councils are more truly national than the military councils and assemblies. Servitude is less rude in mediæval Spain than in the rest of Europe; the cultivator progresses, but disappears {38} from the other side of the Pyrenees before the invasion of feudalism, and the hired or leasehold cultivator is almost free. There are tributary nobles: between the democracy and the nobility there are no irreducible divisions. This equalitarian development is especially notable in the political world. In Spain feudalism is not a national institution, and the spirit of Gothic kingship becomes transformed under Iberian influences. In Leon and Castile the nobility are less powerful than in France or other parts of Spain, Catalonia, Navarre, and Aragon.[3] The social classes are not superimposed in rigorous order; cities acquire franchises, and "popular seigneuries" are formed. The monarchy, too, undergoes this process of levelling or democratisation. The Emperor aims at equilibrium in equality; he destroys the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the people; in the political conflict he leans to one side or the other alternately. The popular tongue consecrates the equality of the social classes: "In a hundred years a king becomes a thrall; in a hundred and six a thrall becomes a king." "All are equal to the king, except in wealth." The Spanish commune lasts, because it is the centre of this great democracy. From the beginnings of Peninsular history we see the cities struggling for their independence. They reproduce the _djemaa_ of the Atlas, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, amid the Berbers, the parents of the Iberians; the _djemaa_ is the African progenitor of the Spanish commune; both make an equal distribution of goods, and endeavour to avoid poverty. The _djemaa_, or municipality, or commune, isolated and autonomous, constitutes the political unit: the State is a confederation of free cities. The Spanish towns defend their {39} liberties against every form of artificial unity, whether Phoenician, Greek, or Roman. Rome reigns for seven hundred years; but because she partially recognises the autonomy of the municipalities, the Spanish democracy; she increases civil rights, founds small republics, which elect their own magistrates, administer the communal finances, and discuss the payment of imposts and the distribution of lands in their ward. Thus Spanish individualism is satisfied. Rome, absorbing and centralising under the Cæsars, destroys local liberty; but a deep-seated current re-establishes the autonomy of the peoples when the Roman power decays. Assemblies of free citizens govern the cities; the Visigoth monarchy, at the suggestion of the national Church, respects the municipal organisation. Thus a hybrid system springs up, feudal in the Germanic character of the predominant aristocracy, democratic by virtue of the Councils, the Church, and the tenacious power of the cities.