the tenth century it had
acquired full force.

This order of things being thus well defined, we find ourselves face to
face with an indisputable historic fact: no period, no system has ever,
in France, remained so odious to the public instincts. And this
antipathy is not peculiar to our age, nor merely the fruit of that great
revolution which not long since separated, as by a gulf, the French
present from its past. Go back to any portion of French history, and
stop where you will; and you will everywhere find the feudal system
considered, by the mass of the population, a foe to be fought and fought
down at any price. At all times, whoever dealt it a blow has been
popular in France.

The reasons for this fact are not all, or even the chief of them, to be
traced to the evils which, in France, the people had to endure under the
feudal system. It is not evil plight which is most detested and feared
by peoples; they have more than once borne, faced, and almost wooed it,
and there are woful epochs, the memory of which has remained dear. It is
in the political character of feudalism, in the nature and shape of its
power, that we find lurking that element of popular aversion which, in
France at least, it has never ceased to inspire.

It was a confederation of petty sovereigns, of petty despots, unequal
amongst themselves, and having, one towards another, certain duties and
rights, but invested in their own domains, over their personal and direct
subjects, with arbitrary and absolute power. That is the essential
element of the feudal system; therein it differs from every other
aristocracy, every other form of government.

There has been no scarcity in this world of aristocracies and despotisms.
There have been peoples arbitrarily governed, nay, absolutely possessed
by a single man, by a college of priests, by a body of patricians. But
none of these despotic governments was like the feudal system.

In the case where the sovereign power has been placed in the hands of a
single man, the condition of the people has been servile and woful. At
bottom the feudal system was somewhat better; and it will presently be
explained why. Meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that that condition
often appeared less burdensome, and obtained more easy acceptance than
the feudal system. It was because, under the great absolute monarchies,
men did, nevertheless, obtain some sort of equality and tranquillity. A
shameful equality and a fa