hey had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that of
passive obedience and non-resistance. They knew that government was a
plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and
quite comprehensible by common sense.----They detested all the base
services, and servile dependencies of the feudal system.----They knew
that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats of
liberty, the republic of Greece and Rome: and they thought all such
slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution
of human nature, and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made
them free. This was certainly the opinion they had formed, and they were
far from being singular or extravagant in thinking so.----Many
celebrated modern writers in Europe have espoused the same
sentiments.--Lord Kaims, a Scottish writer of great reputation, whose
authority in this case ought to have the more weight, as his countrymen
have not the most worthy ideas of liberty, speaking of the feudal law,
says, "A constitution so contradictory to all the principles which
govern mankind, can never be brought about, one should imagine, but by
foreign conquest or native usurpations." Brit. Ant. p. 2.--Rousseau
speaking of the same system, calls it, "That most iniquitous and absurd
form of government, by which human nature was so shamefully degraded."
Social compact, Page 164.----It would be easy to multiply authorities;
but it must be needless, because as the original of this form of
government was among savages, as the spirit of it is military and
despotic, every writer, who would allow the people to have any right to
life or property or freedom, more than the beasts of the field, and who
was not hired or inlisted under arbitrary lawless power, has been always
willing to admit the feudal system to be inconsistent with liberty and
the rights of mankind.

To have holden their lands allodially, or for every man to have been the
sovereign lord and proprietor of the ground he occupied, would have
constituted a government, too nearly like a commonwealth.--They were
contented, therefore, to hold their lands of their King, as their
sovereign lord, and to him they were willing to render homage: but to no
mesne and subordinate lords, nor were they willing to submit to any of
the baser services.--In all this they were so strenuous, that they have
even transmitted to their posterity, a very general contempt and
detestation of h