had obtained in reality implied the eventual supremacy of the pope); how
an opportunity which occurred for reconstructing the empire of the West
under Charles the Fat was thwarted by the imbecility of that sovereign,
an imbecility so great that his nobles were obliged to depose him; how,
thereupon, a number of new kingdoms arose, and Europe fell, by an
inevitable necessity, into a political chaos; how, since there was thus
no protecting government, each great landowner had to protect himself,
and the rightfulness of private war became recognised; how, through this
evil state, the strange consequence ensued of a great increase in the
population, it becoming the interest of every lord to raise as many
peasants as he could, offering his lands on personal service, the value
of an estate being determined by the number of retainers it could
furnish, and hence arose the feudal system; how the monarchical
principle, once again getting the superiority, asserted its power in
Germany in Henry the Fowler and his descendants, the three Othos; how,
by these great monarchs, the subjection of Italy was accomplished, and
the morality of the German clergy vindicated by their attempts at the
reformation of the papacy, which fell to the last degree of degradation,
becoming, in the end, an appanage of the Counts of Tusculum, and,
shameful to be said, in some instances given by prostitutes to their
paramours or illegitimates, in some, to mere boys of precociously
dissolute life; before long, A.D. 1045, it was actually to be sold for
money. We have now approached the close of a thousand years from the
birth of Christ; the evil union of the Church and State, their
rivalries, their intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevitable
result, doing the same in the West that they had done in the East;
disorganizing the political system, and ending in a universal social
demoralization. The absorption of small properties into large estates
steadily increased the number of slaves; where there had once been many
free families, there was now found only a rich man. Even of this class
the number diminished by the same process of absorption, until there
were sparsely scattered here and there abbots and counts with enormous
estates worked by herds of slaves, whose numbers, since sometimes one
man possessed more than 20,000 of them, might deceive us, if we did not
consider the vast surface over which they were spread. Examined in that
way, the West of Europ