These are, no doubt, extreme forms of the mediaeval conception, but the principle that the authority of the ruler was conditioned by his faithful discharge of his obligations is the normal doctrine of the Middle Ages, is maintained by the compilers of the feudal law-books of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, by the great English jurist Bracton, by St. Thomas Aquinas, and even by some of the most representative of the Roman jurists of Bologna, like Azo. These were the fundamental principles of the conception of the nature of political authority whose development we can trace in the Middle Ages, and it is out of these conceptions that there grew the system of the control of the common affairs of the community by means of the representation of the community. For it should be more clearly understood than it is, that the representative system was the creation of the mediaeval political genius, it was these men--to whom even yet the more ignorant would deny the true political instinct--it was these men who devised that method upon which the structure of modern civilized government has been built up. There is, however, yet another aspect of the development of political civilization which deserves our attention if we are to understand the nature of political progress in the Middle Ages. It was in these centuries that there were created the elementary forms of the administrative system of government. And indeed, there is perhaps no clearer distinction between a barbarian and a civilized government than this, that while the barbarian government hangs precariously on the life of the capable king, the civilized government is carried on continuously by an organized civil service. It would be impossible here to discuss the earlier forms of this in the organization of government by Charles the Great, or the very interesting developments of the royal or imperial chapel as the nucleus of a civil service in Germany, it is enough here to remind ourselves that it is the creation of this organized administration by Henry I and Henry II of England which laid the foundations of our national order. Enough has, I think, been said to illustrate the reality and significance of the progressive reconstruction of the political order of Western society in the Middle Ages. * * * * *