through the circumstances of most European countries, partly through the growth of humanity and civilization, the hateful institution has, during a few centuries past, gradually disappeared from a certain portion of the earth’s surface. And we must not forget that, in many states of society, the doom of slavery may have been thankfully received as an alleviation of his lot by the man whose life was forfeited either as a prisoner in merciless warfare or as a wrong-doer sentenced for his crimes(16). But I mention the existence of slavery only that we may remember that when we speak of freedom, freeman, democracy, and the like, we are after all speaking of the rights of a privileged class—that, whether in Athens, in Rome, or in the early Teutonic communities, there was always a large mass of human beings who had no share in the freedom, the victory, or the glory of their masters. We are now more closely concerned with those distinctions which, from the earliest times, we find among the freemen themselves. In the Germany of Tacitus, as at this day in the democratic Cantons, the sovereign power is vested in the whole people, acting directly in their own persons. But if the sovereignty of the popular Assembly is plainly set before us, we have also no less plainly set before us the existence of a Council smaller than the popular Assembly, and also the existence of a class of nobles, the nature and extent of whose privileges is not very well defined, but who clearly had privileges of some kind or other, and whose privileges passed on by hereditary descent. Here we have an aristocratic element as distinctly marked as the democratic element which is supplied by the popular Assembly. And at the head of all we see personal chiefs of tribes and nations, chiefs bearing different titles, Kings, Dukes, or Ealdormen, who in most cases drew their title to rule from an union of birth and election, rulers whom the nation chose and whom the nation could depose, but who still were the personal leaders of the nation, its highest magistrates in peace, its highest leaders in war. Here then, besides the democratic and the aristocratic elements, we have a distinct monarchic element standing out clearly in our earliest glimpses of Teutonic political life. King, Lords, and Commons, in their present shapes, are something comparatively recent, but we may see something which may fairly pass as the germ of King, Lords, and Commons, from the very beginning of our history.