Germany and the Germans | Page 7

the constitution of Venice is unlike that of Morocco?"
One might ask as well how it happened, that the speech of one German invasion mixing itself with Latin became French, of another Spanish, of another Portuguese, of another Italian, of another English. These are interesting inquiries, and in regard to the former it is not difficult to see, that men grew to be governed differently, according as the geographical exigencies of their homes were different, and as they occupied themselves differently.
The observant traveller in the United States, may see for himself what differences even a few years of differing climate, and circumstances, and custom will produce. The inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina, are evidently and visibly different from those in Davenport, Iowa. Two towns of similar size and wealth, Salisbury, Maryland, and Hingham, Massachusetts, are almost as different, except in speech, and even in speech the accent is perceptibly different even to the careless listener, as though Salisbury were in the south of France, and Hingham in the north of Germany. These changes and differences are only inexplicable, to those who will not see the ethnographical miracles taking place under their noses. Look at the mongrel crowd on Fifth Avenue at midday, and remember what was there only fifty years ago, and the differentiation which has taken place in Europe due to climate, intermarriage, laws, and customs seems easy to trace and to explain.
The fishermen and tillers of the soil in the Scandinavian peninsula, afterward the settlers in the Saxon plain and in England, recognized him who ruled over their settled place of abode as king; while roaming bands of fighting men would naturally attach themselves to the head of the tribe, as the leader in war, and recognize him as king. As late as the death of Charlemagne, when his powerful grip relaxed, the tribes of Germans, for they were little more even then, fell apart again. Another family like that of Pepin arose under Robert the Strong, and under Hugue Capet (987) acquired the title of Kings of France. The monarchy grew out of the weakening of feudalism, and feudalism had been the gradual setting, in law and custom, of a way of living together, of these detached tribes and clans, and their chiefs.
A powerful warrior was rewarded with a horse, a spear; later, when territory was conquered and the tribe settled down, land was given as a reward. Land, however, does not die like a horse, or wear out and get broken like a spear, and the problem arises after the death of the owner, as to who is his rightful heir. Does it revert to the giver, the chief of the tribe, or does it go to the children of the owner? Some men are strong enough to keep their land, to add to it, to control those living upon it, and such a one becomes a feudal ruler in a small way himself. He becomes a duke, a dux or leader, a count, a margrave, a baron, and a few such powerful men stand by one another against the king. A Charlemagne, a William the Conqueror, a Louis XIV is strong enough to rule them and keep them in order for a time. Out of these conditions grow limited monarchies or absolute monarchies and national nobilities.
More than any other one factor, the Crusades broke up feudalism. The great noble, impelled by a sense of religious duty, or by a love of adventure, arms himself and his followers, and starts on years of journeyings to the Holy Land. Ready money is needed above all else. Lands are mortgaged, and the money-lender and the merchant buy lands, houses, and eventually power, and buy them cheap. The returning nobles find their affairs in disarray, their fields cultivated by new owners, towns and cities grow up that are as strong or stronger than the castle. Before the Crusades no roturier, or mere tiller of the soil, could hold a fief, but the demand for money was so great that fiefs were bought and sold, and Philippe Auguste (1180) solved the problem by a law, declaring that when the king invested a man with a sufficient holding of land or fief, he became ipso facto a noble. This is the same common-sense policy which led Sir Robert Peel to declare, that any man with an income of $50,000 a year had a right to a peerage. There can be no aristocracy except of the powerful, which lasts. The difference to-day is seen in the puppet nobility of Austria, Italy, Spain, and Germany as compared with the nobility of England, which is not a nobility of birth or of tradition, but of the powerful: brewers and bankers, and statesmen and lawyers, and leaders of public opinion, covering their humble past with ermine,