From 1495 the character of the legislation was changed: the Roman law began to penetrate; the _doctors_, as they were called, those who had studied law in the foreign schools, entered the Government and possessed themselves of the direction of the superior courts. During the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century political society maintained the same struggle against them that was going on in England at the same time, but with very different success. At the diet of Tübingen in 1514, and at those which succeeded it, the representatives of feudalism and the deputies of the towns made all kinds of representations against that which was taking place; they attacked the legists who were invading all the courts, and changing the spirit or the letter of all customs and laws. The advantage at first seemed on their side; they obtained from the Government the promise that henceforth the high courts should be composed of honourable and enlightened men chosen from among the nobility and the Estates of the Duchy, and not of doctors, and that a commission composed of agents of the Government, and of representatives of the estates, should draw up the project of a code which might serve as a rule throughout the country. These efforts were vain. The Roman law soon drove the national law out of a great portion of the legislation, and even took root in the very ground on which it still suffered this legislation to subsist. This victory of a foreign over the indigenous law is ascribed by many German historians to two causes:--1. To the movement which at that period attracted all minds towards the languages and literature of antiquity, and the contempt which this inspired for the intellectual productions of the national genius. 2. To the idea which had always possessed the whole of the Middle Ages in Germany, and which displays itself even in the legislation of that period, that the Holy Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire, and that the legislation of the former was an inheritance derived from the latter. These causes, however, are not sufficient to explain why the same law should at the same period have been introduced into the whole continent of Europe. I believe that this arose from the fact that at this time the absolute power of the sovereigns was everywhere established on the ruins of the ancient liberties of Europe, and that the Roman law, a law of servitude, was admirably fitted to second their views.