ned circle, when means of action and expansion are wanting to men,
communities become petty and local, just as the thoughts and existence of
their members are. Such was the state of things in the ninth and tenth
centuries; there was no general and fructifying idea, save the Christian
creed; no great intellectual vent; no great national feeling; no easy and
rapid means of communication; mind and life were both confined in a
narrow space, and encountered, at every step, stoppages and obstacles
well nigh insurmountable. At the same time, by the fall of the empires
of Rome and of Charlemagne, men regained possession of the rough and
ready individual liberties which were the essential characteristic of
Germanic manners: Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, Saxons, Lombards, none
of these new peoples had lived as the Greeks and Romans had, under the
sway of an essentially political idea, the idea of city, state, and
fatherland: they were free men, and not citizens; comrades, not members
of one and the same public body. They gave up their vagabond life; they
settled upon a soil conquered by themselves and partitioned amongst
themselves; and there they lived each by himself, master of himself and
all that was his, family, servitors, husbandmen, and slaves: the
territorial domain became the fatherland, and the owner remained a free
man, a local and independent chieftain, at his own risk and peril. And
this, quite naturally, grew up feudal France, when the new comers,
settled in their new abodes, were no more swayed or hampered by the vain
attempt to re-establish the Roman empire.

The consequences of such a state of things and of such a disposition of
persons were rapidly developed. Territorial ownership became the
fundamental characteristic of and warranty for independence and social
importance. Local sovereignty, if not complete and absolute, at least
in respect of its principal rights, right of making war, right of
judicature, right of taxation, and right of regulating the police, became
one with the territorial ownership, which before long grew to be
hereditary, whether, under the title of _alleu (allodium)_, it had been
originally perfectly independent and exempt from any feudal tie, or,
under the title of benefice, had arisen from grants of land made by the
chieftain to his followers, on condition of certain obligations. The
offices, that is, the divers functions, military or civil, conferred by
the king on his lieges, al