Even when the barbaric nations have ceased to be nomadic,
pastoral, or predatory nations, as the ancient Assyrians and
Persians or modern Chinese, and have their geographical
boundaries, they have still no state, no country. The nation
defines the boundaries, not the boundaries the nation. The
nation does not belong to the territory, but the territory to the
nation or its chief. The Irish and Anglo-Saxons, in former
times, held the land in gavelkind, and the territory belonged to
the tribe or sept; but if the tribe held it as indivisible, they
still held it as private property. The shah of Persia holds the
whole Persian territory as private property, and the landholders
among his subjects are held to be his tenants. They hold it from
him, not from the Persian state.

The public domain of the Greek empire is in theory the private
domain of the Ottoman emperor or Turkish sultan. There is in
barbaric states no republic, no commonwealth; authority is
parental, without being tempered by parental affection. The
chief is a despot, and rules with the united authority of the
father and the harshness of the proprietor. He owns the land and
his subjects.

Feudalism, established in Western Europe after the downfall of
the Roman Empire, however modified by the Church and by
reminiscences of Graeco-Roman civilization retained by the
conquered, was a barbaric constitution. The feudal monarch, as
far as he governed at all, governed as proprietor or landholder,
not as the representative of the commonwealth. Under feudalism
there are estates, but no state. The king governs as an estate,
the nobles hold their power as an estate, and the commons are