luxury, the measure of which is never full, and which cannot fail of impoverishing them, and bringing them into the most flavish dependance upon the will of the court; if they would act thus, they would find money flow into their coffers in a far greater abundance than they can ever hope to receive from the Imiles of minifters; at the fame time that they would refide where a fhilling goes as far as a pound. In the profufion of a capital, the greatest eftates are spent without making any unufual figure; but in the country, half the income would enable them to build and furnith coftly palaces, and raise whole cities around them to be witneffes of their fplendour.-It is a a most happy thing to any country, when a fovereign gives all the encouragement in his power to promote this rural attention in nobles, which cannot fail of turning out highly beneficial to the whole community."

Our Traveller's account of Vienna gives us no very advantageous idea of that city; indeed, though he had letters of recommendation to feveral perfons from whom he hoped to have received fome interesting and valuable information, he was, he tells us, ftrangely difappointed, as he found a haughty referve in every man of the leaft confequence, which, he adds, renders a refidence in any but a public character very difagreeable at Vienna. However, he accidentally met with a field-officer, a native of Milan, who was very fenfible and communicative, from whom he learned many particulars, which he here delivers to the public.

We fhall here close our review of a publication which bath afforded us confiderable entertainment, and fome information; but we cannot help wishing that the Author had been more attentive to his language, which is extremely defective: although, in other refpects, we think he has made a valuable addition to the public ftock of this kind of books; and that his work may contribute both to the amufement of his readers, and the improvement of his country.

ART. VI. SULLIVAN's Treatife on the Feudal Law, and the Conftitution and Lars of England, &c. concluded. T HAT the power of our Kings, was in the earliest times precarious and limited, our learned Author has fhewn with much perfpicuity; but as they came to affume a power fuperior to the laws, it was neceffary that he fhould mark the fteps by which they arrived at it; and his enquiries on this delicate fubject immediately follow his vindication of the ori ginal freedom of our conftitution *.

See the former part of our account of this work in the last Month's Review.

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The feudal laws kept monarchs under fuch fubjection and restraint, that, till the age of Henry 1. no perfect idea was entertained of an abfolute monarchy; but in the reign of this prince, a copy of the Pandects having been founi at Amalfi, the fovereigns of Europe, ftruck with the dignity of the Imperial defpotifm, fighed after the honours of an unbounded authority. They wished no longer to be chief magistrates, and to have men for their fubjects; they were difpofed to be tyrants, and to domineer over flaves. The excellency of the civil law was every where inculcated with zeal; and though it met not in England with fo cordial a reception as in fome other countries of Europe, it was yet a fource of power to feveral of its princes. Dr. Sullivan, accordingly, has very properly confidered its influence in this light; and we muft obferve, that he has given a mafterly account of the ftruggles which it occafioned. It feems, however, an omiffion in our ingenious Profeffor, that while he ftrongly remarks its arbitrary tendency, he has failed to point out the advantages it produced. To an age involved in ignorance and barbarity, it prefented enlarged ideas concerning the principles of jurifprudence, and the adminif tration of justice. It made law to be confidered as a science. Hence judges became ambitious to think with precifion, and to diftinguith with accuracy.

In enumerating the other sources which contributed to give power to our princes, with the actual encroachments which many of them made on the rights of the people, our Author is neither obfcure nor fuperficial; and before he leaves this fubject, he explains the real prerogatives which they have a title to exercise.

From the King, or head of the community, he proceeds to confider the other orders of which it was compofed. Here the history and nature of the different ranks of nobility attract his attention; and in unfolding and illuftrating thefe topics, he communicates much hiftorical information. It is obvious, from his details, that hiftory is the best interpreter of law; and yet, what may appear fingular, there is perhaps no branch of knowledge with which lawyers are fo little acquainted. This divifion of his work he concludes with an enquiry concerning Palatinates in Ireland, which the enlightened Antiquary will read' with particular pleasure.

The state and hiftory of the Commons are next explained by this judicious Writer. This fubject is particularly interefting; and from his obfervations upon it we shall give our Readers the following extract.

Having come, he obferves, to the constitution of the houfe of commons as it ftands at prefent, it will not be amifs to look back,

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and fee how far its prefent form agrees with, or differs from the feudal principles. Thefe principles, we have feen, were principles of liberty; but not of liberty to the whole nation, nor even to the conquerors; I mean as to the point I am now upon, of having a fhare in the legiflation. That was referved to the military tenants, and to fuch of them only as held immediately of the king. And the loweft and poorest of these alfo, finding it too burthenfome to attend thefe parliaments, or affemblies, that were held fo frequently, foon, by disuse, loft their privileges; fo that the whole legislature centered in the king, and his rich immediate tenants, of his barony. And it is no wonder the times were tempeftuous, when there was no mediator, to balance between two fo great contending powers, and were it not that the clergy, who, though fitting as barons, were in fome degree a feparate body, and had a peculiar intereft of their own, performed that office, fometimes, by throwing themfelves into the lighter fcale, the government muft foon have ended either in a defpotical monarchy, or tyrannical oligarchy.

Such were the general affemblies abroad in the feudal countries, but fuch were not strictly the wittenagemots of the Saxons, for their conftitution was not exactly feudal, I have obferved that the moft of their lands were allodial, and very little held by tenure. The reafon I take to be this: On their fettlement in Britain they extirpated, or drove out, the old inhabitants, and therefore, being in no danger from them, they were under no neceffity of forming a conftitution completely military. But then thofe allodial proprietors being equally freemen, and equal adventurers with these who had lands given them by tenure, if any in truth had fuch, they could not be deprived of their old German rights, of fitting in the public affemblies. From the old historians, who call these meetings infinita multitudo, it appears that they fat in perfon, not by reprefentation.

This conftitution, however, vanifhed with the conqueft, when all the lands became feudal, and none but the immediate military tenants were admitted. We find, indeed, in the fourth year of William the Firft, twelve men fummoned from every county, and Sir Matthew Hale will have this to be as effectual a parliament as any in England; but, with deference to fo great an authority, I apprehend that thefe were not members of the legislature, but only affiftants to that body. For if they were part thereof, how came they afterwards to be difcontinued till Henry the Third's time, where we first find any account of the commons? The truth feems to be, that they were fummoned on a particular occafion, and for a purpose that none but they could anfwer, On his coronation he had

fworn to govern by Edward the Confeffor's laws, which had been fome of them reduced into writing, but the greater part were the immemorial custom of the realm; and he having diftributed his confifcations, which were almoft the whole of England, into his followers' hands, who were foreigners, and ftrangers to what thefe laws and cuftoms were, it was neceffary to have them afcertained; and, for this purpose, he fummoned these twelve Saxons from every county, to inform him and his lords what the ancient laws were. And that they were not legislators, I think appears from this, that when William wanted to revive the Danish laws, which had been abolished by the Confeffor, as coming nearer to his own Norman laws, they prevailed against him, not by refufing their confent, but by tears and prayers, and adjurations, by the foul of Edward his benefactor.

• Thus William's laws were no other than the Confeffor's, except that by one new one, he dextrously, by general words, unperceived by the English, because couched in terms of the foreign feudal law, turned all the allodial lands, which had remained unforfeited in the proprietor's hands, into military tenures. From that time, until the latter end of Henry the Third's reign, our parliaments bore the exact face of those on the continent in that age; but then, in order to do fome justice to the leffer barons, and the lower military tenants, who were entitled by the principles of the conftitution to be present, but difabled by indigence to be fo in perfon, they were allowed to appear by representation, as were the boroughs about the fame time, or foon after. The perfons entitled to vote in these elections for knights of the fhire, were, in my apprehenfion, only the minor barons, and tenants by knight service, for they were the only perfons that had been omitted, and had a right before, or perhaps with them, the king's immediate focage tenants in capite.

But certain it is, the law that fettled this had foon, with regard to liberty, a great and favourable extenfion, by which all freemen, whether holding of the king mediately or immediately, by military tenure or otherwife, were admitted equally to vote; and none were excluded from that privilege, except villains, copy-holders, and tenants in antient demefne. That' fo great a deviation from the feudal principles of government happened in fo fhort a time, can only be accounted for by conjecture. For records, or hiftory, do not inform us. Í fhall guefs then, that the great barons, who, at the end of Henry the Third's reign, had been subject to forfeiture, and obliged to fubmit, and accept of mercy, were duly fenfible of the defign the king had in introducing this new body of legislators, and fenfible that it was aimed against them, could not oppofe

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it. But, however, they attempted, and for fome time fucceeded to elude the effects of it, by infifting that all freemen, whether they held of the king, or of any other lord, should be equally admitted to the right of the representation.

The king, whofe profeffion was to be a patron of liberty, Edward the Firft, could not oppofe this; and as he was a prince of great wisdom and forefight, I think it is not irrational to fuppofe, that he might be pleafed to fee even the vassals of his lords, act in fome fort independently of them, and look immediately to the king their lord's lord. The effect was certainly this, by the power and influence their great fortunes gave them in the country, the majority of the commons were, for a long time, more in the dominion of the lords than of the crown; though, if the king was either a wife or a good prince, they were even then a confiderable check upon the too mighty peers.

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Every day, and by infenfible steps, their house advanced in reputation and privileges and power; but fince Henry the Seventh's time, the progrefs has been very great. The increase of commerce gave the commons ability to purchate; the extravagance of the lords gave them an inclination, the laws of that king gave them a power to alienate their intailed eftates; infomuch that, as the fhare of property which the commons have is fo difproportionate to that of the king and nobles, and that power is faid to follow property, the opinion of many is, that, in our prefent fituation, our government leans too much to the popular fide; while others, though they admit it is fo in appearance, reflecting what a number of the house of commons are returned by indigent boroughs, who are wholly in the power of a few great men, think the weight of the government is rather oligarchical.'

Dr. Sullivan, proceeding naturally in his fubject, now prefents his reader with an account of vile nage, copyhold tenants, and tenants in ancient demefne; a portion of his treatise by no means incurious, and in which he leads us to admire his various erudition.

After he has exhibited a delineation of the orders of men in a feudal monarchy, and of the other peculiarities which diftinguish it, he goes on, to defcribe the progrefs of the English law, and to exprefs the variations it has undergone. But, in order to execute this difficult tafk with the greater perfpicuity, he gives a previous view of the laws and civil polity of the Anglo-Saxons. In this difcuffion, where he had to encounter the obfcurity which refults both from antiquity and barbarism, he proceeds with deliberate and cautious fteps. There appears to us, accordingly, but one circumftance of importance which he feems to have overlooked, in regard to this dark and intricate.