becomes the more tyrannical.  The sword is the only symbol of law, the cross is a weapon of offence, the bishop is a consecrated pirate, every petty baron a burglar, while the people, alternately the prey of duke, prelate, and seignor, shorn and butchered like sheep, esteem it happiness to sell themselves into slavery, or to huddle beneath the castle walls of some little potentate, for the sake of his wolfish protection.  Here they build hovels, which they surround from time to time with palisades and muddy entrenchments; and here, in these squalid abodes of ignorance and misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the spirit of Commerce, descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and cowardly stupor.  A longer night was to intervene; however, before the dawn of day.

The crown-appointed functionaries had been, of course, financial officers.  They collected the revenue of the sovereign, one third of which slipped through their fingers into their own coffers.  Becoming sovereigns themselves, they retain these funds for their private emolument.  Four principal sources yielded this revenue:  royal domains, tolls and imposts, direct levies and a pleasantry called voluntary contributions or benevolences.  In addition to these supplies were also the proceeds of fines.  Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a considerable branch of the revenue.  The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes.  Nearly all the misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only.  Murder, larceny, arson, rape—­all offences against the person were commuted for a definite price.  There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death.  It is a natural inference that, as the royal treasury was enriched by these imposts, the sovereign would hardly attempt to check the annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased.  Still, although the moral sense is shocked by a system which makes the ruler’s interest identical with the wickedness of his people, and holds out a comparative immunity in evil-doing for the rich, it was better that crime should be punished by money rather than not be punished at all.  A severe tax, which the noble reluctantly paid and which the penniless culprit commuted by personal slavery, was sufficiently unjust as well as absurd, yet it served to mitigate the horrors with which tumult, rapine, and murder enveloped those early days.  Gradually, as the light of reason broke upon the dark ages, the most noxious features of the system were removed, while the general sentiment of reverence for law remained.

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