intelligence of the
men that lived by trade. But Rienzi, Marcel, Artevelde, and the other
champions of the unripe democracy of those days, lived and died in vain.
The upheaval of the middle class had disclosed the need, the passions,
the aspirations of the suffering poor below; ferocious insurrections in
France and England caused a reaction that retarded for centuries the
readjustment of power, and the red spectre of social revolution arose in
the track of democracy. The armed citizens of Ghent were crushed by the
French chivalry; and monarchy alone reaped the fruit of the change that
was going on in the position of classes, and stirred the minds of men.

Looking back over the space of a thousand years, which we call the
Middle Ages, to get an estimate of the work they had done, if not
towards perfection in their institutions, at least towards attaining the
knowledge of political truth, this is what we find: Representative
government, which was unknown to the ancients, was almost universal. The
methods of election were crude; but the principle that no tax was lawful
that was not granted by the class that paid it--that is, that taxation
was inseparable from representation--was recognised, not as the
privilege of certain countries, but as the right of all. Not a prince in
the world, said Philip de Commines, can levy a penny without the consent
of the people. Slavery was almost everywhere extinct; and absolute power
was deemed more intolerable and more criminal than slavery. The right of
insurrection was not only admitted but defined, as a duty sanctioned by
religion. Even the principles of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the method
of the Income Tax, were already known. The issue of ancient politics was
an absolute state planted on slavery. The political produce of the
Middle Ages was a system of states in which authority was restricted by
the representation of powerful classes, by privileged associations, and
by the acknowledgment of duties superior to those which are imposed by
man.

As regards the realisation in practice of what was seen to be good,
there was almost everything to do. But the great problems of principle
had been solved, and we come to the question, How did the sixteenth
century husband the treasure which the Middle Ages had stored up? The
most visible sign of the times was the decline of the religious
influence that had reigned so long. Sixty years passed after the
invention of printing, and thirty thousan