Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/50

42 and the Germans of old fell upon the same model, from whence the Goths their neighbours, with the rest of those northern people, did perhaps borrow it. But an assembly of the three estates is not properly of Gothick institution; for these fierce people, when upon the decline of the Roman empire they first invaded Europe, and settled so many kingdoms in Italy, Spain, and other parts, were all heathens; and when a body of them had fixed themselves in a tract of land left desolate by the flight or destruction of the natives, their military government, by time and peace, became civil; the general was king, his great officers were his nobles and ministers of state, and the common soldiers the body of the people; but these were freemen, and had smaller portions of land assigned them. The remaining natives were all slaves; the nobles were a standing council; and upon affairs of great importance, the freemen were likewise called by their representatives to give their advice. By which it appears, that the Gothick frame of government consisted at first but of two states or assemblies, under the administration of a single person. But, after the conversion of these princes and their people to the Christian faith, the church became endowed with great possessions, as well by the bounty of kings, as the arts and industry of the clergy, winning upon the devotion of their new converts: and power, by the common maxim, always accompanying property, the ecclesiasticks began soon to grow considerable, to form themselves into a body, and to call assemblies or synods by their own authority, or sometimes by the command of their princes, who, in an ignorant age, had a mighty veneration for their learning as well