they must ring the town bell and summon an assembly of all the burghers
to compel him. Any one ringing the town bell, except by general consent,
and any one not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine. No
Middelburger can be arrested or held in durance within Flanders or
Holland, except for crime."

This document was signed, sealed, and sworn to by the two sovereigns in
the year 1217. It was the model upon which many other communities,
cradles of great cities, in Holland and Zeland, were afterwards created.

These charters are certainly not very extensive, even for the privileged
municipalities which obtained them, when viewed from an abstract
stand-point. They constituted, however, a very great advance from the
stand-point at which humanity actually found itself. They created, not
for all inhabitants, but for great numbers of them, the right, not to
govern them selves but to be governed by law: They furnished a local
administration of justice. They provided against arbitrary imprisonment.
They set up tribunals, where men of burgher class were to sit in
judgment. They held up a shield against arbitrary violence from above and
sedition from within. They encouraged peace-makers, punished
peace-breakers. They guarded the fundamental principle, 'ut sua
tanerent', to the verge of absurdity; forbidding a freeman, without a
freehold, from testifying--a capacity not denied even to a country slave.
Certainly all this was better than fist-law and courts manorial. For the
commencement of the thirteenth century, it was progress.

The Schout and Schepens, or chief magistrate and aldermen, were
originally appointed by the sovereign. In process of time, the election
of these municipal authorities was conceded to the communities. This
inestimable privilege, however, after having been exercised during a