When the protective principle is carried into trade, these are its inevitable results. When it is carried into politics, there is formed what is called a paternal government, in which supreme power is vested in the sovereign, or in a few privileged classes. When it is carried into theology, it produces a powerful church, and a numerous clergy, who are supposed to be the necessary guardians of religion, and every opposition to whom is resented as an insult to the public morals. These are the marks by which protection may be recognized; and, from a very early period, they have displayed themselves in France much more clearly than in England. Without pretending to discover their precise origin, I will, in the next chapter, endeavour to trace them back to a time sufficiently remote to explain some of the discrepancies which, in this respect, existed between the two countries.

Note to p. 544. Descartes died in Sweden on a visit to Christina; so that, strictly speaking, there is an error in the text. But this does not affect the argument; because the works of Descartes, being eagerly read in France, and not being prohibited, we must suppose that his person would have been safe, had he remained in his own country. To burn a heretic is a more decisive step than to suppress a book; and as the French clergy were not strong enough to effect the latter, it is hardly likely that they could have accomplished the former.

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CHAPTER IX.

HISTORY OF THE PROTECTIVE SPIRIT, AND COMPARISON OF IT IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

WHEN, towards the end of the fifth century, the Roman empire was broken up, there followed, as is well known, a long period of ignorance and of crime, in which even the ablest minds were immersed in the grossest superstitions. During these, which are rightly called the Dark Ages, the clergy were supreme: they ruled the consciences of the most despotic sovereigns, and they were respected as men of vast learning, because they alone were able to read and write; because they were the sole depositaries of those idle conceits of which European science then consisted; and because they preserved the legends of the saints and the lives of the fathers, from which, as it was believed, the teachings of divine wisdom might easily be gathered.

Such was the degradation of the European intellect for about five hundred years, during which the credulity of men reached a height unparalleled in the annals of ignorance. But at length the human reason, that divine spark which even the most corrupt society is unable to extinguish, began to display its power, and disperse the mists by which it was surrounded. Various circumstances, which it would be tedious here to discuss, caused this dispersion to take place at different times in different countries. However, speaking generally, we may say that it occurred in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and that by the twelfth century there was no nation now called civilized, upon whom the light had not begun to dawn.

It is from this point that the first great divergence between the European nations took its rise. Before this time

their superstition was so great and universal, that it would avail little to measure the degree of their relative darkness. Indeed, so low had they fallen, that, during the earlier period, the authority of the clergy was in many respects an advantage, as forming a barrier between the people and their rulers, and as supplying the sole instance of a class that even made an approach to intellectual pursuits. But, when the great movement took place, when the human reason began to rebel, the position of the clergy was suddenly changed. They had been friendly to reasoning as long as the reasoning was on their side.1 While they were the only guardians of knowledge, they were eager to promote its interests. Now, however, it was falling from their hands: it was becoming possessed by laymen: it was growing dangerous: it must be reduced to its proper dimensions. Then it was that there first became general the inquisitions, the imprisonments, the torturings, the burnings, and all the other contrivances by which the church vainly attempted to stem the tide that had turned against her. From that moment there has been an unceasing struggle between these two great parties, the advocates of inquiry, and the advocates of

1 'Toute influence qu'on accordait à la science ne pouvait, dans les premiers temps, qu'être favorable au clergé.' Meyer, Institut. Judic. vol. i. p. 498.

2 Early in the eleventh century the clergy first began systematically to repress independent inquiries by punishing men who attempted to think for themselves. Compare Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. iv. pp. 145, 146; Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. vi. pp. 365, 366; Prescott's Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. i. p. 261 note. Before this, such a policy, as Sismondi justly observes, was not required: Pendant plusieurs siècles, l'église n'avoit été troublée par aucune hérésie; l'ignorance étoit trop complète, la soumission trop servile, la foi trop aveugle, pour que les questions qui avoient si long-temps exercé la subtilité des Grecs fussent seulement comprises par les Latins.' As knowledge advanced, the opposition between inquiry and belief became more marked: the church redoubled her efforts, and at the end of the twelfth century the popes first formally called on the secular power to punish heretics; and the earliest constitution addressed 'inquisitoribus hæretica pravitatis' is one by Alexander IV. Meyer, Inst. Jud. vol. ii. pp. 554, 556. See also, on this movement, Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, vol. i. p. 125, vol. iv. p. 284. In 1222 a synod assembled at Oxford caused an apostate to be burned; and this, says Lingard (Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 148), 'is, I believe, the first instance of capital punishment in England on the ground of religion.' Compare Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. vol. ii. p. 444.

belief; a struggle which, however it may be disguised, and under whatever forms it may appear, is at bottom always the same, and represents the opposite interests of reason and faith, of scepticism and credulity, of progress and reaction, of those who hope for the future, and of those who cling to the past.

This, then, is the great starting point of modern civilization. From the moment that reason began, however faintly, to assert its supremacy, the improvement of every people has depended upon their obedience to his dictates, and upon the success with which they have reduced to its standard the whole of their actions. To understand, therefore, the original divergence of France and England, we must seek it in the circumstances that took place when this, which may be called the great rebellion of the intellect, was first clearly seen.

If now, with a view to such inquiry, we examine the history of Europe, we shall find that just at this period there sprung up the feudal system; a vast scheme of polity, which, clumsy and imperfect as it was, supplied many of the wants of the rude people among whom it arose. 3 The connexion between it and the decline of the ecclesiastical spirit is very obvious. For, the feudal system was the first great secular plan that had been seen in Europe since the formation of the civil law: it was the first comprehensive attempt which had been made, during more than four hundred years, to organize society according to temporal, not according to spiritual circumstances, the basis of the whole arrangement being merely the pos

3 Sir F. Palgrave (English Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. ccvi.) says, 'It is generally admitted, by the best authorities, that from about the eleventh century benefices acquired the name of fiefs or feuds;' and Robertson (State of Europe, note viii. in Works, p. 393) supposes that the word feudum does not occur before 1008. But according to M. Guizot (Civilisation en France, vol. iii. p. 238), 'il apparaît, pour la première fois, dans une charte de Charles le Gros en 884.' This is a question more curious than important; since whatever the origin of the word may be, it is certain that the thing did not, and could not, exist before the tenth century at the earliest: inasmuch as the extreme disorganization of society rendered so coercive an institution impossible. M. Guizot, in another work (Essais sur l'Hist. de France, p. 239, rightly says, 'Au Xe siècle seulement, les rapports et les pouvoirs sociaux acquirent quelque fixité.' See also his Civilisation en Europe, p. 90.

session of land, and the performance of certain military and pecuniary services.*

This was, no doubt, a great step in European civilization, because it set the first example of a large public polity in which the spiritual classes as such had no recognized place; and hence there followed that struggle between feudality and the church, which has been observed by several writers, but the origin of which has been strangely overlooked. What, however, we have now to notice is, that by the establishment of the feudal system, the spirit of protection, far from being destroyed, was probably not even weakened, but only assumed a new form. Instead of being spiritual, it became temporal. Instead of men looking up to the church, they looked up to the nobles. For, as a necessary consequence of this vast movement, or rather as a part of it, the great possessors of land were now being organized into an hereditary aristocracy.6 In the tenth century, we find the first surnames:7 by the

Le système féodal est comme

4 'La terre est tout dans ce système. une religion de la terre.' Origines du Droit, in Euvres de Michelet, vol. ii. p. 302. Le caractère de la féodalité, c'était la prédominance de la réalité sur la personnalité, de la terre sur l'homme.' Eschbach, Etude du Droit, p. 256.

5 According to the social and political arrangements from the fourth to the tenth century, the clergy were so eminently a class apart, that they were freed from burdens of the state,' and were not obliged to engage in military services unless they thought proper to do so. See Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. iii. p. 195, vol. v. pp. 133, 140; and Petrie's Ecclesiast. Archit. p. 382. But under the feudal system this immunity was lost; and in regard to performing services no separation of classes was admitted. After the feudal polity became established, we do not find that there was any dispensation for ecclesiastical fiefs.' Hallam's Supplemental Notes, p. 120; and for further proof of the loss of the old privileges, compare Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. i. pp. 5, 64; Meyer, Instit. Judic. vol. i. p. 257; Turner's Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 462; and Mably's Observations, vol. i. pp. 434, 435: so that, as this writer says, p. 215, 'Chaque seigneur laïc avait gagné personnellement à la révolution qui forma le gouvernement féodal; mais les évêques et les abbés, en devenant souverains dans leurs terres, perdirent au contraire beaucoup de leur pouvoir et de leur dignité.'

The great change of turning life-possessions of land into hereditary possessions, began late in the ninth century, being initiated in France by a capitulary of Charles the Bald, in 877. See Allen on the Prerogative, p. 210; Spence's Origin of the Laws of Europe, pp. 282, 301; Meyer, Instit. Judiciaires, vol. i. p. 206.

7 That surnames first arose in the tenth century, is stated by the most competent authorities. See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. pp. 452455; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 138; Monteil, Hist. des divers Etats VOL. I.

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