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It is using the language of all tyrants: "Sic volo, sic jubeo," etc., etc. It claims, after the example of Prussia or Russia, or some other despotism, to direct the education of the children of the people. It even claims them as belonging to itself. It is the great feudal master. It takes upon itself the old duty of providing instruction for the sons and daughters of its dependents.
Their manor courts, whether they were feudal courts established by the new nobility of the Conquest, or whether they represented ancient franchises in which Norman lords succeeded to the jurisdiction of earlier English rulers, were more and more turned into mere feudal courts.
It is unnecessary to recapitulate here all the points in which the Anglo-Saxon institutions were already approaching the feudal model; it may be assumed that the actual obligation of military service was much the same in both systems, and that even the amount of land which was bound to furnish a mounted warrior was the same however the conformity may have been produced.
Under the revival of classical ideals at the Renaissance, in the new emphasis upon individual rights born of the Reformation, in the rebellion of the Puritan English and Scotch against the divine right of kings and bishops to rule them against their conscience and will, in the Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic wars, the Feudal System passed, and the commercial order took its place.
The successive members of the Monte Beni family showed valor and policy enough' at all events, to keep their hereditary possessions out of the clutch of grasping neighbors, and probably differed very little from the other feudal barons with whom they fought and feasted.
The better to unite the parts of the government, and to bind them into one system, which might serve both for defence against foreigners, and for the support of domestic tranquillity, William reduced the ecclesiastical revenues under the same feudal law; and though he had courted the church on his invasion and accession, he now subjected it to services which the clergy regarded as a grievous slavery, and as totally unbefitting their profession.
The heads of all departments are German officers, recruited from the old feudal aristocracy, loyal to a degree to the throne. They find it incompatible, notwithstanding their loyalty, to soil their hands with some of the work connected with all government duties, especially those of the Secret Service. Though planning the work, they never execute it.
In these circumstances the struggles between the feudal states called urgently for an arbiter, to settle simple cases, and in more difficult cases either to try to induce other feudal lords to intervene or to give sanction to the new situation. These were the only governing functions of the ruler from the time of the transfer to the second capital.
The authority of government still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head, and too strong in the inferior members; and the excessive strength of the inferior members was the cause of the weakness of the head. After the institution of feudal subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords as before.
What impression such a city as Chicago or Pittsburgh might have made upon some denizen of those cathedral-crowned feudal cities of the past we do not know. He would certainly have been amazed at its giant energy, and probably revolted at its grimy dreariness.
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