The intimate relation of the feudal ages, between baron and retainer, established at first upon principles of individual safety and the public weal, soon degenerated into that of noble and serf. That which at first was but an honorable distinction between knight service on the one hand, and protection and patronage on the other, became, in the course of time, the baser relation of haughty assumption and oppression on the one hand, and the most abject servitude on the other. Descended from the same stern Saxon stock, separated only by purely artificial barriers, by the fortuitous circumstance of birth, the sturdy peasant could ill brook the tyranny of the privileged class--those 'lords rich in some dozen paltry villages.' That stern independence which has ever been the prominent characteristic of the Saxon mind, revolted at the palpable injustice of the relation of lord and serf. The aristocracy, on the contrary, fortified in their arrogance, at a later day, by the irruption of the Norman nobility, with their French ideas and customs, so far from yielding to the signs of the times and the light of dawning civilization, refused to give up one tittle of their assumed prerogatives, and became even more exacting in their demands, more lofty in their supposed superiority. Thus was engendered between the two classes a bitterness of feeling, a spirit of antagonism, that has never yet disappeared. Patiently did the peasant bide his time, and only when the tyranny became utterly unendurable did the movement commence which has swept downward to our time, reiving away one by one the miscalled privileges of the favored class, bringing, year by year, the condition of the laborer nearer to the true balance of society.