be practised."

The Capitularies which have been classed under the heads of _political,
penal_, and _canonical legislation_ are the most numerous, and are those
which bear most decidedly an imperative of prohibitive stamp; among them
a prominent place is held by measures of political economy,
administration, and police; you will find therein an attempt to put a
fixed price on provisions, a real trial of a _maximum_ for cereals, and
a prohibition of mendicity, with the following clause:

"If such mendicants be met with, and they labor not with their hands,
let none take thought about giving unto them."

The interior police of the palace was regulated thereby, as well as that
of the empire:

"We do will and decree that none of those who serve in our palace shall
take leave to receive therein any man who seeketh refuge there and
cometh to hide there, by reason of theft, homicide, adultery, or any
other crime. That if any free man do break through our interdicts and
hide such malefactor in our palace, he shall be bound to carry him on
his shoulders to the public quarter, and be there tied to the same stake
as the malefactor."

Certain Capitularies have been termed _religious legislation,_ in
contradistinction to canonical legislation, because they are really
admonitions, religious exhortations, addressed not to ecclesiastics
alone, but to the faithful, the Christian people in general, and notably
characterized by good sense and, one might almost say, freedom of
thought.

For example:

"Beware of venerating the names of martyrs falsely so called, and the
memory of dubious saints."

"Let none suppose that prayer cannot be made to God save in three
tongues [probably Latin, Greek, and Germanic, or perhaps the vulgar
tongue; for the last was really beginning to take form], for God is
adored in all tongues, and man is heard if he do but ask for the things
that be right."

These details are put forward that a proper idea may be obtained of
Charlemagne as a legislator, and of what are called his laws. We have
here, it will be seen, no ordinary legislator and no ordinary laws: we
see the work, with infinite variations and in disconnected form, of a
prodigiously energetic and watchful master, who had to think and provide
for everything, who had to be everywhere the moving and the regulating
spirit. This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic
of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his s