CH. I. ADVANCE OF COMMERCE AND FREEDOM.

13

to command ten footmen not worth the commanding. Indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great or even a greater number of people than he could have done by the ancient method of expense. Though he contributes to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him. . . . The personal expenses of the great proprietors having in this manner gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not as gradually diminish, till they were at last dismissed altogether. It was thus that through the greater part of Europe the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.' But this revolution in the condition of the country was effected only very slowly, except when it was as in England accelerated by legislation. It was not until after a long period, when manufacturing industry had heaped up men and money in some strong cities, that the overflowing population could create suburbs, burghs, hamlets, or change hamlets into towns. In this manner, generally speaking, the country was created by the town, the soil by man. Agriculture was the last manufacture born of the success of the others.' 1

Upon the continent of Europe, indeed, many towns that had been at one period in a flourishing condition were unable to resist the as yet wild and unreformed forces of the country. There were pirates, too, who infested the seas which were frequented by the richly laden argosies from distant lands. Thus it was that obstacles to the growth of these centres of industry and wealth were continually presented by the outer populations, who were ultimately to be the richest gainers by their prosperity. The want of a settled order outside of the towns prevented the

1 History of France, by M. Michelet, book 12, chap. i.

establishment of those relations between the municipalities and the country which would have otherwise taken place. There was too great a force outside, too large an area of wild unsettled country to leaven at the first, and its impulses often could not be withstood in the early stages of existence. Hence arose the necessity for individual towns combining together for mutual protection. An independent power in the north of Europe was thus formed. It was named the Hanseatic League, and embraced at one time as many as eighty-five towns. At a period two centuries anterior to the effective political unification of France the League affected a greater extent of country than is measured by that kingdom. Thus the enterprise of individuals, associated together in towns favourably situated on the sea-coast or on the great rivers, was effective in building up a government for the protection of their own interests, and ultimately in securely binding together the whole regions wherein these towns existed in one common welfare. It was a natural development which gradually affected all the countries within the range of its influence, establishing the opportunity of material independence in every household, and furnishing inducements to exertion which were the necessary antecedents to an immense amelioration in the condition of the people. Yet this development was seriously retarded by other influences. Where war and violence were still to be dreaded, the great lords could not let go the hold which they had upon the multitude of people who lived upon their domains as serfs. While the numbers of personal followers, and the expenses of the household of the lord were therefore so far as possible reduced, a certain hold was maintained upon the rural populations, by which they could at any time be called upon to supply the necessary means of defence. And even, as we shall see, after the period at which

CH. I. INFLUENCE OF TOWNS UPON RURAL DISTRICTS. 15

standing armies had been organised, the power and distinction of the great proprietor, depending as it did upon the amount of land he possessed that was cultivated by serfs, lent another influence in maintaining the old state of things.

Yet notwithstanding these counteracting influences. the influence of the towns was clearly distinctive, and there now exists the most comfort and wealth as well as settled prosperity amongst the people of those countries which can reckon the greater number of towns. At the present day the towns in the principal European States which possess populations of 40,000 inhabitants and above are in number as follows1 :-Great Britain and Ireland contain fifty-five such towns; France twenty-eight; Italy twenty-four; Prussia twenty-one; Russia fourteen ; and Austria six. There is no country in Europe which can excel Britain either in the number of her towns, in the period during which they have flourished, in the uniformity of their progress, or in the height of prosperity acquired; and neither is there any other country in which the peasantry have been so long free, and wherein they have had opportunities, from the uniform development of manufactures and commerce, of improving their condition. From the latter half of the fourteenth century to the time of Elizabeth, the peasantry of the country as a whole changed their condition from one of servitude to one of freedom.

The influence of the towns in France was not altogether dissimilar from that of the towns in Britain, but it did not result so happily either for the urban or rural population. For there were other influences at work in France which unfortunately largely interfered with the free action of commerce and manufactures in either en

1 Brachelli's Staaten Europas, quoted in the Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. 38, p. 379.

riching the towns or enfranchising the country. One of these proceeded from the disastrous effects of the wars with England and the consequent spoliation of French territory. The continual want of security that resulted from the overrunning of the country produced the most pernicious effects on the strength of the towns. Already from the position that they held on relatively widely separated coast lines, they were not in a fortunate condition to confederate for common defence, nor even were they always able to maintain internal peace. The consequent diminution of municipal strength was great. But the same causes aggrandised the monarchy. The lords were supplanted by the astute policy of the successive monarchs, so that in course of time the general effect came to be that they were too weak to resist the encroachments which were continually made by the central government. The necessity for the arbitrary predominance of a central power to gather the forces of the nation and keep them united for the purpose of common defence existed scarcely at all when the English had at last been driven from French soil. But the mischief of a powerful and unchecked monarchy controlling all the other forces of the kingdom became during peace the inevitable result of the preceding situation. The lords and commons had been perpetually weakened in the long continued wars, but the king had been strengthened. The advantage of despotism in the camp was followed by the disadvantage of despotism in the civil government. The will of the king became the law. The lords were stripped of their important feudal functions, and reduced to the condition of being only the principal inhabitants of the country. The few duties of which they had not been stripped had now become uninteresting and irksome to them. It therefore happened that they found their pleasure in attending upon the Court, where the ambition to outvie each other

CH. I. DESPOTISM AND BUREAUCRACY IN FRANCE. 17

in splendour produced an undue expenditure. Their fortunes were too lavishly spent in the drawing-rooms of Paris. Thus the necessities of their position sometimes compelled the sale of their lands. The townsmen and the peasantry in many parts of France had therefore become proprietors of a large part of the country long before the first Revolution. The celebrated traveller, Arthur Young, was astonished at the great subdivision of the land in France, and he gave it as his opinion that probably one-third of the country was held in fee by the peasantry. While the political duties of the lords had almost wholly disappeared, their peculiar emoluments were for the most part retained. They became as a caste still more divided in their position and interests from the mass of the people. The spiritual lords occupied a similar position. Both of these retained their feudal rights over the people. The exercise of these was severely felt, the more so that the correlative duties had been transferred to the deputies of the Crown, the intendant of the province, and the parochial officers. These rights still retained by the lords, lay and clerical, consisted in the levying of dues on fairs and markets; the monopoly of sporting, the power to compel the peasants to have their corn ground only at the lord's mill, and the pressing of their grapes at the lord's wine-press. They also embraced taxes on the transfer of land, and dues on the land of all kinds, which were incommutable, tolls on the roads and the enforcement of labour-rents. It was a complaint that the whole country was loaded with rent-charges, which were experienced as a peculiar hardship, since there were no correlative duties. performed by the lords.

Again the expenses of government bore heavily on the poorer portion of the community-that portion which was not able successfully to resist the imposition and augmentation of the State taxes. The king's necessities were

C