st
the greatest political disruption, the Celtic nation had for long
been centralized in respect of religion and even of theology.
The Celtic priesthood or, to use the native name, the corporation
of the Druids, certainly embraced the British islands and all Gaul,
and perhaps also other Celtic countries, in a common religious-
national bond. It possessed a special head elected by the priests
themselves; special schools, in which its very comprehensive
tradition was transmitted; special privileges, particularly
exemption from taxation and military service, which every clan
respected; annual councils, which were held near Chartres
at the "centre of the Celtic earth"; and above all, a believing people,
who in painful piety and blind obedience to their priests seem
to have been nowise inferior to the Irish of modern times. It may
readily be conceived that such a priesthood attempted to usurp,
as it partially did usurp, the secular government; where the annual
monarchy subsisted, it conducted the elections in the event
of an interregnum; it successfully laid claim to the right of excluding
individuals and whole communities from religious, and consequently
also from civil, society; it was careful to draw to itself the most
important civil causes, especially processes as to boundaries
and inheritance; on the ground, apparently, of its right to exclude
from the community, and perhaps also of the national custom
that criminals should be by preference taken for the usual
human sacrifices, it developed an extensive priestly criminal
jurisdiction, which was co-ordinate with that of the kings
and vergobrets; it even claimed the right of deciding on war and peace.
The Gauls were not far removed from an ecclesiastical state
with its pope and councils, its immunities, interdicts,
and spiritual courts; only this ecclesiastical state did not,
like that of recent times, stand aloof from the nations,
but was on the contrary pre-eminently national.

Want of Political Centralization
The Canton-Leagues

But while the sense of mutual relationship was thus vividly
awakened among the Celtic tribes, the nation was still precluded
from attaining a basis of political centralization such as Italy
found in the Roman burgesses, and the Hellenes and Germans
in the Macedonian and Frank kings. The Celtic priesthood and likewise
the nobility--although both in a certain sense represented and combined
the nation--were yet, on the one hand, incapable