kings was surrounded with convenient yards and stables, for the cattle
and the poultry; the garden was planted with useful vegetables; the
various trades, the labors of agriculture, and even the arts of hunting
and fishing, were exercised by servile hands for the emolument of the
sovereign; his magazines were filled with corn and wine, either for
sale or consumption; and the whole administration was conducted by
the strictest maxims of private economy. This ample patrimony was
appropriated to supply the hospitable plenty of Clovis and his
successors; and to reward the fidelity of their brave companions who,
both in peace and war, were devoted to their persona service. Instead of
a horse, or a suit of armor, each companion, according to his rank, or
merit, or favor, was invested with a _benefice_, the primitive name,
and most simple form, of the feudal possessions. These gifts might be
resumed at the pleasure of the sovereign; and his feeble prerogative
derived some support from the influence of his liberality. But
this dependent tenure was gradually abolished by the independent and
rapacious nobles of France, who established the perpetual property, and
hereditary succession, of their benefices; a revolution salutary to the
earth, which had been injured, or neglected, by its precarious masters.
Besides these royal and beneficiary estates, a large proportion had been
assigned, in the division of Gaul, of _allodial_ and _Salic_ lands: they
were exempt from tribute, and the Salic lands were equally shared among
the male descendants of the Franks.

In the bloody discord and silent decay of the Merovingian line, a new
order of tyrants arose in the provinces, who, under the appellation
of _Seniors_, or Lords, usurped a right to govern, and a license to
oppress, the subjects of their peculiar territory. Their ambition might
be checked by the hostile resistance of an equal: but the laws were
extinguished; and the sacrilegious Barbarians, who dared to provoke the
vengeance of a saint or bishop, would seldom respect the landmarks of a
profane and defenceless neighbor. The common or public rights of nature,
such as they had always been deemed by the Roman jurisprudence, were
severely restrained by the German conquerors, whose amusement, or rather
passion, was the exercise of hunting. The vague dominion which _Man_ has
assumed over the wild inhabitants of the earth, the air, and the waters,
was confined to some fortunate individual