r, assigned
to the landowner by the king, and paid for in past or present services
to the king. In other words, the head of the Norman army invited his
officers to help themselves to a share of the cattle and crops over
certain districts of England, and promised to aid them in securing their
plunder, in case the Saxon cultivator was rash enough to resist. The
baronial order presently ceased to render any real service to their
duke, beyond upholding him that he might uphold them. But there was no
such surcease for the Saxon cultivator. The share of his cattle and
crops which he was compelled to give up to the Norman baron became more
rigidly defined, more strictly exacted, with every succeeding century,
and the whole civil state of England was built up on this principle.

The baronial order assembled at Runnymead to force the hand of the king.
From that time forward their power increased, while the king's power
waned. But there was no Runnymead for the Saxon cultivator. He
continued, as to this day he continues, to pay the share of his cattle
and crops to the Norman baron or his successor, in return for
services--no longer rendered--to the king. The whole civil state of
England, therefore, depends on the principle of private taxation; the
Norman barons and their successors receiving a share of the cattle and
crops of the whole country, year after year, generation after
generation, century after century, as payment for services long become
purely imaginary, and even in the beginning rendered not to the
cultivator who was taxed, but to the head of the armed invaders, who
stood ready to enforce the payment. The Constitution of England embodies
this very principle even now, in the twentieth century. Two of the three
Estates,--King, Lords and Commons,--in whom the law-making power is
vested, represent the Norman conquest, while even the third, still
called the Lower House, boasts of being "an assembly of gentlemen," that
is, of those who possess the right of private taxation of land, the
right to claim a share of the cattle and crops of the whole country
without giving anything at all in return.

This is the system which English influence slowly introduced into
Ireland, and with the reign of the first Stuarts the change was
practically complete, guaranteed by law, and enforced by armed power.
The tribesmen were now tenants of their former elected chief, in whom
the ownership of the tribal land was invested; the right of priv