ry, there is nothing astonishing in such a fact. Whether it
be civilized or barbarian, that which every society needs, that which it
seeks or demands first of all in its government, is a certain degree of
good sense and strong will, of intelligence and innate influence, so far
as the public interests are concerned; qualities, in fact, which
suffice to keep social order maintained or make it realized, and to
promote respect for individual rights and the progress of the general
well-being. This is the essential aim of every community of men; and the
institutions and guarantees of free government are the means of
attaining it. It is clear that, in the eighth century, on the ruins of
the Roman and beneath the blows of the barbaric world, the
Gallo-Frankish nation, vast and without cohesion, brutish and ignorant,
was incapable of bringing forth, so to speak, from its own womb, with
the aid of its own wisdom and virtue, a government of the kind. A host
of different forces, without enlightenment and without restraint, were
everywhere and incessantly struggling for dominion, or, in other words,
were ever troubling and endangering the social condition. Let there but
arise, in the midst of this chaos of unruly forces and selfish passions,
a great man, one of those elevated minds and strong characters that can
understand the essential aim of society, and then urge it forward, and
at the same time keep it well in hand on the roads that lead thereto,
and such a man will soon seize and exercise the personal power almost of
a despot, and people will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate
his praises, for they do not quit the substance for the shadow, or
sacrifice the end to the means. Such was the empire of Charlemagne.
Among annalists and historians, some, treating him as a mere conqueror
and despot, have ignored his merits and his glory; others, that they
might admire him without scruple, have made of him a founder of free
institutions, a constitutional monarch. Both are equally mistaken:
Charlemagne was, indeed, a conqueror and a despot; but by his conquests
and his personal power he, so long as he was by, that is, for
six-and-forty years, saved Gallo-Frankish society from barbaric invasion
without and anarchy within. That is the characteristic of his government
and his title to glory.

What he was in his wars and his general relations with his nation has
just been seen; he shall now be exhibited in all his administrative
ac