hereditary in his own family, (a) he established the hereditariship of fiefs as a general principle; and, from this epoch, authors date the complete establishment of the feudal fyftem in France.

On the other hand, the Lords who gavė their fuffrages to Hugh Capet, forgot not the interest of their own ambition. They compleated the breach of those feeble ties which fubjected them to the royal authority, and became every where independent. They left the King no jurisdiction either over themselves, or their vaffals; they reserved the right of waging war with each other; they even affumed the fame privilege, in certain cafes, with regard to the King himself. (b) If Hugh

(a) Hottoman has proved beyond a doubt, in his Francogallia, that under the two first races of Kings the Crown of France was elective. The Princes of the reigning family had nothing more in their favour, than the custom of chufing one of that house.

(b) The principal of these cases was when the King refused to appoint Judges to decide a difference between himfelf and one of his firft Barons: the latter had then a right to take up arms against the King; and the fubordinate Vaffals were fo dependent on their immediate Lords, that they were

Capet, therefore, by rendering rendering the Crown hereditary, laid the foundation of the power of his family, and of the Crown itself, yet he added little to his own authority, and acquired fcarcely any thing more than a nominal fuperiority over the number of Sovereigns who then fwarmed in France. (a)

But the establishment of the feudal fyftem was, in England, an immediate and fudden confequence of that conquest which introduced it. Befides, this conqueft was made by a Prince who kept the greater part of his army in his own pay, and who was placed at the head of a People over whom he was

obliged to follow them against the Lord Paramount. St. Louis, though the power of the Crown was in his time much increased, was obliged to confirm both this privilege of the firft Barons, and this obligation of their Vaffals.

(a) The Grandees of the Kingdom," fays Mezeray, "thought that Hugh Capet ought to put up with all their "infults, because they had placed the Crown on his head:

nay, fo great was their licentiousnefs, that on his writing "to Audebert, Viscount of Perigueux, ordering him to raife; "the fiege he had laid to Tours, and asking him, by way "of reproach, who had made him a Viscount? that No"bleman haughtily answered, Not you, but those who made

you a King. [Non pas vous, mais ceux qui vous ont fait "Roi.]"

an hereditary Sovereign: circumstances, which gave a totally different turn to the Government of that Kingdom.

Surrounded by a warlike, though a conquered Nation, William kept on foot a part of his army. The English, and after them the Normans themselves, having revolted, he crushed both; and the new King of England, at the head of victorious troops, having to do with two nations at enmity with each other, lying under a reciprocal check, and equally fubdued by a fenfe of their unfortunate resistance, found himself in the most favourable circumftances for becoming an abfolute Monarch; and his laws, thus promulgated in the midft, as it were, of thunder and lightning, imposed the yoke of despotism, both on the victors and the vanquished."

He divided England into fixty thousand two hundred and fifteen military fiefs, all held of the Crown; the poffeffors of which were, on pain of forfeiture, to take up arms and repair to his standard on the first signal: he fubjected not only the common people, but even the barons, to all the rigours of

the feudal Government. He even imposed on them his tyrannical forest laws. (a)

He affumed the prerogative of impofing taxes he invested himself with the whole executive power of Government. But what was of the greatest consequence, he arrogated to himself the most extenfive judicial power in the establishment of the Court which was called Aula Regis; a formidable Tribunal, which received appeals from all the Courts of the Barons, and decided in the last resort on the estates, honour, and lives, of the Barons themselves; and which, being wholly compofed of the great officers of the Crown, removable at the King's pleasure, and having the King himself for Prefident, held the first Nobleman in the Kingdom under the fame controul as the meaneft fubject.

(a) He referved to himself an exclufive privilege of killing game throughout all England, and enacted the feverest penalties on all who fhould attempt it without his permiffion. The fuppreffion, or rather mitigation, of these penalties, was one of the articles of the Charta de Foreftâ, which the Barons afterwards obtained by force of arms. Nullus de cetero amittat vitam, vel membra, pro venatione noftrâ. Ch. dẹ Forefta, Art. 10.

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Thus, while the Kingdom of France, in confequence of the flow and gradual formation of the feudal Government, found itself to be in the iffue only a number of parts, fimply placed by each other, and without any reciprocal adherence; the Kingdom of England, on the contrary, in confequence of the fudden and violent introduction of the fame fyftem, became a compound of parts united by the strongest ties; and the regal Authority, by the preffure of its immense weight, confolidated the whole into one compact indiffoluble body.

It is to this difference in the original Conftitution of France and England, that is, in the original power of their Kings, that we must attribute the difference, fo little analogous to its caufe, of their prefent Conftitutions. It is this which furnishes the folution of a problem, which, I must confess, for a long time perplexed me; and explains the reason why, of two neighbouring Nations, fituated almoft under the fame climate, and having one common origin, the one has attained the fummit of liberty, the other has

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