[299] Montlosier, with the fine spirit of a French noble, taunts the English aristocracy with this: ‘En France la noblesse, attaquée sans cesse, s'est défendue sans cesse. Elle a subi l'oppression; elle ne l'a point acceptée. En Angleterre, elle a couru dès la première commotion, se réfugier dans les rangs des bourgeois, et sous leur protection. Elle a abdiqué ainsi son existence.’ Montlosier, Monarchie Française, vol. iii. p. 162. Compare an instructive passage in De Staël, Consid. sur la Révolution, vol. i. p. 421.
[300] See some good remarks in Mably, Observations sur l'Hist. de France, vol. iii. pp. 114, 115.
[301] Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 111.
[302] ‘Originally there was no limit to subinfeudation.’ Brougham's Polit. Philos. vol. i. p. 279.
[303] A living French historian boasts that, in his own country, ‘toute la société féodale formait ainsi une échelle de clientelle et de patronage.’ Cassagnac, Révolution Française, vol. i. p. 459.
[304] This is 18 Edw. I. c. 1; respecting which, see Blackstone's Comment. vol. ii. p. 91, vol. iv. p. 425; Reeve's Hist. of English Law, vol. ii. p. 223; Dalrymple's Hist. of Feudal Property, pp. 102, 243, 340.
[305] The history of the decay of that once most important class, the English yeomanry, is an interesting subject, and one for which I have collected considerable materials; at present, I will only say, that its decline was first distinctly perceptible in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was consummated by the rapidly-increasing power of the commercial and manufacturing classes early in the eighteenth century. After losing their influence, their numbers naturally diminished, and they made way for other bodies of men, whose habits of mind were less prejudiced, and therefore better suited to that new state which society assumed in the last age. I mention this, because some writers regret the almost total destruction of the yeoman freeholders; overlooking the fact, that they are disappearing, not in consequence of any violent revolution or stretch of arbitrary power, but simply by the general march of affairs; society doing away with what it no longer requires. Compare Kay's Social Condition of the People, vol. i. pp. 43, 602, with a letter from Wordsworth in Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 440; a note in Mill's Polit. Econ. vol. i. pp. 311, 312; another in Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 323; and Sinclair's Correspond. vol. i. p. 229.
[306] This is stated as an admitted fact by French writers living in different periods and holding different opinions; but all agreed as to there being only two divisions: ‘comme en France on est toujours ou noble, ou roturier, et qu'il n'y a pas de milieu.’ Mém. de Rivarol, p. 7. ‘La grande distinction des nobles et des roturiers.’ Giraud, Précis de l'Ancien Droit, p. 10. Indeed, according to the Coutumes, the nobles and roturiers attained their majority at different ages. Klimrath, Hist. du Droit, vol. ii. p. 249 (erroneously stated in Story's Conflict of Laws, pp. 56, 79, 114). See further respecting this capital distinction, Mém. de Duplessis Mornay, vol. ii. p. 230 (‘agréable à la noblesse et au peuple’); Œuvres de Turgot, vol. viii. pp. 222, 232, 237; Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 256; Mably, Observations, vol. iii. p. 263; and Mercier sur Rousseau, vol. i. p. 38: ‘On étoit roturier, vilain, homme de néant, canaille, dès qu'on ne s'appelloit plus marquis, baron, comte, chevalier, etc.’
[307] ‘Les états-généraux sont portés dans la liste de nos institutions. Je ne sais cependant s'il est permis de donner ce nom à des rassemblemens aussi irréguliers.’ Montlosier, Monarchie Française, vol. i. p. 266. ‘En France, les états-généraux, au moment même de leur plus grand éclat, c'est à dire dans le cours du xive siècle, n'ont guère été que des accidents, un pouvoir national et souvent invoqué, mais non un établissement constitutionnel.’ Guizot, Essais, p. 253. See also Mably, Observations, vol. iii. p. 147; and Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xiv. p. 642.
[308] This is frankly admitted by one of the most candid and enlightened of all the foreign writers on our history, Guizot, Essais, p. 297: ‘En 1307, les droits qui devaient enfanter en Angleterre un gouvernement libre étaient définitivement reconnus.’