The things we do!

Thanks to the pressure of
this tight bandage, the broken fragments of the community can be
again united, and society once more recover its solidity, force, and
activity. -- In any event, that the institution, like all human
institutions, took its rise in violence and was corrupted by abuses
is of little consequence; the State, for eight hundred years,
recognized these feudal claims, and, with its own consent and the
concurrence of its Courts, they were transmitted, bequeathed, sold,
mortgaged, and exchanged, like any other species of property. Only
two or three hundred, at most, now remained in the families of the
original proprietors. "The largest portion of the titled estates,"
says a contemporary,[18] "have become the property of capitalists,
merchants, and their descendants; the fiefs, for the most part,
being in the hands of the bourgeois of the towns." All the fiefs
which, during two centuries past, have been bought by new men, now
represent the economy and labor of their purchasers.


Pages:
351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375