evidence for any case prior to the middle 

 of the 13th century. 



In the chapter on the duties of the seigneur, Achille Lu- 

 chaire quotes Fulbert de Chartres and the Etablissetnents 



^^ K. W. R. von Rotteck, Das Staats-Lexikon. Encyklopadie der 

 sammtlichen Staatswissenschaften fiir alle Stande, hrsg. von Carl 

 von Rotteck und Carl Welcker, Altona, 1845-1848, Rotteck, Ab- 

 trettjng. 



*" E. Soliere, Le plebiscite dans I'annexion, Paris, 1901, pp. 7, 156. 



