Before entering upon it, I will hazard a short remark. It is true that the owner of the fief and the priest both belonged to a general society; at a distance, they had numerous and frequent relations. It was not so with the serfs: whenever we use a general word, as, for instance, the word 'people,' to designate the rural population at this epoch, which conveys the idea of a society, one and indivisible, we speak inaccurately. For this population there was no general society; its existence was purely local. Beyond the territory in which they had habitation, the serfs held communication or interests with no individual or thing. There was for them no common destiny or common country: they did not compose a people. Therefore when we speak of the feudal association in its entirety, reference is made to the owners of fiefs alone.
Let us see, then, what were the relations of the lord of the isolated society with the general society in which he was involved and what consequences they brought to bear upon the development of civilisation.
The reciprocal ties that united the possessors of fiefs, the duties attached to their tenures, the obligations of service on one side, of protection on the other, are well known. I will not enter into their detail; a general idea of them is sufficient for my purpose. There must necessarily have flowed from them a certain number of ideas and moral sentiments, conceptions of duty, and feelings of attachment, impressed on the mind of each proprietor. That the principle of fidelity, of devotedness, of loyalty to engagements, and all the sentiments thereunto persuading, were evolved and sustained by the mutual relations amongst the holders of fiefs, is sufficiently evident.
It was attempted to convert these obligations, duties, and feelings, into rights and institutions. Every one is aware that the feudal system endeavoured to make matter of legal regulation the services that the possessor of the fief owed to his superior, and those that he might claim in return, the cases in which the vassal could be called upon by his suzerain for a military or money aid, and the forms in which he might obtain the consent of his vassals for services to which they were not bound by the holding of their fiefs. They essayed to put all these rights under the guarantee of institutions calculated to insure respect. Thus, the seignorial jurisdictions were intended to administer justice between holders of fiefs, upon reclamation to their common suzerain. Thus, also, every considerable lord gathered his vassals into a parliament, in order to treat with them upon affairs which required their consent or co-operation. In fact, there was a concourse of political, judicial, and military modes, by which they strove to organise the feudal system, and to convert the relations of the possessors of fiefs into rights and institutions.
But these rights and institutions had no substantiveness or guarantee.
When we are asked in what a political guarantee consists, we are induced to acknowledge that its fundamental character is the constant presence in society of a force, disposed and conditioned to impose law upon individual will and power, and to compel their observance of rules laid down for all, and their respect to general rights.
There are only two possible systems of political guarantees. Either there is requisite one particular will or force, so superior to all others, that none can resist it, and to which all are obliged to submit when it interferes; or a public force and will, the result of the concurrence and demonstration of individual wills, is required to be in such a state, when once fairly developed, as to awe and impose submission upon all.
Therefore the despotism of a single man or body, or a free government, are the only two possible systems of political guarantees. When we come to review the various governing forms, we shall find that they are all assignable within one or other of these systems.