might be expected to lighten it. On the contrary, many a people has
gradually emerged from this condition by the aid of a central
authority, whose position has made it the rival, and has ended by
making it the master, of the local despots, and which, above all, has
been single. French history, from Hugh Capet to Richelieu and Louis
XIV., is a continued example of this course of things. Even when the
king was scarcely so powerful as many of his chief feudatories, the
great advantage which he derived from being but one has been
recognized by French historians. To him the eyes of _all_ the locally
oppressed were turned; he was the object of hope and reliance
throughout the kingdom, while each local potentate was only powerful
within a more or less confined space. At his hands, refuge and
protection were sought from every part of the country against first
one, then another of the immediate oppressors. His progress to
ascendancy was slow; but it resulted from successively taking
advantage of opportunities which offered themselves only to him. It
was, therefore, sure; and, in proportion as it was accomplished, it
abated, in the oppressed portion of the community, the habit of
submitting to oppression. The king's interest lay in encouraging all
partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves
from their masters, and place themselves in immediate subordination to
himself. Under his protection numerous communities were formed which
knew no one above them but the king. Obedience to a distant monarch is
liberty itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the
neighboring castle; and the monarch was long compelled by necessities
of position to exert his authority as the ally rather than the master
of the classes whom he had aided in affecting their liberation. In
this manner a central power, despotic in principle, though generally
much restricted in practice, was mainly instrumental in carrying the
people through a necessary stage of improvement, which representative