king,
through that dependence which their lord was obliged by his tenure to
acknowledge to his sovereign and superior. Their land, comprehended in
the barony, was represented in parliament by the baron himself, who was
supposed, according to the fictions of the feudal law, to possess the
direct property of it; and it would have been deemed incongruous to give
it any other representation. They stood m the same capacity to him, that
he and the other barons did to the king: the former were peers of the
barony; the latter were peers of the realm: the vassals possessed a
subordinate rank within their district: the baron enjoyed a superior
dignity in the great assembly: they were in some degree his companions
at home; he the king's companion at court: and nothing can be
more evidently repugnant to all feudal ideas, and to that gradual
subordination which was essential to those ancient institutions, than to
imagine that the king would apply either for the advice or consent of
men who were of a rank so much inferior, and whose duty was immediately
paid to the mesne lord that was interposed between them and the
throne.[*]

[* Spel. Gloss, in verb. Baro.]

If it be unreasonable to think that the vassals of a barony, though
their tenure was military, and noble, and honorable, were ever summoned
to give their opinion in national councils, much less can it be supposed
that the tradesmen or inhabitants of boroughs, whose condition was so
much inferior, would be admitted to that privilege. It appears from
Domesday, that the greatest boroughs were, at the time of the conquest,
scarcely more than country villages; and that the inhabitants lived
in entire dependence on the king or great lords, and were of a
station little better than servile.[*] They were not then so much as
incorporated; they formed no community; were not regarded as a body
politic; and being really nothing but a number of low, dependent
tradesmen, living, without any particular civil tie, in neighborhood
together, they were incapable of being represented in the states of the
kingdom. Even in France, a country which made more early advances in
arts and civility than England, the first corporation is sixty years
posterior to the conquest under the duke of Normandy; and the erecting
of these communities was an invention of Lewis the Gross, in order
to free the people from slavery under the lords, and to give
them protection by means of certain privileges and a sep