The asiaticizing tendency of Roman political life
had become so powerful by the fourth century, and has since been so
powerfully propagated through the Church, that we ought to be glad that
the Teutons came into the empire as masters rather than as subjects. As
the Germanic tribes got possession of the government in one part of
Europe after another, they brought with them free institutions again.
The political ideas of the Goths in Spain, of the Lombards in Italy, and
of the Franks and Burgundians in Gaul, were as distinctly free as those
of the Angles in Britain. But as the outcome of the long and
uninterrupted turmoil of the Middle Ages, society throughout the
continent of Europe remained predominantly military in type, and this
fact greatly increased the tendency towards despotism which was
bequeathed by Rome. After the close of the thirteenth century the whole
power of the Church was finally thrown into the scale against the
liberties of the people; and as the result of all these forces combined,
we find that at the time when America was discovered government was
hardening into despotism in all the great countries of Europe except
England. Even in England the tendency towards despotism had begun to
become quite conspicuous after the wholesale slaughter of the great
barons and the confiscation of their estates which took place in the
Wars of the Roses.
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