Another family system offers itself, the clans, a sort of petty associations, of which the type is to be found in Scotland and Ireland, through which in all probability a great portion of the European world has passed. This was very different from the patriarchal family. There existed an important distinction between the situations of the chief and the rest of the population: they did not lead the same life; the greater part tilled and served, whilst the chief was an idler and a warrior. But they had a common origin, and they all bore the same name; whilst relations of kindred, old traditions, identity in recollections, and feelings of attachment, established a moral tie, a sort of equality, amongst all the members of the clan.
These are the two principal types of family association that history supplies. But do they contain the feudal family? Certainly not. At the first glance, some similarity may be imagined to exist with the clan, but in reality there was a great difference. The population which surrounded the possessor of a fief was perfectly alien to him; it neither bore his name, nor was there between him and it any relationship, or traditional or moral tie. And assuredly it was not the patriarchal family. The fief-holder led not the same life, nor surrendered himself to the same labours, as those who encompassed him; he was addicted to idleness and war, and their occupations were servile and toilsome. The feudal family was not numerous; it formed no tribe; it included simply the family, properly so called, the wife and children, who lived apart from the rest of the population in the seclusion of the castle. The serfs made no part of it; their origin was distinct, and their inequality of condition prodigious. The feudal family was composed of five or six individuals, occupying a position at once superior and antagonistic. In such a state, it was sure to be invested with a peculiar character. Thus it was close and concentrated, perpetually on the alert to defend itself, doubtful of, or at least isolating itself from, its very retainers. The home life, or domestic manners, were certain to become of preponderating influence in this sequestered state. I am well aware that the development of domestic manners would meet with great obstacles from the brutal passions of the chief, and his habits of consuming time in war and the chase. But these obstacles would be overcome; the chief, of course, must have habitually returned to his home, and there he would always find his wife and children; they alone must have been his permanent society, and the assured sympathisers with his interests and projects. Under these circumstances, it was impossible that the domestic existence should not acquire a great sway. There are numerous proofs of it. Was it not in the bosom of the feudal family that the importance of women received its grand development! In all the ancient societies, not adducing those in which the spirit of family did not prevail, but in those even where it was potential, in the patriarchal life, for example, the women were very far from holding the station they acquired in Europe under the feudal system. This change or advancement in their position was mainly owing to the development, to the necessary preponderance, of domestic manners in the feudal state. Its cause has been sought for in the peculiar manners of the ancient Germans, in a sort of national respect which, it is asserted, they paid to women amidst their primeval forests. Founding upon a phrase of Tacitus, German patriotism has reared a fabric of such superior gentleness, of such native and ineffaceable purity, in the relations of the two sexes amongst the old Germans, as is truly surprising. Similar phrases to those of Tacitus, sentiments and usages analogous to those of the ancient Germans, are found in the recitals of a host of describers of savage or barbarian populations. The result was not owing to anything primitive, or peculiar to a certain race. It was from the consequences of a social situation strongly marked, from the progress and preponderance of domestic manners, that the importance of women in Europe originally sprang, and this very preponderance became, at a very early date, an essential characteristic of the feudal system.
A second fact, forming an additional proof of the sway of domestic ties, likewise distinguished the feudal family—namely, the hereditary spirit, the desire for perpetuity which clearly prevailed in it. The idea of hereditary descent is inherent in the spirit of family, but it never took so great a development as in the feudal system. This resulted from the nature of the property to which the family was linked. The fief was not like any other property; it had constant need of a possessor to defend it, to do its services, to fulfil the obligations cohesive to the domain, and so maintain its position in the general association of the lords of the soil. Thence arose a species of identification between the actual possessor of the fief, and the fief itself, and the series of his future successors.
This circumstance greatly contributed to strengthen and bind more closely the family ties, already so powerful from the nature of the feudal state.
I shall now leave the seignorial abode, and descend amongst that petty population which surrounded it. Here things bore a very different aspect. The nature of man is so happily disposed, so open to impressions, that when a social situation endures any length of time, a certain moral tie, sentiments of protection, benevolence, and affection, are inevitably established between those whom it draws together, whatever conditions may clog the junction. So it happened in the feudal system. There is no doubt that after the lapse of a certain period, some moral relations, some habits of affectionate regard, were formed between the serfs and the owner of the fief, in spite of their reciprocal situation, and certainly not in consequence of it; for, considered in itself, the situation was radically vicious. There was nothing morally in common between the lord and the serfs; they formed part of his domain, and were his property; under which designation were comprised all the rights that we at present call rights of public sovereignty, as well as the privileges of private property, he having the right of giving laws, of imposing taxes, and of inflicting punishment, as well as that of disposing and selling. In fact, as between the lord and the labourers on his domain, there were no recognised laws, no guarantees, no society, at least so far as may be predicated of any state in which men are brought into contact.
Hence arose, as I believe, that vast inextinguishable hatred which the country people have borne at all times to the feudal system, to its recollections, and to its very name. We are not without examples that men may endure oppressive despotisms, become used to them, and even voluntarily accept them. Both theocratic and monarchical despotisms have more than once obtained the sanction, almost the affection, of the population subjected to them. The feudal despotism was always repulsive and odious; it sat heavily on the destinies, but it never reigned over the minds, of men. The reason of the difference is obviously deducible from the fact, that power in a theocracy or monarchy is exercised by virtue of principles common to the wielder and the subject; the former is the representative and administrator of another power, superior to all human powers; he speaks and acts in the name of the Divinity, or of a general idea, and not in right of man himself, and of man alone. The feudal despotism was quite the contrary; it recognised the power of one individual over another, the dominion of the personal and capricious will of a man. This is perhaps the only tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, never would yield to. Wherever he perceives that his master is but a man, so soon as the will which weighs upon him is but a human individual will like his own, he grows indignant, and submits to the yoke with wrath. Such was the veritable and distinctive character of the feudal sway, and such also was the origin of the antipathy which it never ceased to inspire.
The religious element which was associated with it was little calculated to lighten the burden. I do not believe that the influence of the priest was at all considerable in the confined society I have just depicted, nor that he succeeded, to any great extent, in imparting a juster character to the relations between the servile population and the lord. The church has doubtless exercised an important influence on European civilisation, but it has done so by proceeding in a general manner, by operating a change on the general dispositions of men. Now when we narrowly scrutinise the petty feudal society, limiting the designation as I have previously done, we find the influence of the priest, as between the lord and the serfs, almost a nullity. In the majority of cases, he was himself as boorish and subservient as the serf, and in very poor condition and weak inclination to bear up against the arrogance of the superior. We can readily imagine that he, the sole instrument to sustain and develop any sort of moral life in the lower population, would be useful to it in that respect, and attract some regard; he would confer a modicum of consolation and enlightenment; but he neither could nor did effect much in his ministry.
I have now examined the elementary feudal society, and brought forward the principal consequences that necessarily flowed from it, as affecting the possessor of the fief himself, his family, and the population gathered around him. We will now emerge from this narrow circle. The population of the fief was not alone on the face of the land; there were other societies, analogous or different, with which it had relations. The influence of this general society upon civilisation, therefore, becomes our present object of inquiry.