This, then, was the condition of the towns in the course of the tenth century. Their strength, importance, and riches had increased; and these acquisitions rendering them every day objects of greater envy to the lords, it became more than ever necessary to be able to defend them. The danger and the evil grew in magnitude with the means of resisting them. Indeed the feudal system offered to all its participators the continual example of resistance; it presented to the mind, under no modification, the idea of an organised government, capable of regulating and controlling all by its intervention alone. On the contrary, the spectacle of individual will, refusing to submit to any restraint, was unceasingly displayed. The greater number of the fief-holders was in this position with regard to their lords-paramount, and the small lords with regard to the great; so that, at the very time when the towns were oppressed and tormented, and they began to have new and important interests to maintain, they had under their eyes a continual lesson of insurrection. Feudalism has certainly done this service to humanity, that it has given a perpetual exhibition of individual will acting in all its energy. The lesson was not thrown away, for notwithstanding their weakness, and the prodigious inequality of condition between them and their lords, the towns became insurgent on all sides. {129} It is difficult to assign a precise date to the event. It is generally said that the enfranchisement of the boroughs commenced in the eleventh century; but in all great events, how many unknown and unsuccessful efforts are made before that which finally prevails! In all things, Providence, to accomplish its designs, lavishes courage, virtues, sacrifices man himself; and it is only after a countless multitude of unknown labours, in appearance utterly lost, after numberless noble hearts have sunk under discouragement, and the painful conviction of the hopelessness of their cause, that the triumph is achieved. This was doubtless the case with the boroughs. There can be little question but that very many attempts at resistance and struggles for enfranchisement were made in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, which not only did not succeed, but the memory of which remained without renown, because unfortunate. But these endeavours most assuredly exercised an influence upon posterior events; they gave animation and prevalence to the spirit of liberty, and laid the train for the great insurrection of the eleventh century.