Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/126

 produce subsistence for the labour which, in consequence of the shortness of the seasons, is required in very large quantity, in proportion to the area, for its cultivation. We find, accordingly, that when the viking trade, the occupation of piracy and pillage, was extinguished by the influence of Christianity, the progress of civilisation, the rise of the Hanseatic League and of its establishments, which in Norway itself both repressed piracy and gave beneficial occupation in the fisheries to the surplus population formerly occupied in piracy and warfare, that class of people fell back upon husbandry and ordinary occupations which had formerly been engaged all summer and autumn in marauding expeditions; and the class of slaves, the thralls, was necessarily superseded in their utility by people living at home all the year. The last piratical expeditions were about the end of the 12th century, and in the following century thraldom, or slavery, was, it is understood, abolished by law by Magnus the Law Improver. The labour of the slave was no longer needed at home, and would not pay the cost of his subsistence.

Physical circumstances also, and not conventional or accidental circumstances, evidently moulded the other social arrangements of the Northmen into a shape different from the feudal. The Things or assemblies of the people, which kings had to respect and refer to, may be deduced much more reasonably from natural causes similar to those which prevented the rise of a feudal class of nobles in Norway, than from political institutions or principles of social arrangement carried down from the ancient Germans in a natural state of liberty in remote ages. The same causes will produce the same effects in all ages. It is refining too much in political antiquarianism to refer all liberal social arrangements—our English parliaments, our constitutional checks upon the executive