The earliest records we can refer to, place before us a system founded upon distinctions of birth, as clearly as any that we can derive from the Parliamentary writs or rolls of later ages: in our history there is not even a fabulous Arcadia, wherein we may settle a free democracy: for even where the records of fact no longer supply a clue through the labyrinths of our early story, the epic continues the tradition, and still celebrates the deeds of nobles and of kings. Tacitus, from whom we derive our earliest information, supplies us with many details, which not only show the existence of a system, but tend also to prove its long prevalence. He tells us not only of nobles, but also of kings, princes and inherited authority[197], more or less fully developed: and the unbiassed judgment of the statesman who witnessed the operation of institutions strange to himself, warns us against theoretical appeals to the fancied customs of ages not contemporaneous with our own. The history of Europe knows nothing of a period in which there were not freemen, nobles and serfs; and the institutions of Europe, in proportion as we pursue them to their earliest principles, furnish only the stronger confirmation of history. We may, no doubt, theorize upon this subject, and suggest elementary forms, as the necessary conditions of a later system: but this process is and must be merely hypothetical, nor can such forms be shown to have had at any time a true historical existence. That every German was, in the beginning, Kaiser and Pope in his own house[198] may be perfectly true in one sense; just as true is it that every Englishman’s house is his castle. Nevertheless, the German lived under some government, civil or religious, or both: and—to the great advantage of society—the process of law surmounts without the slightest difficulty the imaginary battlements of the imaginary fortress. ----- Footnote 197: The Cherusci feeling the want of a king sent to Rome for a descendant of Arminius. Tac. An. xi. 17. The Heruli in Illyria having slain their king, sent to their brethren in Thule (Scandinavia) for a descendant of the blood royal. During his journey however they accepted another king from the hands of Justinian. This person and their alliance with the emperor they renounced upon the arrival of the prince from the North. Procop. Bell. Got. ii. 15. “Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute summit.” Tac. Germ. vii. “Magna patrum merita principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant.” Ibid. xiii. Although mere boys might be kings, they could hardly be _duces_, in the old Teutonic sense. Footnote 198: Möser, Osnabrückische Geschichte (1780), 1^{er} Abschn. § 8. “Solche einzelne wohner waren Priester und Könige in ihren Häusern und Hofmarken,” etc. See his references to Tac. Germ. x. etc. -----