Nevertheless, these attempts to make them co-ordinate without changing them, to link them to a national unity without abolishing their variety, hold an important place in the history of Europe. They partly fill the epoch upon which we are now engaged, that epoch which divides primitive from modern Europe, and in which was accomplished the metamorphosis of European society. They have, furthermore, had a vast influence upon posterior events, upon the manner in which the reduction of all the social elements to two, government and nation, has been effected. It is therefore of great consequence to investigate and thoroughly understand all the essays at political organisation, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, designed to create nations and governments, without rooting out the diversity in character of the secondary societies placed side by side. Such is our present task. It is a difficult and even a painful task. All these attempts at political organisation were assuredly not conceived and framed with good intentions; several were instigated by views of selfishness and tyranny. More than one, however, was pure and disinterested; more than one had really for its object the moral and social wellbeing of mankind. The state of incohesiveness, violence, and injustice in which society was then plunged, was disgusting to great and elevated minds, and they were incessantly devising means to emancipate it. Yet the very best of those noble efforts failed; all that amount of courage, sacrifices, energy, and virtue, was utterly thrown away. Is not this a mournful consideration? And there is upon this point something still more painful, ground for still deeper sadness, when we reflect that not only did these experiments for social amelioration miscarry, but an enormous mass of errors and of evil accompanied them. In spite of good intentions, the greater part were absurd, and avouch a profound ignorance of what reason and justice required, of the rights of humanity, and the conditions upon which the social state is founded; so that not only did the men fail in success, but they deserved their discomfiture. We have here, therefore, the spectacle both of the hard fate of humanity, and of its weakness. And we have also placed in striking light how the smallest portion of truth suffices so completely to dazzle the greatest minds, that they lose sight of all the rest, and become blind to what is not comprised within the narrow scope of their ideas; and so that there be a particle of justice in their cause, to what extent men may overlook all the injustice which that cause involves and sanctions. The contemplation of such a display of the faults and imperfection of human nature is, in my opinion, still more sad than the evil of its condition, for its errors are more afflictive to me than its sufferings. The efforts of which I have to speak will present us with both spectacles. It behoves us, however, to encounter them, and at the same time to