remnant of sovereignty or, at least, of independence. The privileged
person avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it despoils him,
but because it belittles him; it is a mark of the commoner, that is to
say, of former servitude, and he resists the fisc (the revenue services)
as much through pride as through interest.

IV. Their Feudal Rights.

These advantages are the remains of primitive sovereignty.

Let us follow him home to his own domain. A bishop, an abbe, a chapter
of the clergy, an abbess, each has one like a lay seignior; for, in
former times, the monastery and the church were small governments like
the county and the duchy.--Intact on the other bank of the Rhine, almost
ruined in France, the feudal structure everywhere discloses the same
plan. In certain places, better protected or less attacked, it has
preserved all its ancient externals. At Cahors, the bishop-count of
the town had the right, on solemnly officiating, "to place his helmet,
cuirass, gauntlets and sword on the altar."[1220] At Besancon, the
archbishop-prince has six high officers, who owe him homage for their
fiefs, and who attend at his coronation and at his obsequies. At
Mende,[1221] the bishop, seignior-suzerain for Gevaudan since the
eleventh century, appoints "the courts, ordinary judges and judges of
appeal, the commissaries and syndics of the country." He disposes of
all the places, "municipal and judiciary." Entreated to appear in the
assembly of the three orders of the province, he "replies that his
place, his possessions and his rank exalting him above every individual
in his diocese. He cannot sit under the presidency of any person; that,
being seignior-suzerain of all estates and particularly of the baronies,
he cannot give way to his vassals." In brief that he is king, or but
little short of it, in his own province. At Remiremont, the noble
chapter of canonesses has, "inferior, superior, and ordinary judicature
in fifty-two bans of seigniories," nominates seventy-five curacies and
confers ten male canonships. It appoints the municipal officers of the
town, and, besides these, three lower and higher courts, and everywhere
the officials in the jurisdiction over woods and forests. Thirty-two
bishops, without counting the chapters, are thus temporal seigniors, in
whole or in part, of their episcopal town, sometimes of the surrounding
district, and sometimes, like the bishop of St. Claude, of the entire
country. Here the