So clearly were the popular benefits of the laws defined, that the code regulated the maximum demand which the proprietor of the soil might exact from his tenant; and it neither enforced taxation, nor recognised corporal punishment, nor in the composition of a pecuniary mulct admitted any distinction between the Varangians and the Slavs, who formed the aristocracy and the democracy. The prince neither possessed revenue nor levied taxes. He subsisted on the fines he imposed for infractions of law, on the tributes he received from his estates, on the voluntary offerings of the people, and the produce of such property as had fallen to the private title of the sovereignty. Even the tribute was not compulsory; it was rather a right derived from prescription. The only dependence of the lords of fiefs was in that they were compelled to render military service when required to the grand prince; and it was expected that they should come numerously attended, well armed, and provisioned. The tribute was the mark of conquest, and was not considered to imply taxation. But while the monarchical principle was thus kept within proscribed limits, the power of the democracy was not sufficiently curbed: over both there was a check, but the hands of the prince were bound too tightly. His dominion was despotic, because he was surrounded by men devoted to his will; but the dominion of the people was boundless, because opinion was only in its rickety infancy, and the resistance to the offending prince lay in the demonstration of physical superiority instead of moral combination. They never hesitated to avail themselves of their numerical advantage. They even carried it to extravagance and licentiousness; and so much did they exult in their strength, that they regulated the hours at which the sovereign was permitted to enjoy relaxation, punished the obnoxious heads of the church by summary ejectment, and in several instances, taking the charter of law into their own keeping, deposed their princes. The checks, therefore, established in Iaroslav’s wise convention between the government and the constituency were overborne by the rudeness of the times.