Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/603

Rh himself against the royal party supported by the Pope. And whether he sought thus to increase his adherents or to obtain larger pecuniary means, or both, the implication equally is that the urban populations had become a relatively important part of the nation. This interpretation harmonizes with subsequent events. For, though the representation of towns afterward lapsed, yet it shortly revived, and in 1295 became established. As Hume remarks, such an institution could not *'have attained to so vigorous a growth and have flourished in the midst of such tempests and convulsions," unless it had been one "for which the general state of things had already prepared the nation"; the truth here to be added being that this "general state of things" was the augmented mass, and consequently augmented influence, of the free industrial communities.

Confirmation is supplied by cases showing that power, gained by the people during times when the regal and aristocratic powers are diminished by dissension, is lost again if, while the old organization recovers its stability and activity, industrial growth does not make proportionate progress. Spain, or more strictly Castile, yields an example. Such share in government as was acquired by those industrial communities which grew up during the colonization of the waste lands became, in the space of a few reigns, characterized by wars and consolidations, scarcely more than nominal.

It is instructive to note how that primary incentive to coöperation which initiates social union at large continues afterward to initiate special unions within the general union. For, just as external militancy sets up and carries on the organization of the whole, so does internal militancy set up and carry on the organization of the parts, even when those parts, industrial in their activities, are intrinsically non-militant. On looking into their histories we find that the increasing clusters of people who, forming towns, lead lives essentially distinguished by continuous exchange of services under agreement, develop their governmental structures during their chronic antagonisms with the surrounding militant clusters.

We see, first, that these settlements of traders, growing important and obtaining royal charters, were by doing this placed in quasi-militant positions—became in modified ways holders of fiefs from their king, and had the associated responsibilities. Habitually they paid dues of sundry kinds equivalent in general nature to those paid by feudal tenants; and, like them, they were liable to military service. In Spanish chartered towns "this was absolutely due from every inhabitant"; and "every man of a certain property was bound to serve on horseback or pay a fixed sum." In France "in the charters of incorporation which towns received, the number of troops required was usually expressed." And in the chartered royal burghs of Scotland "every burgess was a direct vassal of the crown."