it accorded unprecedented concessions to the widow and the orphan; it respected the unfortunate and helpless condition of the slave. It prohibited encroachments upon personal liberty, and declared the sale of a freeman to be equivalent in atrocity to the crime of homicide. In almost every provision which did not conflict with the claims of the priesthood, it hearkened to the voice of mercy and humanity. By the constant menace and certain infliction of civil degradation, confiscation, and perpetual servitude, it secured the fidelity of the judges and fiscal officers of the state. It accepted the great principle of the Salic law, and, with worldly prudence, forbade the election of a female sovereign. But, when the theocratic influence which pervaded every branch of the Gothic constitution comes to be examined, its effect upon contemporaneous legislation is seen to be pernicious and deplorable. The power of the clergy was irresponsible, ubiquitous, and thoroughly despotic. It dictated the proceedings of every assembly. It whispered suggestions of questionable morality in the ears of the monarch. When thwarted in its unholy aims, its vengeance was implacable. The abuse of the convenient and formidable weapon of excommunication had not reached the extreme which it subsequently attained, yet the all but omnipotent hand of the priesthood was already able to invade the privacy of domestic life, to interfere with the sensitive and delicate mechanism of commerce, to violate the rights of property, to desecrate the sacred precincts of the grave. Ecclesiastical intolerance dictated the passage of ex-post-facto laws, a measure whose monstrous injustice is patent to every unprejudiced mind. The disability imposed upon the Hebrew race, and the savage spirit of the canons enacted for its oppression, point significantly to the prospective horrors of the inquisitorial tribunals. The practice of sorcery and magic--so dreaded in an age of intellectual inferiority, and especially offensive to the Church, which tolerated no wonder-workers outside of its own pale--was severely reprobated, and punished with excessive severity. The ends of the clergy, when not obtainable by the arts of controversy, were secured by other means not unfamiliar to the intriguing courtiers of mediæval Europe; its propositions were advanced with caution and debated with consummate skill; and its arguments were either insinuated with more than Jesuitical adroitness, or urged with all the energy of sacerdotal zeal.