[90] C. 12.
[91] De Bello Gallico. lib. VI. c. 21.
[92] Com. Vol. III. 35. This cannot be strictly true; for the principes were electiv; and therefore could not hav owned the land (pagus) or exercised the office of judge in right of their property. The kings, princes, and generals of the ancient Germans were elected; some for their nobility, that iz, the respectability of their families, arising from the valor and merits of their ancestors; others, az their duces, military commanders, were chosen for their virtues, their personal bravery. This I take to be the meening of that passage in Tacitus, "Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt."
"The Comites ex plebe," says Selden, chap. 18, "made one rank of freemen superior to the rest in wisdom." The Saxon nobles were called adelingi, or wel born; the freemen, frilingi, or free born; the latter might be assistants in the judicial department. The lower ranks were called lazzi or slaves; and indolence iz so necessary a consequence of bondage, that this word lazzi, or lazy, haz become sinonimous with indolent, sluggish. This word iz a living national satire upon every species of slavery. But the effect of slavery iz not merely indolence; its natural tendency iz to produce dishonesty; "almost every slave, being, says Dr. Franklin, from the nature of hiz employment, a theef." Az a striking proof of this, we may instance the change of meening in the words villain and knave, which at first denoted tenant and plowman, but during the oppressions of the feudal system, come to signify, a rogue. Vassal also denoted originally, a tenant or feudatory of a superior lord. It waz an honorable name, the barons being called the kings vassals. But servitude iz to natural a consequence of the tenure of lands under a proprietor, in see, that vassal haz become sinonimous with slave.[c] The change of meening in theze words iz a volum of instruction to princes and legislators. Reduce men to bondage, and they hav no motiv but feer to keep them industrious and honest, and of course, most of them commence rogues and drones. Why hav not the tyrants of Europe discovered this truth? Good laws, and an equal distribution of the advantages and the rights of government, would generally be an effectual substitute for the bayonet and the gallows. Look thro Europe; wherever we see poverty and oppression, there we find a nursery of villains. A difference in the property, education and advantages, originates the difference of character, between the nobleman of nicest honor, and the culprits that swing at Tyburn.
[c] Blackstone, Vol. II. 52, says, "we now uze the word vassal opprobriously, az sinonimous to slave or bondman, on account of the prejudices we hav justly conceived against the doctrins grafted on the feudal system." So good a man ought not to hav uzed the word prejudice; and so great a man ought to hav assigned a better reezon for this opprobriousness of the modern word vassal.
[93] De Mor. Germ. c. 13.
[94] The practice of choosing assistant judges in the Roman commonwealth, waz something similar to our mode of impannelling a jury. Theze assistants were sometimes a hundred, and it iz not improbable, the Roman and German customs of electing that number might be derived from the same original.
[95] See Coke Litt. and Hargraves notes on this subject.
[96] Mallets North. Antiquities.
[97] Mentioned in the preceding note, copied from Mallet.