manufacture offer no resources to the surplus population. But all the single hides or estates are here considered as included in the same category, and it is only on the large possessions of the noble that the poor freeman can hope to live, without utterly forfeiting everything that makes life valuable. Some sort of service he must yield, and among all that he can offer, military service, the most honourable and attractive to himself, is sure to be the most acceptable to the lord whose protection he requires. ----- Footnote 290: Mor. Germ. xix. Footnote 291: Grimm, Rechtsalt. p. 455. Footnote 292: “Cumque, ut dixi, sive parum compluta humo, seu nimium torrida, torpentibus satis, ac parce fructificantibus campis, inediae languor defectam escis regionem attereret, nullumque, parum suppetentibus alimentis, trahendae famis superesset auxilium, Aggone atque Ebbone auctoribus, plebiscito provisum est, ut senibus et parvulis caesis, omnique demum imbelli aetate regno egesta, robustis duntaxat patria donaretur; nec nisi aut armis, aut agris colendis habiles domestici laris paternorumque penatium habitacula retinerent.” By the advice however of Gambara, they cast lots, and a portion of the people emigrate. “Igitur omnium fortunis in sortem coniectis, qui designabantur, extorres adiudicati sunt.” Saxo Gram. p. 159. Under similar circumstances, according to Geoffry of Monmouth, Hengest came to Britain. ----- The temptation to engage in distant or dangerous warlike adventures may not appear very great to the agricultural settler, whose continuous labour will only wring a mere sufficiency from the soil he owns. It is with regret and reluctance that such a man will desert the land he has prepared or the crops he has raised, even when the necessity of self-defence calls the community to arms. Far otherwise however is it with him who has no means of living by the land, or whom his means place above the necessity of careful, unremitting toil. The prince, enriched by the contributions of his fellow-countrymen, and the presents of neighbouring states or dynasts, as well as master of more land than he requires for his own subsistence, has leisure for ambition, and power to reward its instruments. On the land which he does not require for his own cultivation, he can permit the residence of freemen or even serfs, on such conditions as may seem expedient to himself or endurable to them. He may surround himself with armed and noble retainers, attracted by his liberality or his civil and military reputation[293], whom he feeds at his own table and houses under his own roof; who may perform even servile duties in his household, and on whose aid he may calculate for purposes of aggression or defence. Nor does it seem probable that a community would at once discover the infinite danger to themselves that lurks in such an institution: far more frequently must it have seemed