BARON, COPYHOLD, COURTS, DISTRESS, ESTATE, LEASE, MANOR, TENURES, and such other articles as may be referred to in those last mentioned.
The notions of loyalty, of honour, of nobility, and of the importance, socially and politically, of landed over other pro perty, are the most striking of the feel ings which may be considered to have taken their birth from the feudal system. These notions are opposed to the tendency of the commercial and manufacturing spirit, which has been the great moving power of the world since the decline of strict feudalism ; but that power has not yet been able to destroy, or perhaps even very materially to weaken, the opinions above mentioned in the minds of the mass.
We are not however to pass judgment upon feudalism, as the originating and shaping principle of a particular form into which human society has run, simply according to our estimate of the value of these its relics at the present day. The true question is, if this particular organ ization had not been given to European society after the dissolution of the ancient civilization, what other order of things would in all likelihood have arisen, a bet ter or a worse than that which did result ? As for the state of society during the actual prevalence of the feudal system, it was without doubt in many respects ex ceedingly defective and barbarous. But the system, with all its imperfections, still combined the two essential qualities of being both a system of stability and a system of progression. It did not fall to pieces, neither did it stand still. Not withstanding all its rudeness, it was, what every right system of polity is, at once conservative and productive. And per haps it is to be most fairly appreciated by being considered, not in what it actu ally was, but in what it preserved from destruction, and in what it has produced.
The earliest published compilation of feudal law was a collection of rules and opinions supposed to have been made by two lawyers of Lombardy, Obertus of Otto and Gerardus Niger, by order of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa. It ap peared at Milan about the year 1170, and immediately became the great text-book of this branch of the law in all the schools and universities, and even a sort of authority in the courts. It is divided in some editions into three, in others into five books, and is commonly entitled the ' Libri Feudorum; ' the old writers how ever are wont to quote it simply as the Textus, or Text. But the great sources of the feudal law are the ancient codes of the several Germanic nations ; the capitu laties or collections of edicts of Charle magne and his successors ; and the vari ous Coutumiers, or collections of the old customs of the different provinces of France. The laws of the Visigoths, of the Burgundian, the Salk law, the laws of the Alemanni, of the Baiuvarii, of the Ripuarii, of the Saxons, of the Anglii, of the Werini, of the Frisians, of the Loin bards, &c., have been published by Lindenbrogius in his Codex Leguns Ant: guarani, fol. Francof., 1613. The best editions of the capitularies are that by Baluze, in 2 vols. fol., Paris, 1677, and that by Chiniac, of which, however, we believe only the two first volumes have appeared, Paris, fol., 1780. Richebourg's Nouveau Coutumier Geheral, 4 vols. fol., Paris, 1724, is a complete collection of the Coutumiers, all of which however have also been published separately. All these old laws and codes, as well as the Milan text-book, have been made the subject of voluminous commentaries.