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 10 HISTORY OF GREECE vassals, though subject, also, to certain obligations towards thorn the immediate vassals of the king had subordinate vassals cl their own, to whom they stood in the same relation : and in this hierarchy 1 of power, property, and territory blended together, the rights of the chief, whether king, duke, or baron, were always conceived as constituting a status apart, and neither conferred originally by the grant, nor revocable at the pleasure, of those over whom they were exercised. This view of the essential nature of political authority was a point in which the three great elements of 'modern European society, the Teutonic, the Ro- man, and the Christian, all concurred, though each in a differ- ent way and with different modifications ; and the result was, a variety of attempts on the part of subjects to compromise with their chief, without any idea of substituting a delegated executive in his place. On particular points of these feudal monarchies there grew up, gradually, towns with a concentrated population, among whom was seen the remarkable combination of a republi- can feeling, demanding collective and responsible management in their own local affairs, with a necessity of union and subordina- tion towards the great monarchical whole ; and hence again arose a new force tending both to maintain the form, and to predeter mine the march, of kingly government. 2 And it has been found in ' Sec the Lectures of M. Guizot, Cours d'Histoire Modcrne, Le^on 30, vol. iii, p. 187, edit. 1829. 2 M. Augustin Thierry observes, Lcttrcs sur 1'Histoire de France, Lettre xvi, p. 235 : " Sans aucun souvenir de 1'histoire Greoque ou Romaine, les bourgeois des onzieme et douzieme siecles, soil que leur ville fut sous la seigneurio d'un roi, d'un comte, d'un due, d'une eveque ou d'une abbaye. allaient droit a la republique : mais la reaction du pouvoir etabli les rejetait souvent en arriere. Du balancement de ces deux forces opposees resultait pour la ville une sort de gouvernement mixte, et c'cst ce qui arriva, en ge'ne'ral. dans le nord de la France, comme le proavent les chartes de commune." Even among the Italian cities, which became practically self-governing, and produced despots as many in number and as unprincipled in character as the Grecian (I shall touch upon this comparison more largely hereafter), Mr. Hallam observes, that " the sovereignty of the emperors, though not very effective, was in theory always admitted : their name was used in pub lie acts and appeared upon the coin." View of the Middle Ages, part i. ch 3, p. 346, sixth edit. Sec also M. Raynouard, Histoire du Droit Municipal en France, botk 'ii