mstances of the Norman Conquest more forcibly illustrate the
humiliation of the conquered people, than the measures by which the
invaders imposed their language on the public courts of the country, and
endeavored to make it permanently usurp the place of the mother-tongue
of the despised multitude; and no fact more signally displays our
conservative temper than the general reluctance of English society to
relinquish the use of the French words and phrases which still tincture
the language of parliament, and the procedures of Westminster Hall,
recalling to our minds the insolent domination of a few powerful
families who occupied our country by force, and ruled our forefathers
with vigorous injustice.

Frenchmen by birth, education, sympathy, William's barons did their
utmost to make England a new France: and for several generations the
descendants of the successful invaders were no less eager to abolish
every usage which could remind the vanquished race of their lost
supremacy. French became the language of parliament and the
council-chamber. It was spoken by the judges who dispensed justice in
the name of a French king, and by the lawyers who followed the royal
court in the train of the French-speaking judges. In the hunting-field
and the lists no gentleman entitled to bear coat-armour deigned to utter
a word of English: it was the same in Fives' Court and at the
gambling-table. Schoolmasters were ordered to teach their pupils to
construe from Latin into French, instead of into English; and young men
of Anglo-Saxon extraction, bent on rising in the world by native talent
and Norman patronage, labored to acquire the language of the ruling
class and forget the accents of their ancestors. The language and usages
of modern England abound with traces of the French of this period. To
every act that obtained the royal assent during last session of
parliament, the queen said "La reyne le veult." Every bill which is sent
up from the Commons to the Lords, an officer of the lower house endorses
with "Soit baile aux Seigneurs;" and no bill is ever sent down from the
Lords to the Commons until a corresponding officer of the upper house
has written on its back, "Soit baile aux Communes."

In like manner our parochial usages, local sports, and domestic games
continually remind us of the obstinate tenacity with which the
Anglo-Saxon race has preserved, and still preserves, the vestiges of its
ancient subjection to a foreign yoke. The