When the need of such an institution as Feudalism no longer existed, then it was broken up.  Its blessings were not commensurate with its evils; but the evils were less than those which previously existed.  This is, I grant, but faint praise.  But the progress of society could not be rapid amid such universal ignorance:  it is slow in the best of times.  I do not call that state of society progressive where moral and spiritual truths are forgotten or disregarded in the triumphs of a brilliant material life.  There was no progress of society from the Antonines to Theodosius, but a steady decline.  But there was a progress, however slow, from Charlemagne to Philip Augustus.  But for Feudalism and ecclesiastical institutions the European races might not have emerged from anarchy, or might have been subjected to a new and withering imperialism.  Say what we will of the grinding despotism of Feudalism,—­and we cannot be too severe on any form of despotism,—­yet the rude barbarian became a citizen in process of time, with education and political rights.

Society made the same sort of advance, in the gloomy epoch we are reviewing, that the slaves in our Southern States made from the time they were imported from Africa, with their degrading fetichism and unexampled ignorance, to the time of their emancipation.  How marked the progress of the Southern slaves during the two hundred years of their bondage!  No degraded race ever made so marked a progress as they did in the same period, even under all the withering influences of slavery.  Probably their moral and spiritual progress was greater than it will be in the next two hundred years, exposed to all the dangers of modern materialism, which saps the life of nations in the midst of the most brilliant triumphs of art.  We are now on the road to a marvellous intellectual enlightenment, unprecedented and full of encouragement.  But with this we face dangers also, such as undermined the old Roman world and all the ancient civilizations.  If I could fix my eye on a single State or Nation in the whole history of our humanity that has escaped these dangers, that has not retrograded in those virtues on which the strength of man is based, after a certain point has been reached in civilization, I would not hazard this remark.  Society escaped these evils in that agricultural period which saw the rise and fall of Feudalism, and made a slow but notable advance.  That is a fact which cannot be gainsaid, and this is impressive.  It shows that society, in a moral point of view, thrives better under hard restraints than when exposed to the dangers of an irreligious, material civilization.