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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
representative element in the constitution might overrule both monarchy and aristocracy, if it had the courage
to carry accepted principles to their logical conclusion.
Even in England a medieval Parliament was scarcely a legislature in our sense of the word. Legislation of a
permanent and general kind was an occasional expedient. New laws were usually made in answer to the
petitions of the Estates; but the laws were framed by the King and the Crown lawyers, and often took a form
which by no means expressed the desires of the petitioners. The most important changes in the law of the
land were not made, but grew, through the accumulated effect of judicial decisions. The chief function of
Parliaments, after the voting of supplies, was to criticise and to complain; to indicate the shortcomings of a
policy which they had not helped to make. Except as the guardians of individual liberty they cannot be said to
have made medieval government more scientific or efficient. In the fifteenth century the English Commons
criticised the government of the Lancastrian dynasty with the utmost freedom; but it was left for Yorkist and
Tudor despots to diagnose aright the maladies of the body politic. Englishmen and Frenchmen alike were
well advised when, at the close of the Middle Ages, they committed the task of national reconstruction to
sovereigns who ignored or circumvented parliamentary institutions. A parliament was admirable as a check
or a balance, as a symbol of popular sovereignty, as a school of political intelligence. But no parliament that
had been brought together in any medieval state was fitted to take the lead in shaping policy, or in reforming
governmental institutions.
VIII. THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE THE CRUSADES
Neither the internal development of the medieval state nor the international politics of medieval Europe can
be explained without constant reference to class distinctions. First, there is a sharp line dividing each state
horizontally and marking off the privileged few from the unprivileged many, the rulers from the ruled. Below
the line are the traders, artisans, and cultivators of the soil; above it the landlords, the officeholders, and the
clergy. If an industrial community, here and there a Milan or a Ghent, succeeds in asserting political
independence, the phenomenon is regarded as anomalous and revolutionary; still graver is the head-shaking
when mere peasants, like the Swiss, throw off what is called their natural allegiance. And such cases of
successful rebellion are rare. It is true that in England, in France, and in the Spanish kingdoms there are
privileged towns which receive the right of representation in national assemblies; but this concession to the
power of the purse is strictly limited; the spokesmen of the burgesses are not invited to express opinions until
asked for subsidies or military aid. Government is the affair of the King and the privileged classes. But again
VIII. THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE THE CRUSADES 45
Medieval Europe
there is a division within the privileged classes, a vertical line of cleavage between the various grades of the
lay and clerical aristocracies. The prelate and the baron, the knight and the priest, harmonious enough when it
is a question of teaching the unprivileged their place, are rivals for social influence and political power, are
committed to conflicting theories of life. The ecclesiastic, enrolled in an order which is recruited from every
social grade, makes light of secular rank and titles; he claims precedence over every layman; he holds that it
is the business of the Church to command, of princes to obey. The lay feudatory, born into a hereditary caste
of soldiers, regards war as the highest vocation for a man of honour, is impatient of priestly arrogance, and
believes in his heart that the Church ought not to meddle with politics. It would be a mistake to think of the
two privileged classes as always at strife with one another and their social inferiors. But the great wars of
Pope and Emperor, the fourteenth-century revolts of French and English peasants, are not events which come
suddenly and unexpectedly; each such outbreak is like the eruption of a volcano, a symptom of subterranean
forces continually in conflict. The state of peace in medieval society was a state of tension; equilibrium meant
the unstable balance of centralising and centrifugal forces. And this was one reason why wars, condemned in
the abstract by the Church, were frequently regarded with favour by sober statesmen and by idealists. In more
ways than one a successful war might serve to heal or salve the feuds of rival classes. It offered an outlet for
the restless and anarchic energies of feudalism; sometimes it ended in conquests with which the landless
could be permanently endowed. It might offer new markets to the merchant, a field of emigration to the
peasant, a new sphere of influence to the national clergy. Better still, it might evoke common sentiments of
patriotism or religion, and create in all classes the consciousness of obligations superior to merely selfish
interests.
Such statecraft may perhaps seem rude and barbarous to us. The idea of a nation as a system of classes, and
of national unity as a condition only to be realised when all classes combine for some purpose extraneous to
the everyday life of the nation, is foreign to our thought. We believe that by making war upon class privileges
we have given to the State a less divided and more organic character. We maintain that the State exists to
realise an immanent ideal, which we express by some such formula as the greatest good of the greatest
number. But we are still so far from a reconciliation of facts with theories that we must hesitate before
utterly condemning the medieval attitude towards war. In place of classes we have interests, which are hard to
unite and often at open variance. Our statesmen balance one interest against another, and consider war
legitimate when it offers great advantages to the interests most worth conciliating. Nor have we yet succeeded
in giving to the average citizen so elevated a conception of the purpose for which the State exists that he can
think of national policy as something different from national selfishness. It is easier to criticise the enthusiasts
who urged medieval nations to undertake some work of noble note, remote from daily routine, than it is to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
