and destruction; nothing held sacred.  Universal desolation filled the souls of men with despair.  What state of society could be worse than that of England under the early Saxon kings?  There were no dominant races and no central power.  The countries of Europe relapsed into a sullen barbarism.  I see no bright spot anywhere, not even in Italy, which was at this time the most overrun and the most mercilessly plundered of all the provinces of the fallen Empire.  The old capital of the world was nearly depopulated.  Nothing was spared of ancient art on which the barbarians could lay their hands, and nothing was valued.

This was the period of what writers call allodial tenure, in distinction from feudal.  The allodialist owned indeed his lands, but they were subject to incessant depredations from wandering tribes of barbarians and from robbers.  There was no encouragement to till the soil.  There was no incentive to industry of any kind.  During a reign of universal lawlessness, what man would work except for a scanty and precarious support?  His cattle might be driven away, his crops seized, his house plundered.  It is hard to realize that our remote ancestors were mere barbarians, who by the force of numbers overran the world.  They seem to have had but one class of virtues,—­contempt of death, and the willing sacrifice of their lives in battle.  The allodialist, however, was not a barbaric warrior or chieftain, but the despoiled owner of lands that his ancestors had once cultivated in peace and prosperity.  He was the degenerate descendant of Celtic and Roman citizens, the victim of barbaric spoliations.  His lands may have passed into the hands of the Gothic conquerors; but the Gothic or Burgundian or Frankish possessor of innumerable acres, once tilled by peaceful citizens, remained an allodial proprietor.  Even he had no protection and no safety; for any new excursion of less fortunate barbarians would desolate his possessions and decimate his laborers.  The small proprietor was especially subject to pillage and murder.

In the universal despair from this reign of anarchy and lawlessness, when there was no security to property and no redress of evils, the allodialist parted with his lands to some powerful chieftain, and obtained promise of protection.  He even resigned the privilege of freedom to save his wretched life.  He became a serf,—­a semi-bondman, chained to the soil, but protected from outrage.  Nothing but inconceivable miseries, which have not been painted by historians, can account for the almost simultaneous change in the ownership of land in all European countries.  We can conceive of nothing but blank despair among the people who attempted to cultivate land.  And there must have been the grossest ignorance and the lowest degradation when men were willing to submit to the curtailment of personal freedom and the loss of their lands, in order to find protectors.