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One very specious objection is made as regards feudalism, which some clear-minded people obstinately confound with chivalry. This was the favorite theory of Montalembert. Now there are two kinds of feudalism, which the old feudalists put down very clearly in two words now out of date "fiefs of dignity" and "fiefs simple."
Our Saxon ancestors held their lands, as they did their personal property, in absolute dominion, disencumbered with any superior, answering nearly to the nature of those possessions which the Feudalists term Allodial. William the Norman first introduced that system generally.
As little, therefore, as the sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal, a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs of a Camphausen or a Hansemann convince Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
The defeat of the feudalists and their Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's honour required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou from Louis VIII., and to strengthen the English hold over Gascony.
Liberalism and common sense are spreading even in the army; but take a Tory squire, a Groom of the Chamber, and a Life-guardsman, boil them down, and you will obtain the ordinary type of the Prussian officer. For my part, I look with grim satisfaction to the future. The unity of Germany has been brought about by the union of Prussian Feudalists and German Radicals.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
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