This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may have been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture. If these were the old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the respect for man as man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite element? How is it that these liberties have been lost throughout almost all Europe? How is it that a system of law prevailed over the whole continent, up to the French revolution, and prevails still in too many countries, the very opposite of all this? I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the Roman clergy during the middle age. The original difference of race between the clergy and the Teutonic conquerors, which I have already pointed out to you, had a curious effect, which lingers to this day. It placed the Church in antagonism, more or less open, to the civil administration of justice. The criminal was looked on by the priest rather as a sufferer to be delivered, than an offender to be punished. All who are conversant with the lives of saints must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to murder and steal; and found the practice pay him well. For when he was taken and hanged, our Lady put her 'mains blanches' under his feet, and supported him invisibly for a whole day, till the executioner, finding it impossible to kill him, was forced to let him retire peaceably into a monastery, where he lived and died devoutly. We may laugh at such fancies; or express, if we will, our abhorrence of their immorality: but it will be more useful to examine into the causes which produced them. They seem to have been twofold. In the first place, the Church did not look on the Teutonic laws, whether Frank, Burgund, Goth or Lombard, as law at all. Her law, whether ecclesiastical or civil, was formed on the Roman model; and by it alone she wished herself, and those who were under her protection, to be judged. Next--and this count is altogether to her honour--law, such as it was, was too often administered, especially by the Franks, capriciously and brutally; while the servile population, always the great majority, can hardly be said to have been under the protection of law at all. No one can read the pages of Fredegarius, or Gregory of Tours, without seeing that there must have been cases weekly, even daily, which called on the clergy, in the name of justice and humanity, to deliver if possible, the poor from him that spoiled him; which excused fully the rise of the right of sanctuary, and of benefit of clergy, afterwards so much abused; which made it a pious duty in prelates