dations of great and
important changes in the government.

Though nothing could be worse calculated for cultivating the arts of
peace, or maintaining peace itself, than the long subordination of
vassalage from the king to the meanest gentleman, and the consequent
slavery of the lower people, evils inseparable from the feudal system,
that system was never able to fix the state in a proper warlike posture,
or give it the full exertion of its power for defence, and still less
for offence, against a public enemy. The military tenants, unacquainted
with obedience, unexperienced in war, held a rank in the troops by
their birth, not by their merits or services; composed a disorderly
and consequently a feeble army; and during the few days which they
were obliged by their tenures to remain in the field, were often more
formidable to their own prince than to foreign powers, against whom they
were assembled. The sovereigns came gradually to disuse this cumbersome
and dangerous machine, so apt to recoil upon the hand which held it; and
exchanging the military service for pecuniary supplies, enlisted forces
by means of a contract with particular officers, (such as those the
Italians denominate "condottieri,") whom they dismissed at the end of
the war.[*] The barons and knights themselves often entered into these
engagements with the prince; and were enabled to fill their bands, both
by the authority which they possessed over their vassals and tenants,
and from the great numbers of loose, disorderly people whom they
found on their estates, and who willingly embraced an opportunity of
gratifying their appetite for war and rapine.

Meanwhile the old Gothic fabric, being neglected, went gradually to
decay. Though the Conqueror had divided all the lands of England
into sixty thousand knights' fees, the number of these was insensibly
diminished by various artifices; and the king at last found that, by
putting the law in execution, he could assemble a small part only of the
ancient force of the kingdom. It was a usual expedient for men who held
of the king or great barons by military tenure, to transfer their
land to the church, and receive it back by another tenure, called
frankalmoigne, by which they were not bound to per form any service.[**]
A law was made against this practice; but the abuse had probably gone
far before it was attended to, and probably was not entirely corrected
by the new statute, which, like most laws of that age,