the Saxon immigration resulted in the foundation of a number of small
communities which, though they were afterwards fused into seven or eight
petty kingdoms and ultimately into one large kingdom, must, while they
existed, have fostered habits of local independence and self-government.
Maritime migration would also facilitate the transition from the tribe
to the nation, because the ships could hardly be manned on purely tribal
principles; the early Saxon communities in England appear in fact to
have been semi-tribal, the local bond predominating over the tribal,
though a name with a tribal termination is retained. Room would scarcely
be found in the ships for a full proportion of women; the want would be
supplied by taking the women of the conquered country; and thus tribal
rules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers connected with them,
would be broken down.

Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from invasion. The
success of the Saxon invaders may be ascribed to the absence of strong
resistance. The policy of Roman conquest, by disarming the natives, had
destroyed their military character, as the policy of British conquest
has done in India, where races which once fought hard against the
invader under their native princes, such as the people of Mysore, are
now wholly unwarlike. Anything like national unity, or power of co-
operation against a foreign enemy, had at the same time been extirpated
by a government which divided that it might command. The Northman in his
turn owed his success partly to the want of unity among the Saxon
principalities, partly and principally to the command of the sea which
the Saxon usually abandoned to him, and which enabled him to choose his
own point of attack, and to baffle the movements of the defenders. When
Alfred built a fleet, the case was changed.

William of Normandy would scarcely have succeeded, great as his armament