of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of
the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family
inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by
which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of
power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and
began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to
the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated
into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must
have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the
midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous
as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the
want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon
rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to
appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in
their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves
by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources
by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce.
The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The
transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier
rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once
flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and
the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success
to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to
social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the
State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the
exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In
the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth
it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270;