vassals. The one thing needful was to pay their rents, or perform their
services, to maintain his extravagances; and these were accordingly
exacted with merciless severity. Thence the general oppression of the
poor, and universal outcry against the system, which produced the French
Revolution.

The powerful central government, regular taxation, and large standing
armies of modern Europe, have removed the chief _political_ evils which
were at times felt with such dreadful severity during the middle ages; but
have they not introduced _social_ evils of a still more pernicious and
irretrievable character? Private wars have disappeared; we no longer hear
of chateaux burnt, fields ravaged, or serfs massacred, in pursuance of the
deadly feuds of hostile barons. War has become a separate profession;
military service is no longer required from the rural tenants; the
undivided attention of industry is permitted to be directed to pacific
pursuits. The ravages of hostility, and the destruction of conquest, have
been diminished in amount, and greatly alleviated in severity. Taxes
levied on the whole community, have superseded the necessity, save in
extreme cases, of ruinous exactions from individuals; war is often felt
rather as a stimulus to industry by its expenditure, than a blight to it
from its contributions. It is the influence of these circumstances, joined
to the protection of a regular government, and the unbounded stimulus of
general freedom, which have given so marvellous an impulse to the
prosperity of modern Europe and rendered the British Empire in
particular, where their fostering tendency has been most strongly felt,
the admiration, the terror, and the envy of the world.

But in lieu of the political oppression and military exactions which, in
former days, were felt as so disastrous, a host of _social_ evils have
sprung up, and are rapidly spreading their baneful influence through every
class of society, to such an extent as to render it doubtful whether their
effect will not ultimately be to uproot society, and destroy the whole
states of modern Europe. These effects have taken place amidst general
peace and apparent general prosperity; at a time when wealth was
accumulating with unheard-of rapidity, and knowledge was diffused to an
unprecedented extent. Law was regularly administered; illegal acts
generally checked; foreign hostility averted; domestic oppression removed,
or softened. The Chrematists were in exult