ousand novel sources of enjoyment,
which they could indulge in while giving themselves up to idleness. They
had chiefs because men leagued together always have leaders, and because
the bravest, ever held in high consideration, soon become the most
powerful, and bequeath to their descendants a portion of their own
personal influence. These chiefs became kings; the old subjects of Rome,
who at first had only been called upon to receive, to lodge, and feed
their new masters, were soon compelled to surrender to them a portion of
their estates; and as the labourer, as well as the plant, attaches
himself to the soil that nourishes him, the lands and the labourers
became the property of these turbulent and lazy owners. Thus feudalism
was established,--not suddenly, not by an express convention between the
chief and his followers, not by an immediate and regular division of the
conquered country amongst the conquerors, but by degrees, after long
years of uncertainty, by the simple force of circumstances, as must
always happen when conquest is followed by transplantation and continued
possession.

We should be wrong in supposing that the barbarians were destitute of
all moral convictions. Man, in that early epoch of civilization, does
not reflect upon what we call duties; but he knows and respects, amongst
his fellow-beings, certain rights, some traces of which are discoverable
even under the empire of the most absolute force. A simple code of
justice, often violated, and cruelly avenged, regulates the simple
intercourse of associated savages. The Germans, unacquainted with any
other laws or ties, found themselves suddenly transported into the midst
of an order of things founded on different ideas, and demanding
different restrictions. This gave them no trouble; their passage was too
rapid to enable them to ascertain and supply what was deficient in their
legislature and policy. Bestowing little thought on their new subjects,
they continued to follow the same principles and customs which recently,
in the forests of Germany, had regulated their conduct and decided their
quarrels. Thus the conquered people were, at first, more forgotten than
vanquished, more despised than oppressed; they constituted the mass of
the nation, and this mass found itself controlled without being reduced
to servitude, because they were not thought of, and because the
conquerors never suspected that they could possess rights which they
feared to defend.