recover from the greatest catastrophe in all her history.

But our little systems have their day, as the poet assures
us. They have their day and cease to be. Feudalism had
its day, from dawn to twilight a day of picturesque
memory. But it did not cease to exist when its day of
service was done. Long after the necessity for mutual
service and protection had passed away; long after the
growth of firm monarchies with powerful standing armies
had established the reign of law, the feudal system kept
its hold upon the social order in France and elsewhere.
The obligation of military service, when no longer needed,
was replaced by dues and payments. The modern cash nexus
replaced the old personal bond between vassal and lord.
The feudal system became the seigneurial system. The lord
became the seigneur; the vassal became the censitaire or
peasant cultivator whose chief function was to yield
revenue for his seigneur's purse. These were great changes
which sapped the spirit of the ancient institution. No
longer bound to their dependants by any personal tie,
the seigneurs usually turned affairs over to their
bailiffs, men with hearts of adamant, who squeezed from
the seigneuries every sou the hapless peasantry could
yield. These publicans of the old regime have much to
answer for. They and their work were not least among the
causes which brought upon the crown and upon the privileged
orders that terrible retribution of the Red Terror. Not
with the mediaeval institution of feudalism, but with
its emaciated descendant, the seigneurial system of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ought men to