he waters were distributed in portions,
according to their labor, by those who reclaimed them, except
the parts reserved for the chieftain, the church, and the poor.
This vital necessity for the construction of dikes had given to
the Frison and Flemish population a particular habit of union,
goodwill, and reciprocal justice, because it was necessary to make
common cause in this great work for their mutual preservation.
In all other points, the detail of the laws and manners of this
united people presents a picture similar to that of the Saxons of
England, with the sole exception that the people of the Netherlands
were milder than the Saxon race properly so called--their long
habit of laborious industry exercising its happy influence on
the martial spirit original to both. The manufacturing arts were
also somewhat more advanced in this part of the continent than in
Great Britain. The Frisons, for example, were the only people
who could succeed in making the costly mantles in use among the
wealthy Franks.

The government of Charlemagne admitted but one form, borrowed
from that of the empire in the period of its decline--a mixture
of the spiritual and temporal powers, exercised in the first place
by the emperor, and at second-hand by the counts and bishops. The
counts in those times were not the heads of noble families, as
they afterward became, but officers of the government, removable
at will, and possessing no hereditary rights. Their incomes did
not arise from salaries paid in money, but consisted of lands,
of which they had the revenues during the continuance of their
authority. These lands being situated in the limits of their
administration, each regarded them as his property only for the
time being, and considered himself as a tenant at will. How
unfavorable such a system was to culture and improvement may be
well imagined. The force of possession was, however, frequently
opposed to the seigniorial rights of the crown; and thus, though
all civil dignity and the revenues attached to it were but personal
and reclaimable at will, still many dignitaries, taking advantage
of the barbarous state of the country in which their isolated
cantons were placed, sought by every possible means to render
their power and prerogatives inalienable and real. The force
of the monarchical government, which consists mainly in its
centralization, was necessarily weakened by the intervention
of local obstacles, before it could pass from