It is only natural that the sense of common and independent interests should spring up and grow strong more rapidly in an insular than in a continental state. Frontiers traced by a river or a mountain can be, and as a fact often are, shifted. Nationalities divided by a barrier so slight and variable are consequently slow to detach and differentiate themselves. A sense of nationality may eventually condense and settle into shape, but it is only by an historical process and by the long-continued influence of common traditions. Where the geographical boundaries are indefinite, this sense is at first and for a long time remains wavering, tentative, and hesitating. On the other hand, a boundary so clearly marked and so permanent as is the sea acts as an incessant inducement to regard as final the separation of the peoples which it divides, and to look upon any particular group which it shuts off from the rest as forming a natural unit. The Norman barons, less than a century after the conquest, show an inclination to look upon themselves as one with the conquered people.1 The followers whom the Angevin kings brought with them from the Continent, inhabitants of Touraine and Poitou, or even Normans fresh from Normandy, are not looked upon by the first settlers with hatred and suspicion, merely as new claimants to a share of the spoil; but the latter instinctively regard them, their compatriots of yesterday, as aliens, albeit

1 Before the end of the thirteenth century the difference in dress between Normans and Saxons had disappeared.- View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England, Strutt, ii.

they both speak the same language and one which the Saxons cannot understand.

Hatred of the men from beyond Channel is conspicuous in the whole long series of complaints and remonstrances addressed to the kings; and on the other hand a document from which I have already quoted, the Dialogus de Scaccario, testifies that by the end of the twelfth century the fusion of victor and vanquished was complete. "Sic permixtæ sunt nationes," says the manuscript, "ut vix discerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis Anglicus quis Normannus sit genere.'

The same document notices the frequency of mixed marriages between the two races, and the fact is all the more remarkable as, at the same period, marriage with an alien appears to have been regarded as in some measure a disgrace. Clause 6 of the Barons' Petition in 1258, demands that heiresses of noble birth shall not be so given in marriage as to "lose rank," or to "enter into a mésalliance." These are the nearest equivalents to the word disparagentur, and the explanation given in the context is characteristic.2 By uniting them,” it goes on to say, " with men who are not natives of this kingdom of England." This tradition, it is well known, still obtains amongst the English nobility, who seldom marry outside their own body. A cosmopolitan nobility and an ultramontane clergy have proved the scourge of

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1 Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 10. Stubbs' Select Charters.

2 Petunt de maritagiis domino regi pertinentibus, quod non maritentur ubi disparagentur, videlicet hominibus qui non sunt de natione regni Angliæ.-Petition of the Barons at the Parliament of Oxford. 6. Stubbs' Select Charters.

E.C.

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more than one continental state. In England, the nobility and the clergy may have been, as elsewhere, selfish, unruly, grasping and oppressive; but we find them from the very beginning, and, so to speak, in obedience to the destiny of their geographical position, imbued with a sense of nationality, at once deep-seated, narrow, and defiant, which brought with it this advantage that it limited the scope and checked the development of any spirit of caste, and which ceaselessly, though silently—as I shall explain more fully later on-sapped the foundations of the Catholic Establishment in England.

One circumstance in particular assisted the rapid development of this feeling of nationality; I allude to the long-established homogeneity of the different parts of the kingdom. Let us consider for a moment how France was divided for administrative purposes from the very beginning, and down to the end of the old régime. We find great provinces as extensive as ordinary kingdoms; Brittany, for example, was equal in area to more than a fourth part of England proper; several of the provinces were almost in the position of "sub-nationalities," a distinct race forming the bulk of the population; several had been actual states and cherished the memory of a time when their rulers enjoyed independent sovereignty. Their re-union with the Crown was a gradual process; it was brought about in some cases by conquest, in many by marriage, inheritance, or treaty; in almost all, under terms which safe-guarded their ancient privileges.1

1 Under Philip the Long, Languedoc would not agree to a

The king having taken the place of the former lord, treated directly and separately with each province, whether for the granting or the method of collecting the taxes. The same lines of division appear in the national assemblies which began to meet at the end of the fourteenth century; the deputies were divided in the first place according to class (ordre), but immediate subdivisions appeared in each class corresponding to provinces or groups of provinces.1 And more than once, one or other of these groups, intent merely upon its own advantage, after securing some arrangement favourable to itself, would withdraw or take no further part in the proceedings, thus rendering abortive such measures as concerned the common interest. In short the existence of arbitrary power and a monarchy of great prestige clothed the country with the semblance of unity, but even in the seventeenth century the nation was still in embryo.2 France was no longer a federation, and she

uniform coinage for the whole kingdom; she clung to her own standards and measures and rejected those used in Paris.

1 Note particularly the assemblies of 1576 and of 1588. They were divided according to "governments." The same disposition was shown in 1483 at the assembly of Tours. In 1346 again, Hervieu notices a vote recorded according to provinces or according to "nations." The same thing occurs in 1349 in the case of the "langue d'oil," distinct assemblies for the langue d'oil and the langue d'oc were for a long time the rule.

2 We know that Adam Smith mentions the freedom of internal trade, complete and of long standing as it even then was, as one of the highest advantages enjoyed by the England of his day. In France the kings made efforts to secure it, but they clearly did not think themselves strong enough to impose it by force. In 1621 Louis XIII. authorized the establishment of new custom

was not, as yet, an undivided people. We know that at the date of the wars of religion, la Noüe had contemplated the possibility of a dismemberment of the monarchy.1

houses in certain frontier provinces which had been without them up to that time, but he gave those provinces the choice of placing them either on their external or internal boundary. Burgundy gave the preference to internal trade, and its customs line was drawn on the side of Franche Comté which then belonged to Spain. On the other hand, Saintonge, the district of Aunis, Guienne, Brittany, and Maine had their customs line drawn on the side of Normandy and Poitou, and so insured the freedom of their foreign trade. Later, when Colbert established the grandes fermes, he did not insist on union, he merely suggested it to the provinces, and we know that the only provinces which accepted his suggestion were those which formed the central northern group. No other fact could show more aptly that France was, even at that time, held together only by the very loose ties of a species of federalism, and that the sense of a common fatherland was not as yet strong enough to secure the unity of the State. Clement, Histoire du Système Protecteur.

1 The history of the origin of the "intendants," those agents and types of French centralization, is full of meaning. Their office does not have its rise, as we might be led to believe, in the normal development of the administrative system. It belongs to a period of anarchy; it is a relic handed down to us, in an aggravated form, of a condition of things resembling a state of siege. Speaking generally, the first known form of the intendant seems to have been the commissioner who was sent in the sixteenth century into those provinces in which order had to be restored, as the colleague of the general in command. Hence the expression, "military intendants" (intendants du militaire) continued to appear in their commission. The office existed wherever disorders existed; it ceased with them, and was revived again when they revived, until in 1635 it took permanent shape, and we find it established in every part of the kingdom in spite of the absence of disturbance. The intendants exercised at first, as was to be