ate, every
petty baron a burglar, while the people, alternately the prey of duke,
prelate, and seignor, shorn and butchered like sheep, esteem it happiness
to sell themselves into slavery, or to huddle beneath the castle walls of
some little potentate, for the sake of his wolfish protection. Here they
build hovels, which they surround from time to time with palisades and
muddy entrenchments; and here, in these squalid abodes of ignorance and
misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the spirit of Commerce,
descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and cowardly stupor. A
longer night was to intervene; however, before the dawn of day.

The crown-appointed functionaries had been, of course, financial
officers. They collected the revenue of the sovereign, one third of which
slipped through their fingers into their own coffers. Becoming sovereigns
themselves, they retain these funds for their private emolument. Four
principal sources yielded this revenue: royal domains, tolls and imposts,
direct levies and a pleasantry called voluntary contributions or
benevolences. In addition to these supplies were also the proceeds of
fines. Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a considerable branch
of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a
discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the misdeeds which man is
prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny,
arson, rape--all offences against the person were commuted for a definite
price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed
by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave,
which were punished with death. It is a natural inference that, as the
royal treasury was enriched by these imposts, the sovereign would hardly
attempt to check the annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was
increased. Still, although the moral sense is shocked by a system which
makes the ruler's interest identical with the wickedness of his people,
and holds out a comparative immunity in evil-doing for the rich, it was
better that crime should be punished by money rather than not be punished
at all. A severe tax, which the noble reluctantly paid and which the
penniless culprit commuted by personal slavery, was sufficiently unjust
as well as absurd, yet it served to mitigate the horrors with which
tumult, rapine, and murder enveloped those early days. Gradually, as the
light of reason broke upon t