Reformation it partially shook
itself free from their influence, it instantly supplied their place
with Law. It is difficult to say whether the religious system of
Calvin or the religious system of the Arminians has the more markedly
legal character.

The vast influence of the specific jurisprudence of Contract produced
by the Romans upon the corresponding department of modern Law belongs
rather to the history of mature jurisprudence than to a treatise like
the present. It did not make itself felt till the school of Bologna
founded the legal science of modern Europe. But the fact that the
Romans, before their Empire fell, had so fully developed the
conception of Contract becomes of importance at a much earlier period
than this. Feudalism, I have repeatedly asserted, was a compound of
archaic barbarian usage with Roman law; no other explanation of it is
tenable, or even intelligible. The earliest social forms of the feudal
period differ in little from the ordinary associations in which the
men of primitive civilisations are everywhere seen united. A Fief was
an organically complete brotherhood of associates whose proprietary
and personal rights were inextricably blended together. It had much in
common with an Indian Village Community and much in common with a
Highland clan. But still it presents some phenomena which we never
find in the associations which are spontaneously formed by beginners
in civilisation. True archaic communities are held together not by
express rules, but by sentiment, or, we should perhaps say, by
instinct; and new comers into the brotherhood are brought within the
range of this instinct by falsely pretending to share in the
blood-relationship from which it naturally springs. But the earliest
feudal communities were neither bound together by mere sentiment nor
recruited by a fiction. The tie which united them was Contract, and
they obtained new associates by contracting with them. The relation of
the lord to the vassals had originally been settled by express
engagement, and a person wishing to engraft himself on the brotherhood
by _commendation_ or _infeudation_ came to a distinct understanding as
to the conditions on which he was to be admitted. It is therefore the
sphere occupied in them by Contract which principally distinguishes
the feudal institutions from the unadulterated usages of primitive
races. The lord had many of the characteristics of a patriarchal
chieftain, but his prerogative was