No More Learning

EDWARD A. FREEMAN
Year after year he poured forth a steady
stream of Essays, Thoughts, Remarks, Sug-
gestions, Lectures, Short Histories on mat-
ters of current interest, little monographs
on great events or great men,-all covering
a range of subjects which bear evidence to most astonishing ver-
satility and learning. Sometimes his topic was a cathedral church,
as that of Wells or Leominster Priory; or a cathedral city, as Ely or
Norwich. At others it was a grave historical theme, as the Unity
of History'; or 'Comparative Politics'; or the Growth of the English
Constitution from the Earliest Times'; or 'Old English History for
Children. ' His 'General Sketch of European History' is still a stand-
ard text book in our high schools and colleges. His 'William the
Conqueror in Macmillan's Twelve English Statesmen'; his 'Short
History of the Norman Conquest of England' in the Clarendon Press
Series; his studies of Godwin, Harold, and the Normans, in the 'En-
cyclopædia Britannica,' are the best of their kind.



## p. 5978 (#568) ###########################################

5978
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
His contributions to the reviews and magazines make a small
library, encyclopædic in character. Thirty-one essays were published
in the Fortnightly Review; thirty in the Contemporary Review;
twenty-seven in Macmillan's Magazine; twelve in the British Quar-
terly, and as many more in the National Review; while such as are
scattered through the other periodicals of Great Britain and the
United States swell the list to one hundred and fifty-seven titles.
Every conceivable subject is treated,-politics, government, history,
field sports, architecture, archæology, books, linguistics, finance, great
men living and dead, questions of the day. But even this list does
not comprise all of Freeman's writings, for regularly every week, for
more than twenty years, he contributed two long articles to the Sat-
urday Review.
Taken as a whole, this array of publications represents an indus-
try which was simply enormous, and a learning as varied as it was
immense. If classified according to their subjects, they fall naturally
into six groups.
The antiquarian and architectural sketches and ad-
dresses are the least valuable and instructive. They are of interest
because they exhibit a strong bent of mind which appears constantly
in Freeman's works, and because it was by the aid of such remains
that he studied the early history of nations. Then come the studies
in politics and government, such as the essays on presidential gov-
ernment; on American institutional history; on the House of Lords;
the growth of commonwealths, and such elaborate treatises as the six
lectures on Comparative Politics,' and the History of Federal Gov-
ernment,'—all notable because of the liberal spirit and breadth of
view that mark them, and because of a positiveness of statement
and confidence in the correctness of the author's judgments. Then
come the historical essays; then the lectures and addresses; then his
occasional pieces, written at the request of publishers or editors to
fill some long-felt want; and finally the series of histories on which,
in the long run, the reputation of Freeman must rest. These, in the
order of merit and value, are the 'Norman Conquest'; the 'Reign of
William Rufus,' which is really a supplement to the 'Conquest'; the
"History of Sicily,' which the author did not live to finish.
The roll of his works is enough to show that the kind of history
which appealed to Freeman was that of the distant past, and that
which dealt with politics rather than with social life. Of ancient his-
tory he had a good mastery; English history from its dawn to the
thirteenth century he knew minutely; European history of the same
period he knew profoundly. After the thirteenth century his interest
grew less and less as modern times were approached, and his knowl-
edge smaller and smaller till it became that of a man very well read
in history and no more.


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5979
Freeman was therefore essentially a historian of the far past; and
as such had, it is safe to say, no living superior in England. But in
his treatment of the past he presents a small part of the picture.
He is concerned with great conquerors, with military leaders, with
battles and sieges and systems of government. The mass of the
people have no interest for him at all. His books abound in battle-
pieces of the age of the long-bow and the javelin, of the battle-axe,
the mace, and the spear; of the age when brain went for little and
when brawn counted for much; and when the fate of nations de-
pended less on the skill of individual commanders than on the per-
sonal prowess of those who met in hand-to-hand encounters. He
delights in descriptions of historic buildings; he is never weary of
drawing long analogies between one kind of government and another;
but for the customs, the manner, the usages, the daily life of the
people, he has never a word. "History," said he on one occasion,
"is past politics; politics is present history," and to this epigram he
is strictly faithful. The England of the serf and the villein, the cur-
few and the monastery, is brushed aside to leave room for the story
of the way in which William of Normandy conquered the Saxons,
and of the way in which William Rufus conducted his quarrels with
Bishop Anselm.
With all of this no fault is to be found. It was his cast of mind,
his point of view; and the questions which alone concern us in any
estimate of his work are: Did he do it well? What is its value?
Did he make a real contribution to historical knowledge? What are
its merits and defects? Judged by the standard he himself set up,
Freeman's chief merits, the qualities which mark him out as a great
historian, are an intense love of truth and a determination to dis
cover it at any cost; a sincere desire to mete out an even-handed
justice to each and every man; unflagging industry, common-sense,
broad views, and the power to reproduce the past most graphically.
From these merits comes Freeman's chief defect,-prolixity. His
earnest desire to be accurate made him not only say the same thing
over and over again, but say it with an unnecessary and useless full-
ness of detail, and back up his statement with a profusion of notes,
which in many cases amount to more than half the text. Indeed,
were they printed in the same type as the text, the space they
occupy would often exceed it. Thus in the first volume of the
'Norman Conquest' there are 528 pages of text, with foot-notes occu-
pying from a third to a half of almost every page, and an appendix
of notes of 244 pages; in the second volume, the text and foot-notes
amount to 512, and the appendix 179; in the third, the text covers
562 and the appendix 206 pages. These notes are always interesting
and always instructive. But the end of a volume is not the place for


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5980
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
an exhibition of the doubts and fears that have tormented the his-
torian, for a statement of the reasons which have led him to one
conclusion rather than another, nor for the denunciation or reputa-
tion of the opinions of his predecessors. When the building is fin-
ished, we do not want to see the lumber used as the scaffolding piled
in the back yard. Mr. Freeman's histories would be all the better
for a condensation of the text and an elimination of the long appen-
dices.
With these exceptions, the workmanship is excellent. He entered
so thoroughly into the past that it became to him more real and
understandable than the present. He was not merely the contem-
porary but the companion of the men he had to deal with. He
knew every spot of ground, every Roman ruin, every mediæval
castle, that came in any way to be connected with his story, as well
as he knew the topography of the country that stretched beneath his
study window, or the arrangement of the house in which he lived.
In his histories, therefore, we are presented at every turn with
life-like portraits of the illustrious dead, bearing all the marks of
having been taken from life; with descriptions of castles and towers,
minsters and abbeys, and of the scenes that have made them memo-
rable; with comparisons of one ruler with another, always sane and
just; and with graphic pictures of coronations, of battles, sieges,
burnings, and all the havoc and pomp of war.
The essays and studies in politics show Mr. Freeman in a yet
more interesting light; many are elaborate reviews of historical
works, and therefore cover a wide range of topics, both ancient and
of the present time. Now his subject is Mr. Bryce's 'Holy Roman
Empire'; now the Flavian Cæsars; now Mr. Gladstone's 'Homer and
the Homeric Age'; now Kirk's 'Charles the Bold'; now presidential
government; now Athenian democracy; now the Byzantine Empire;
now the Eastern Church; now the growth of commonwealths; now
the geographical aspects of the Eastern Question.
By so wide a range of topics, an opportunity is afforded for a
variety of remarks, analogies, judgments of men and times, far greater
than the histories could give. In the main, these judgments may be
accepted; but so thoroughly was Freeman a historian of the past, that
some of his estimates of contemporary men and things were singu-
larly erroneous. While our Civil War was still raging he began a
'History of Federal Government,' which was to extend from the
Achæan League "to the disruption of the United States. " A prudent
historian would not have taken up the rôle of prophet. He would
have waited for the end of the struggle. But absolute self-confidence
in his own good judgment was one of Freeman's most conspicuous
traits. His estimate of Lincoln is another instance of inability to


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5981
understand the times in which he lived. In the Essay on Presiden-
tial Government,' published in the National Review in 1864 and re-
published in the first series of 'Historical Essays' in 1871, the greatest
President and the grandest public character the United States has
yet produced is declared inferior to each and all the Presidents from
Washington to John Quincy Adams. A comparison of Lincoln with
Monroe or Madison or Jefferson by Freeman would have been enter-
taining.
Two views of history as set forth in the essays are especially de-
serving of notice. He is never weary of insisting on the unity and
the continuity of history in general and that of England in particular,
and he attaches unreasonable importance to the influence of the Teu-
tonic element in English history. This latter was the inevitable re-
sult of his method of studying the past along the lines of philology
and ethnology, and has carried him to extremes which taken by any-
body else he would have been quick to see.
An examination of Freeman's minor contributions to the reviews
- such essays, sketches, and discussions as he did not think important
enough to republish in book form - is indicative of his interest in
current affairs. They made little draft on his learning, yet the point
of view is generally the result of his learning. He believed, for in-
stance, that a sound judgment on the Franco-Prussian War could not
be found save in the light of history. "The present war," he wrote
to the Pall Mall Gazette, "has largely risen out of a misconception
of history, out of the dream of a frontier of the Rhine which never
existed. The war on the part of Germany is in truth a vigorous set-
ting forth of the historical truth that the Rhine is, and always has
been, a German river. "
Freeman was still busy with his History of Sicily' from the ear-
liest times, and had just finished the preface to the third volume,
when he died at Alicante in Spain, March 16th, 1892. Since his death
a fourth volume, prepared from his notes, has been published.
But one biography of Freeman has yet appeared, 'The Life and
Letters of Edward A. Freeman,' by W. R. W. Stephens, 2 vols. , 1895.
Johns
he Bach Melartin


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5982
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
THE ALTERED ASPECTS OF ROME
From Historical Essays of Edward A. Freeman, Third Series. London,
Macmillan & Co. , 1879
ness.
HE two great phenomena, then, of the general appearance of
Rome, are the utter abandonment of so large a part of the
ancient city and the general lack of buildings of the Middle
Ages. Both of these facts are fully accounted for by the pecul-
iar history of Rome. It may be that the sack and fire under
Robert Wiscard -a sack and fire done in the cause of a pope in
warfare against an emperor - was the immediate cause of the
desolation of a large part of Rome; but if so, the destruction
which was then wrought only gave a helping hand to causes
which were at work both before and after. A city could not do
otherwise than dwindle away, in which neither emperor nor pope
nor commonwealth could keep up any lasting form of regular
government; a city which had no resources of its own, and which
lived, as a place of pilgrimage, on the shadow of its own great-
Another idea which is sure to suggest itself at Rome is
rather a delusion. The amazing extent of ancient ruins at Rome
unavoidably fills us with the notion that an unusual amount of
destruction has gone on there. When we cannot walk without
seeing, besides the more perfect monuments, gigantic masses of
ancient wall on every side,-when we stumble at every step on
fragments of marble columns or on richly adorned tombs,— we are
apt to think that they must have perished in some special havoc
unknown in other places. The truth is really the other way.
The abundance of ruins and fragments-again setting aside the
more perfect monuments proves that destruction has been much
less thorough in Rome than in almost any other Roman city.
Elsewhere the ancient buildings have been utterly swept away;
at Rome they survive, though mainly in a state of ruin.
by surviving in a state of ruin they remind us of their former
existence, which in other places we are inclined to forget. Cer-
tainly Rome is, even in proportion to its greatness above all other
Roman cities, rich in ancient remains above all other Roman
cities. Compare those cities of the West which at one time or
another supplanted Rome as the dwelling-places of her own
Cæsars,― Milan, Ravenna, York, Trier itself. York may be looked
upon as lucky in having kept a tower and some pieces of wall


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5983
through the havoc of the English conquest. Trier is rich above
all the rest, and she has, in her Porta Nigra, one monument of
Roman power which Rome herself cannot outdo. But rich as
Trier-the second Rome-is, she is certainly not richer in pro-
portion than Rome herself. The Roman remains at Milan hardly.
extend beyond a single range of columns, and it may be thought
that that alone is something, when we remember the overthrow
of the city under Frederick Barbarossa. But compare Rome and
Ravenna: no city is richer than Ravenna in monuments of its
own special class,-Christian Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, but of
works of the days of heathen Rome there is no trace - -no walls,
no gates, no triumphal arch, no temple, no amphitheatre. The
city of Placidia and Theodoric is there; but of the city which
Augustus made one of the two great maritime stations of Italy
there is hardly a trace. Verona, as never being an imperial resi-
dence, was not on our list; but rich as Verona is, Rome is-even
proportionally-far richer. Provence is probably richer in Roman
remains than Italy herself; but even the Provençal cities are
hardly so full of Roman remains as Rome herself. The truth is,
that there is nothing so destructive to the antiquities of a city as
its continued prosperity. A city which has always gone on flour-
ishing according to the standard of each age, which has been
always building and rebuilding and spreading itself beyond its
ancient bounds, works a gradual destruction of its ancient remains
beyond anything that the havoc of any barbarians on earth can
work. In such a city a few special monuments may be kept in
a perfect or nearly perfect state; but it is impossible that large
tracts of ground can be left covered with ruins as they are at
Rome. Now, it is the ruins, rather than the perfect buildings,
which form the most characteristic feature of Roman scenery and
topography, and they have been preserved by the decay of the
city; while in other cities they have been swept away by their
prosperity. As Rome became Christian, several ancient buildings,
temples and others, were turned into churches, and a greater
number were destroyed to employ their materials, especially their
marble columns, in the building of churches. But though this
cause led to the loss of a great many ancient buildings, it had
very little to do with the creation of the vast mass of the Roman
ruins. The desolation of the Flavian amphitheatre and of the
baths of Antoninus Caracalla comes from another cause. As the
buildings became disused,— and if we rejoice at the disuse of the


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5984
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
amphitheatre, we must both mourn and wonder at the disuse of
the baths, they were sometimes turned into fortresses, some-
times used as quarries for the building of fortresses. Every turbu-
lent noble turned some fragment of the buildings of the ancient
city into a stronghold from which he might make war upon his
brother nobles, from which he might defy every power which had
the slightest shadow of lawful authority, be it emperor, pope, or
senator. Fresh havoc followed on every local struggle: destruc-
tion came whenever a lawful government was overthrown and
whenever a lawful government was restored; for one form of
revolution implied the building, the other implied the pulling
down, of these nests of robbers. The damage which a lying
prejudice attributes to Goths and Vandals was really done by the
Romans themselves, and in the Middle Ages mainly by the
Roman nobles. As for Goths and Vandals, Genseric undoubtedly
did some mischief in the way of carrying off precious objects,
but even he is not charged with the actual destruction of any build-
ings. And it would be hard to show that any Goth, from Alaric
to Totilas, ever did any mischief whatever to any of the monu-
ments of Rome, beyond what might happen through the unavoid-
able necessities and accidents of warfare. Theodoric of course
stands out among all the ages as the great preserver and repairer
of the monuments of Ancient Rome. The few marble columns
which Charles the Great carried away from Rome, as well as
from Ravenna, can have gone but a very little way towards
accounting for so vast a havoc. It was almost wholly by Roman
hands that buildings which might have defied time and the barba-
rian were brought to the ruined state in which we now find them.
But the barons of mediæval Rome, great and sad as was the
destruction which was wrought by them, were neither the most
destructive nor the basest of the enemies at whose hands the
buildings of ancient Rome have had to suffer. The mediæval
barons simply did according to their kind. Their one notion of
life was fighting, and they valued buildings or anything else.
simply as they might be made use of for that one purpose of
life. There is something more revolting in the systematic de-
struction, disfigurement, and robbery of the ancient monuments
of Rome, heathen and Christian, at the hands of her modern
rulers and their belongings. Bad as contending barons or invad-
ing Normans may have been, both were outdone by the fouler
brood of papal nephews. Who that looks on the ruined Coliseum,
-


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5985
who that looks on the palace raised out of its ruins, can fail to
think of the famous line-
"Quod non fecere barbari, fecere Barberini »?
And well-nigh every other obscure or infamous name in the roll-
call of the mushroom nobility of modern Rome has tried its
hand at the same evil work. Nothing can be so ancient, nothing
so beautiful, nothing so sacred, as to be safe against their destroy-
ing hands. The boasted age of the Renaissance, the time when
men turned away from all reverence for their own forefathers
and professed to recall the forms and the feelings of ages which
are forever gone, was the time of all times when the monuments
of those very ages were most brutally destroyed. Barons and
Normans and Saracens destroyed what they did not understand
or care for; the artistic men of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and sev-
enteenth centuries destroyed the very things which they professed
to admire and imitate. And when they did not actually destroy,
as in the case of statues, sarcophagi, and the like, they did all
they could to efface their truest interest, their local and historical
association.
A museum or collection of any kind is a dreary place. For
some kinds of antiquities, for those which cannot be left in their
own places, and which need special scientific classification, such
collections are necessary. But surely a statue or a tomb should
be left in the spot where it is found, or in the nearest possible
place to it. How far nobler would be the associations of Pom-
pey's statue, if the hero had been set up in the nearest open
space to his own theatre; even if he had been set up with Mar-
cus and the Great Twin Brethren on the Capitol, instead of being
stowed away in an unmeaning corner of a private palace! It is
sadder still to wind our way through the recesses of the great
Cornelian sepulchre, and to find that sacrilegious hands have rifled
the resting-place of the mighty dead; that the real tombs, the
real inscriptions, have been stolen away, and that copies only are
left in their places. Far more speaking, far more instructive,
would it have been to grope out the antique letters of the first
of Roman inscriptions, to spell out the name and deeds of "Cor-
nelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus Gnaivod patre prognatus" by the
light of a flickering torch in the spot where his kinsfolk and gen-
tiles laid him, than to read it in the full light of the Vatican,
numbered as if it stood in a shop to be sold, and bearing a
X-375


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5986
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
fulsome inscription recording the "munificentia" of the triple-
crowned robber who wrought the deed of selfish desecration.
Scipio indeed was a heathen; but Christian holy places, places
which are the very homes of ecclesiastical history or legend, are
no safer than the monuments of heathendom against the desolat-
ing fury of ecclesiastical destroyers.
Saddest of all it is to visit the sepulchral church of St. Con-
stantia- be her legend true or false, it makes no difference-
to trace out the series of mosaics, where the old emblems of
Bacchanalian worship, the vintage and the treading of the wine-
press, are turned about to teach a double lesson of Christian
mysteries; and then to see the place of the tomb empty, and
to find that the tomb itself, the central point of the building,
with the series of images which is begun in the pictures and
continued in its sculpture, has been torn away from the place
where it had meaning and almost life, to stand as number
so-and-so among the curiosities of a dreary gallery. Such is
the reverence of modern pontiffs for the most sacred antiquities,
pagan and Christian, of the city where they have too long worked
their destroying will.
-
In one part however of the city, destruction has been, as in
other cities, the consequence of reviving prosperity on the part
of the city itself. One of the first lessons to be got by heart on
a visit to Rome is the way in which the city has shifted its site.
The inhabited parts of ancient and of modern Rome have but a
very small space of ground in common. While so large a space
within the walls both of Aurelius and of Servius lies desolate,
the modern city has spread itself beyond both. The Leonine city
beyond the Tiber, the Sixtine city on the Field of Mars- both
of them beyond the wall of Servius, the Leonine city largely
beyond the wall of Aurelian - together make up the greater part
of modern Rome. Here, in a thickly inhabited modern city,
there is no space for the ruins which form the main features of
the Palatine, Colian, and Aventine Hills. Such ancient buildings
as have been spared remain in a state far less pleasing than that
of their ruined fellows. The Pantheon was happily saved by its
consecration as a Christian church. But the degraded state in
which we see the theatre of Marcellus and the beautiful remains
of the portico of Octavia; above all, the still lower fate to which
the mighty sepulchre of Augustus has been brought down, — if
they enable the moralist to point a lesson, are far more offensive
-


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5987
to the student of history than the utter desolation of the Coli-
seum and the imperial palace. The mole of Hadrian has under-
gone a somewhat different fate; its successive transformations.
and disfigurements are a direct part, and a most living and speak-
ing part, of the history of Rome. Such a building, at such a
point, could not fail to become a fortress, long before the days.
of contending Colonnas and Orsini; and if the statues which
adorned it were hurled down on the heads of Gothic besiegers,
that is a piece of destruction which can hardly be turned to the
charge of the Goths. It is in these parts of Rome that the
causes which have been at work have been more nearly the same
as those which have been at work in other cities. At the same
time, it must be remembered that it is only for a much shorter
period that they have been fully at work. And wretched as with
one great exception is their state, it must be allowed that the
actual amount of ancient remains preserved in the Leonine and
Sixtine cities is certainly above the average amount of such re-
mains in Roman cities elsewhere.
THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY
From Historical Essays of Edward A. Freeman,' First Series. London,
Macmillan & Co. , 1871
A
COMPARISON between the histories of England, France, and
Germany, as regards their political development, would be
a subject well worth working out in detail. Each country
started with much that was common to all three, while the sep-
arate course of each has been wholly different. The distinctive
character of English history is its continuity. No broad gap sep-
arates the present from the past. If there is any point at which
a line between the present and the past is to be drawn, it is at
all events not to be drawn at the point where a superficial glance
might perhaps induce us to draw it, at the Norman invasion in
1066. At first sight, that event might seem to separate us from
all before it in a way to which there is no analogy in the his-
tory either of our own or of kindred lands. Neither France nor
Germany ever saw any event to be compared to the Norman
Conquest. Neither of them has ever received a permanent dy-
nasty of foreign kings; neither has seen its lands divided among
the soldiers of a foreign army, and its native sons shut out from


## p. 5988 (#578) ###########################################

5988
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
every position of wealth or dignity. England, alone of the
three, has undergone a real and permanent foreign conquest.
One might have expected that the greatest of all possible histori-
cal chasms would have divided the ages before and the ages after
such an event. Yet in truth modern England has practically far
more to do with the England of the West-Saxon kings than mod-
ern France or Germany has to do with the Gaul and Germany
of Charles the Great, or even of much more recent times. The
England of the age before the Norman Conquest is indeed, in
all external respects, widely removed from us. But the England
of the age immediately succeeding the Norman Conquest is
something more widely removed still. The age when English-
men dwelt in their own land as a conquered race, when their
name and tongue were badges of contempt and slavery, when
England was counted for little more than an accession of power
to the Duke of Rouen in his struggle with the King of Paris, is
an age than which we can conceive none more alien to every
feeling and circumstance of our own.
When, then, did the England in which we still live and move
have its beginning? Where are we to draw the broad line, if
any line is to be drawn, between the present and the past? We
answer, In the great creative and destructive age of Europe and
of civilized Asia- the thirteenth century. The England of Rich-
ard Cœur de Lion is an England which is past forever; but the
England of Edward the First is essentially the still living Eng-
land in which we have our own being. Up to the thirteenth
century our history is the domain of antiquaries; from that point
it becomes the domain of lawyers. A law of King Alfred's
Witenagemót is a valuable link in the chain of our political
progress, but it could not have been alleged as any legal author-
ity by the accusers of Strafford or the defenders of the Seven
Bishops. A statute of Edward the First is quite another matter.
Unless can be shown to have been repealed by some later
statute, it is just as good to this day as a statute of Queen Vic-
toria. In the earlier period we may indeed trace the rudiments
of our laws, our language, our political institutions; but from
the thirteenth century onwards we see the things themselves, in
that very essence which we all agree in wishing to retain, though
successive generations have wrought improvement in many
points of detail and may have left many others capable of further
improvement still.


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EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5989
Let us illustrate our meaning by the greatest of all examples.
Since the first Teutonic settlers landed on her shores, England
has never known full and complete submission to a single will.
Some Assembly, Witenagemót, Great Council, or Parliament, there
has always been, capable of checking the caprices of tyrants and
of speaking, with more or less of right, in the name of the na-
tion. From Hengest to Victoria, England has always had what
we may fairly call a parliamentary constitution. Normans, Tu-
dors, and Stewarts might suspend or weaken it, but they could
not wholly sweep it away.
Our Old-English Witenagemóts, our
Norman Great Councils, are matters of antiquarian research,
whose exact constitution it puzzles our best antiquaries fully to
explain. But from the thirteenth century onwards we have a
veritable Parliament, essentially as we see it before our own
eyes. In the course of the fourteenth century every funda-
mental constitutional principle becomes fully recognized. The best
worthies of the seventeenth century struggled, not for the estab-
lishment of anything new, but for the preservation of what even
then was already old. It is on the Great Charter that we still
rest the foundation of all our rights. And no later parliament-
ary reformer has ever wrought or proposed so vast a change as
when Simon of Montfort, by a single writ, conferred their parlia-
mentary being upon the cities and boroughs of England.
This continuity of English history from the very beginning is
a point which cannot be too strongly insisted on, but it is its
special continuity from the thirteenth century onwards which
forms the most instructive part of the comparison between Eng-
lish history and the history of Germany and France. At the
time of the Norman Conquest the many small Teutonic king-
doms in Britain had grown into the one Teutonic kingdom of
England, rich in her barbaric greatness and barbaric freedom,
with the germs, but as yet only the germs, of every institution.
which we most dearly prize. At the close of the thirteenth cen-
tury we see the England with which we are still familiar, young
indeed and tender, but still possessing more than the germs,-
the very things themselves. She has already King, Lords, and
Commons; she has a King, mighty indeed and honored, but who
may neither ordain laws nor impose taxes against the will of his
people. She has Lords with high hereditary powers, but Lords
who are still only the foremost rank of the people, whose child-
ren sink into the general mass of Englishmen, and into whose


## p. 5990 (#580) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5990
order any Englishman may be raised. She has a Commons still
diffident in the exercise of new-born rights; but a Commons
whose constitution and whose powers we have altered only by
gradual changes of detail; a Commons which, if it sometimes
shrank from hard questions of State, was at least resolved that
no man should take their money without their leave. The courts
of justice, the great offices of State, the chief features of local
administration, have assumed, or are rapidly assuming, the form
whose essential character they still retain. The struggle with
Papal Rome has already begun; doctrines and ceremonies indeed.
remain as yet unchallenged, but statute after statute is passed to
restrain the abuses and exactions of the ever-hateful Roman
court. The great middle class of England is rapidly forming; a
middle class not, as elsewhere, confined to a few great cities, but
spread, in the form of a minor gentry and a wealthy yeomanry,
over the whole face of the land. Villanage still exists, but both
law and custom are paving the way for that gradual and silent
extinction of it, which without any formal abolition of the legal
status left, three centuries later, not a legal villain among us.
With this exception, there was in theory equal law for all
classes, and imperfectly as the theory may have been carried out,
it was at least far less imperfectly so than in any other king-
dom. Our language was fast taking its present shape; English,
in the main intelligible at the present day, was the speech of the
mass of the people, and it was soon to expel French from the
halls of princes and nobles. England at the close of the century
is, for the first time since the Conquest, ruled by a prince bear-
ing a purely English name, and following a purely English pol-
icy. Edward the First was no doubt as despotic as he could
be or dared to be; so was every prince of those days who could
not practice the superhuman righteousness of St. Lewis. But he
ruled over a people who knew how to keep even his despotism
within bounds. The legislator of England, the conqueror of
Wales and Scotland, seems truly like an old Bretwalda or West-
Saxon Basileus, sitting once more on the throne of Cerdic and
of Ælfred. The modern English nation is now fully formed; it
stands ready for those struggles for French dominion in the two
following centuries, which, utterly unjust and fruitless as they
were, still proved indirectly the confirmation of our liberties at
home, and which forever fixed the national character for good
and for evil.


## p. 5991 (#581) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5991
Let us here sketch out a comparison between the history and
institutions of England and those of France and Germany. As
we before said, our modern Parliament is traced up in an un-
broken line to the early Great Council, and to the still earlier
Witenagemót. The latter institution, widely different as it is
from the earlier, has not been substituted for the earlier, but has
grown out of it.
It would be ludicrous to look for any such
continuity between the Diet of ambassadors which meets at
Frankfurt and the Assemblies which met to obey Henry the Third
and to depose Henry the Fourth. And how stands the case in
France? France has tried constitutional government in all its
shapes; in its old Teutonic, in its mediæval, and in all its modern
forms Kings with one Chamber and Kings with two, Republics
without Presidents and Republics with, Conventions, Directories,
Consulates, and Empires. All of these have been separate ex-
periments; all have failed; there is no historical continuity be-
tween any of them. Charles the Great gathered his Great Council
around him year by year; his successors in the Eastern Francia,
the Kings of the Teutonic Kingdom, went on doing so long after-
wards. But in Gaul, in Western Francia, after it fell away from
the common centre, no such assembly could be gathered together.
The kingdom split into fragments; every province did what was
right in its own eyes; Aquitaine and Toulouse had neither fear
nor love enough for their nominal King to contribute any mem-
bers to a Council of his summoning. Philip the Fair, for his own
convenience, summoned the States-General. But the States-Gen-
eral were no historical continuation of the old Frankish Assem-
blies; they were a new institution of his own, devised, it may be,
in imitation of the English Parliament or of the Spanish Cortes.
From that time the French States-General ran a brilliant and a
fitful course. Very different indeed were they from the homely
Parliaments of England. Our stout knights and citizens were alto-
gether guiltless of political theories. They had no longing after
great and comprehensive measures. But if they saw any prac-
tical abuses in the land, the King could get no money out of
them till he set matters right again. If they saw a bad law, they
demanded its alteration; if they saw a wicked minister, they de-
manded his dismissal. It is this sort of bit-by-bit reform, going
on for six hundred years, which has saved us alike from mag-
nificent theories and from massacres in the cause of humanity.
Both were as familiar in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth
―


## p. 5992 (#582) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5992
centuries as ever they were at the close of the eighteenth. The
demands of the States-General, and of what we may call the lib-
eral party in France generally, throughout those two centuries, are
as wide in their extent, and as neatly expressed, as any modern
constitution from 1791 to 1848. But while the English Parlia-
ment, meeting year after year, made almost every year some small
addition or other to the mass of our liberties, the States-General,
meeting only now and then, effected nothing lasting, and gradu-
ally sank into as complete disuse as the old Frankish Assemblies.
By the time of the revolution of 1789, their constitution and mode
of proceeding had become matters of antiquarian curiosity. Of
later attempts, National Assemblies, National Conventions, Cham-
bers of Deputies, we need not speak. They have risen and they
have fallen, while the House of Lords and the House of Com-
mons have gone on undisturbed.
RACE AND LANGUAGE
From Historical Essays of Edward A. Freeman,› First Series. London,
Macmillan & Co. , 1871
H
AVING ruled that races and nations, though largely formed by
the working of an artificial law, are still real and living
things, groups in which the idea of kindred is the idea
around which everything has grown,-how are we to define our
races and our nations? How are we to mark them off one from
the other? Bearing in mind the cautions and qualifications which
have been already given, bearing in mind large classes of excep-
tions which will presently be spoken of, I say unhesitatingly that
for practical purposes there is one test, and one only; and that
that test is language.
It is hardly needful to show that races and nations cannot be
defined by the merely political arrangements which group men
under various governments. For some purposes of ordinary lan-
guage, for some purposes of ordinary politics, we are tempted,
sometimes driven, to take this standard. And in some parts of
the world, in our own Western Europe for instance, nations and
governments do in a rough way fairly answer to one another.
And in any case, political divisions are not without their influ
ence on the formation of national divisions, while national divis
ions ought to have the greatest influence on political divisions.


## p. 5993 (#583) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5993
That is to say, prima facie a nation and a government should
coincide. I say only prima facie, for this is assuredly no inflex-
ible rule; there are often good reasons why it should be other-
wise; only, whenever it is otherwise, there should be some good
reason forthcoming. It might even be true that in no case did
a government and a nation exactly coincide, and yet it would
none the less be the rule that a government and a nation should
coincide. That is to say, so far as a nation and a government
coincide, we accept it as the natural state of things, and ask no
question as to the cause; so far as they do not coincide, we mark
the case as exceptional by asking what is the cause. And by say-
ing that a government and a nation should coincide, we mean
that as far as possible the boundaries of governments should be
so laid out as to agree with the boundaries of nations. That is,
we assume the nation as something already existing, something
primary, to which the secondary arrangements of government
should as far as possible conform. How then do we define the
nation which is, if there is no special reason to the contrary, to
fix the limits of a government? Primarily, I say, as a rule,-
but a rule subject to exceptions, as a prima facie standard,
subject to special reasons to the contrary, we define the nation
by language. We may at least apply the test negatively. It
would be unsafe to rule that all speakers of the same language
must have a common nationality; but we may safely say that
where there is not community of language, there is no common
nationality in the highest sense. It is true that without com-
munity of language there may be an artificial nationality, a
nationality which may be good for all political purposes, and
which may engender a common national feeling. Still, this is
not quite the same thing as that fuller national unity which is
felt where there is community of language.
―
――
In fact, mankind instinctively takes language as the badge of
nationality. We so far take it as the badge, that we instinct-
ively assume community of language as a nation as the rule,
and we set down anything that departs from that rule as an ex-
ception. The first idea suggested by the word Frenchman, or
German, or any other national name, is that he is a man who
speaks French or German as his mother tongue. We take for
granted, in the absence of anything to make us think otherwise,
that a Frenchman is a speaker of French and that a speaker of
French is a Frenchman. Where in any case it is otherwise, we
mark that case as an exception, and we ask the special cause.


## p. 5994 (#584) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5994
Again, the rule is none the less the rule nor the exceptions the
exceptions, because the exceptions may easily outnumber the in-
stances which conform to the rule. The rule is still the rule,
because we take the instances which conform to it as a matter
of course, while in every case which does not conform to it we
ask for the explanation. All the larger countries of Europe pro-
vide us with exceptions; but we treat them all as exceptions.
We do not ask why a native of France speaks French. But
when a native of France speaks as his mother tongue some other
tongue than French, when French, or something which popularly
passes for French, is spoken as his mother tongue by some one
who is not a native of France, we at once ask the reason. And
the reason will be found in each case in some special historical
cause, which withdraws that case from the operation of the gen-
eral law. A very good reason can be given why French, or
something which popularly passes for French, is spoken in parts
of Belgium and Switzerland whose inhabitants are certainly not
Frenchmen. But the reason has to be given, and it may fairly
be asked.
In the like sort, if we turn to our own country, whenever
within the bounds of Great Britain we find any tongue spoken
other than English, we at once ask the reason and we learn the
special historic cause. In a part of France and a part of Great
Britain we find tongues spoken which differ alike from English
and from French, but which are strongly akin to one another.
We find that these are the survivals of a group of tongues once
common to Gaul and Britain, but which the settlement of other
nations, the introduction and the growth of other tongues, have
brought down to the level of survivals. So again we find islands
which both speech and geographical position seem to mark as
French, but which are dependencies, and loyal dependencies, of
the English crown. We soon learn the cause of the phenomenon
which seems so strange. Those islands are the remains of a
State and a people which adopted the French tongue, but which,
while it remained one, did not become a part of the French
State. That people brought England by force of arms under the
rule of their own sovereigns. The greater part of that people
were afterwards conquered by France, and gradually became
French in feeling as well as in language. But a remnant clave
to their connection with the land which their forefathers had
conquered, and that remnant, while keeping the French tongue,
never became French in feeling. This last case, that of the


## p. 5995 (#585) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
In
5995
Norman Islands, is a specially instructive one. Normandy and
England were politically connected, while language and geog-
raphy pointed rather to a union between Normandy and France.
In the case of Continental Normandy, where the geographical
tie was strongest, language and geography together would carry
the day, and the Continental Norman became a Frenchman.
the islands, where the geographical tie was less strong, political
traditions and manifest interest carried the day against language
and a weaker geographical tie. The insular Norman did not
become a Frenchman. But neither did he become an English-
man. He alone remained Norman, keeping his own tongue and
his own laws, but attached to the English crown by a tie at once
of tradition and of advantage. Between States of the relative
size of England and the Norman Islands, the relation naturally
becomes a relation of dependence on the part of the smaller
members of the union. But it is well to remember that our
forefathers never conquered the forefathers of the men of the
Norman Islands, but that their forefathers did once conquer ours.
These instances and countless others bear out the position,
that while community of language is the most obvious sign of
common nationality,-while it is the main element, or something
more than an element, in the formation of nationality, the rule
is open to exceptions of all kinds; and that the influence of lan-
guage is at all times liable to be overruled by other influences.
But all the exceptions confirm the rule, because we specially
remark those cases which contradict the rule, and we do not
specially remark those cases which do conform to it.
THE NORMAN COUNCIL AND THE ASSEMBLY OF LILLEBONNE
From The History of the Norman Conquest of England'
THE
case of William had thus to be brought to bear on the
minds of his own people, on the minds of the neighboring
countries whence he invited and looked for volunteers, on
the minds of the foreign princes whose help or at least whose
neutrality he asked for, and above all, on the minds of the
Roman Pontiff and his advisers. The order of these various
negotiations is not very clear, and in all probability all were
being carried on at once. But there is little doubt that William's
first step, on receiving the refusal of Harold to surrender his


## p. 5996 (#586) ###########################################

5996
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
crown, or whatever else was the exact purport of the English
King's answer, was to lay the matter before a select body of
his most trusted counselors. The names of most of the men
whom William thus honored with his special confidence are
already familiar to us. They were the men of his own blood, the
friends of his youth, the faithful vassals who had fought at his
side against French invaders and Norman rebels. There was
his brother, Robert, Count of Mortain, the lord of the castle by
the waterfalls, the spoil of the banished Warling. And there
was one closer than a brother,—the proud William the son of
Osbern, the son of the faithful guardian of his childhood. There,
perhaps the only priest in that gathering of warriors, was his
other brother, Odo of Bayeux, soon to prove himself a warrior
as stout of heart and as strong of arm as any of his race. There
too, not otherwise renowned, was Iwun-al-Chapel, the husband
of the sister of William, Robert, and Odo. There was a kins-
man, nearer in legitimate succession to the stock of Rolf than
William himself,- Richard of Evreux, the son of Robert the
Archbishop, the grandson of Richard the Fearless. There was
the true kinsman and vassal who guarded the frontier fortress
of Eu, the brother of the traitor Busac and of the holy prelate of
Lisieux. There was Roger of Beaumont, who rid the world of
Roger of Toesny, and Ralph, the worthier grandson of that old.
foe of Normandy and mankind. There was Ralph's companion
in banishment, Hugh of Grantmesnil, and Roger of Montgomery,
the loyal son-in-law of him who cursed the Bastard in his cradle.
There too were the other worthies of the day of Mortemar, Wal-
ter Giffard and Hugh of Montfort, and William of Warren, the
valiant youth who had received the chiefest guerdon of that
memorable ambush. These men, chiefs of the great houses of
Normandy, founders, some of them, of greater houses in England,
were gathered together at their sovereign's bidding. They were
to be the first to share his counsels in the enterprise which he
was planning, an enterprise planned against the land which with.
so many in that assembly was to become a second home, a home
perhaps all the more cherished that it was won by the might of
their own right hands.
――――
To this select Council the duke made his first appeal. He
told them, what some of them at least knew well already, of the
wrongs which he had suffered from Harold of England. It was
his purpose to cross the sea, in order to assert his rights and to


## p. 5997 (#587) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5997
chastise the wrong-doer. With the help of God and with the
loyal service of his faithful Normans, he doubted not his power
to do what he purposed. He had gathered them together to
know their minds upon the matter. Did they approve of his
purpose? Did they deem the enterprise within his power? Were
they ready themselves to help him to the uttermost to recover
his right? The answer of the Norman leaders, the personal
kinsmen and friends of their sovereign, was wise and constitu-
tional. They approved his purpose; they deemed that the enter-
prise was not beyond the power of Normandy to accomplish.
The valor of the Norman knighthood, the wealth of the Norman
Church, was fully enough to put their duke in possession of all
that he claimed. Their own personal service they pledged at
once; they would follow him to the war; they would pledge, they
would sell, their lands to cover the costs of the expedition. But
they would not answer for others. Where all were to share in
the work, all ought to share in the counsel. Those whom the
duke had gathered together were not the whole baronage of
Normandy. There were other wise and brave men in the duchy,
whose arms were as strong, and whose counsel would be as sage,
as those of the chosen party to whom he spoke. Let the duke
call a larger meeting of all the barons of his duchy, and lay his
designs before them.
The duke hearkened to this advice, and he at once sent forth
a summons for the gathering of a larger Assembly. This is the
only time when we come across any details of the proceedings of
a Norman Parliament. And we at once see how widely the
political condition of Normandy differed from that of England.
We see how much further England had advanced, or more truly,
how much further Normandy had gone back, in the path of
political freedom. The Norman Assembly which assembled to
discuss the war against England was a widely different body
from the Great Gemót which had voted for the restoration of
Godwine. Godwine had made his speech before the King and
all the people of the land. That people had met under the
canopy of heaven, beneath the walls of the greatest city of the
realm. But in William's Assembly we hear of none but barons.
The old Teutonic constitution had wholly died away from the
memories of the descendants of the men who followed Rolf and
Harold Blaatand, The immemorial democracy had passed away,
and the later constitution of the medieval States had not yet


## p. 5998 (#588) ###########################################

5998
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
arisen.
There was no Third Estate, because the personal right
of every freeman to attend had altogether vanished, while the
idea of the representation of particular privileged towns had not
yet been heard of. And if the Third Order was wanting, the
First Order was at least less prominent than it was in other
lands. The wealth of the Church had been already pointed out
as an important element in the duke's ways and means, and both
the wealth and the personal prowess of the Norman clergy were,
when the day came, freely placed at William's disposal. The
peculiar tradition of Norman Assemblies, which shut out the
clergy from all share in the national deliberations, seems now to
have been relaxed. It is implied rather than asserted that the
bishops of Normandy were present in the Assembly which now
met; but it is clear that the main stress of the debates fell on
the lay barons, and that the spirit of the Assembly was a spirit
which was especially theirs.
Narrow as was the constitution of the Assembly, it showed,
when it met, no lack either of political foresight or of parliament-
ary boldness. In a society so aristocratically constituted as that
of Normandy was, the nobles are in truth, in a political sense, the
people, and we must expect to find in any gathering of nobles
both the virtues and the vices of a real Popular Assembly. Will-
iam had already consulted his Senate; he had now to bring his
resolution, fortified by their approval, before the body which came
as near as any body in Normandy could come to the character of
an Assembly of the Norman people. The valiant gentlemen of
Normandy, as wary as they were valiant, proved good guardians
of the public purse, trusty keepers of what one knows not whether
to call the rights of the nation or the privileges of their order.
The duke laid his case before them. He told once more the tale
of his own rights and of the wrong which Harold had done him.
He said that his own mind was to assert his rights by force of
arms. He would fain enter England in the course of the year
on which they had entered. But without their help he could do
nothing. Of his own he had neither ships enough nor men enough
for such an enterprise. He would not ask whether they would
help nim in such a cause. He took their zeal and loyalty for
granted; he asked only how many ships, how many men, each
of his hearers would bring as a free-will offering.
A Norman Assembly was not a body to be surprised into a
hasty assent, even when the craft and the eloquence of William


## p. 5999 (#589) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5999
was brought to bear upon it. The barons asked for time to
consider of their answer. They would debate among themselves,
and they would let him know the conclusion to which they came.
William was obliged to consent to this delay, and the Assembly
broke up into knots, greater or smaller, each eagerly discussing
the great question. Parties of fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty,
a hundred, gathered round this or that energetic speaker. Some
professed their readiness to follow the duke; others were in debt,
and were too poor to venture on such hazards. Other speakers
set forth the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Normandy
could not conquer England; their fair and flourishing land would
be ruined by the attempt. The conquest of England was an
undertaking beyond the power of a Roman emperor. Harold and
his land were rich; they had wealth to take foreign kings and
dukes into their service; their own forces were in mere numbers
such as Normandy could not hope to strive against. They had
abundance of tried soldiers, and above all, they had a mighty
fleet, with crews skilled beyond other men in all that pertained
to the warfare of the sea. How could a fleet be raised, how
could the sailors be gathered together, how could they be taught,
within a year's space, to cope with such an enemy? The feeling
of the Assembly was distinctly against so desperate an enterprise
as the invasion of England. It seemed as if the hopes and
schemes of William were about to be shattered in their begin-
ning through the opposition of his own subjects.
A daring though cunning attempt was now made by William
Fitz-Osbern, the duke's nearest personal friend, to cajole the
Assembly into an assent to his master's will. He appealed to
their sense of feudal honor; they owed the duke service for their
fiefs: let them come forward and do with a good heart all, and
more than all, that their tenure of their fiefs bound them to.
Let not their sovereign be driven to implore the services of his
subjects. Let them rather forestall his will; let them win his
favor by ready offerings even beyond their power to fulfill. He
enlarged on the character of the lord with whom they had to
deal. William's jealous temper would not brook disappointment
at their hands. It would be the worse for them in the end, if
the duke should ever have to say that he had failed in his enter-
prise because they had failed in readiness to support him.
The language of William Fitz-Osbern seems to have startled
and perplexed even the stout hearts with whom he had to deal.


## p. 6000 (#590) ###########################################

6000
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The barons prayed him to be their spokesman with the duke.