christian of all legal institutions, slavery, assumes a form
so barbarous that the legislator does not blush to place slaves, though
among them were Christians, on the same level with domestic animals.

This same irreconcilable opposition which appears in moral principles,
shows itself again in the political foundation of the assizes.
Originating in the clash of arms, grown up in the contests and
necessities of war, on a soil where nothing but constant war could save
it from annihilation, the system is purely martial--made for conflict
and strife. And still it is but one side which shows this character;
for, in the midst of this precarious existence of the new kingdom, is
seen an elevation of commerce till then unknown--a pursuit of trade for
which feudal ideas had provided no place. As Schiller declared that the
Crusaders laid the foundation of civil liberty in Europe, so we may say
that in the assizes of Jerusalem the narrow views in regard to civil
life, which controlled the west of Europe in the middle ages, were
exploded. Here the idea of the modern state dawned, though of course and
singularly enough, side by side with its absolute antithesis, the feudal
state in its purest form.

In the ancient view, it was natural that any man should rule who had the
power, and incomprehensible that any one should allow himself to be
ruled who could avoid it. Any other than a forced relation to a lord was
nonsense to antiquity, and the moral duty of obedience was unknown.

The idea of voluntary obedience, however, having dawned and become
penetrated with the light of Christianity, formed the first element of
the feudal system. No prescribed series of duties within the cold
enclosure of legal forms bound mutually to each other the lord and his
vassal. They were bound by the all-embracing feeling of fidelity. Hence
the Lombard law of feuds compares the relation to that of husband and
wife.

While on the one hand, in the youth of this institution, the virtues
which spring from reciprocal fidelity and love developed themselves from
this relation--a relation inwardly and mutually binding lord and vassal,
and resulting in holding together all the members of the state--so on
the other hand, where there is no restraint to insolence and arbitrary
despotism, except that found in the mere sense of moral obligation, they
transcend all bounds, and find their natural reaction in the resistance
of the subject, destroying the very idea of a