Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/24

14 middle of the thirteenth century there began in England a mitigation of villanage, by limitation of labor-services and commutation of them for money, and that in the fourteenth century the transformation of a servile into a free population had in great measure taken place; while in France, as in other Continental countries, the old condition survived and became worse. As Mr. Freeman says of this period, "In England villanage was on the whole dying out, while in many other countries it was getting harder and harder." Besides this spreading substitution of contract for status, which, taking place first in the industrial centers, the towns, afterward went on in the rural districts, there was going on an analogous enfranchisement of the noble class: the enforced military obligations of vassals were more and more replaced by money payments of scutages, so that, by King John's time, the fighting-services of the upper class had been to a great extent compounded for, like the labor-services of the lower class. After diminished restraints over persons, there came diminished invasions of property by the charter, arbitrary tallages on towns and nonmilitary king's tenants were checked; and, while the aggressive actions of the state were thus decreased, its protective actions were extended: provisions were made that justice should be neither sold, delayed, nor denied. All which changes were toward those social arrangements which we see characterize the industrial type. Then, in the next place, we have the subsequently-occurring rise of a representative government; which, as shown in a preceding chapter by another line of inquiry, is at once the product of industrial growth and the form proper to the industrial type. But in France none of these changes took place. Villanage remaining unmitigated, continued to comparatively late times; compounding for military obligation of vassal to suzerain was less general; and, when there arose tendencies toward the establishment of an assembly expressing the popular will, they proved abortive. Detailed comparisons of subsequent periods and their changes would detain us too long: it must suffice to indicate the leading facts. Beginning with the date at which, under the influences just indicated, parliamentary government was finally established in England, we find that for a century and a half, down to the Wars of the Roses, the internal disturbances were few and unimportant compared with those which took place in France; while at the same time (remembering that the wars between England and France, habitually taking place on French soil, affected the state of France more than that of England) we note that France carried on serious wars with Flanders, Castile, and Navarre, besides the struggle with Burgundy; the result being that, while in England popular power as expressed by the House of Commons became settled and increased, such power as the States-General had acquired in France dwindled away. Not forgetting (hat by the Wars of the Roses, lasting over thirty years, there was initiated a return toward absolutism, let us