=32. The feudal system; rise and character.=—The time came, finally, when the government had to recognize publicly the change in conditions, and to adopt a system of quite a different kind, known as the feudal system. In substance it told the man who before had been a salaried official that it could no longer pay salaries, and that he must support himself henceforth from the revenues of land which would formerly have gone to it as taxes. It maintained still a nominal superiority, and exacted from the feudal lords who now assumed the responsibility of government certain payments for general public service, occasionally a sum of money and more frequently personal service of a military or judicial kind. Practically, however, the state had split into little pieces; the central government had lost the right even to nominate the successor of an official, and each was succeeded in the duties and profits of government by his son, as though he had been a petty king. It is impossible to state accurately the number of little governments of this kind that existed in the different countries of Europe; in France, in the tenth century, it is supposed to have exceeded 10,000. The character of government varied greatly, of course, according to local conditions, not only in different countries but in different parts of the same country, but it was everywhere extremely low when measured by modern standards. This will be apparent as we survey the conditions under which commerce was carried on in the period known as the Dark Ages. =33. Difficulties and dangers of transportation.=—Attempt was made to maintain the roads, which of course are essential to trade by sea as well as by land, by making the proprietors through whose land they ran responsible for their repair. Many of the proprietors managed to escape contribution, and what work was done was largely wasted, through ignorance and lack of proper superintendence. We shall see that even in later periods the roads were bad; in this early time they were so bad that they seem to have been mere tracks, of service to passengers on foot or on horseback, but of little use for wagon traffic. The merchant suffered even more, however, from bad men than from bad roads. Government was so weak that robbery was common; people were so ignorant of everything outside the narrow sphere of local interests that they suspected every stranger, and too often with reason. There is a whole series of English laws, beginning about 700 and continuing for centuries, of which this is an early example; “If a man come from afar, or a stranger, go out of the highway, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn; he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain or to be redeemed.”