Historical research, in the true sense of the word, was indeed making its first appearance in the eighteenth century, and it was more fruitful in England than in any other country, because England was so far ahead of the Continent in its political condition: the influence of an intelligent society in political affairs had for its counterpart a greater insight into the conditions of political development. But the great English historians of the eighteenth century were looking to problems in other fields than that of social history. Robertson was prompted by an interest in the origins of that peculiar community called Western Europe, so distinctly dismembered in its component States and so closely united by ideal and material ties; Gibbon could see the shadows of the old world in which the new world was living; both had been attracted to research by an admirable sense of influences deeper and stronger than nationality, or State, or class, and both remained indifferent to the humbler range of English social history. Hume took his stand on England, but he had to begin with a general outline and the explanation of the more apparent changes in State and Church. [Blackstone's Commentaries.] In this way current notions on our questions remained towards the close of the eighteenth century still undisturbed by writers of a high order. We may take as a fair sample of such current notions Sir William Blackstone's historical digressions, especially those in the second volume of his Commentaries[7]. There is no originality about them, and the lack of this quality is rather an advantage in this case: it enables us through one book to glance at an entire literature. I may be allowed to recall its most striking points to the mind of my readers. The key to the whole medieval system and to the constitution emerging from it is to be found in feudalism. 'The constitution of feuds had its original from the military policy of the northern or Celtic nations, the Goths, the Huns, the Franks, the Vandals, and the Lombards, who poured themselves into all the regions of Europe, at the declension of the Roman Empire. It was brought by them from their own countries, and continued in their respective colonies as the most likely means to secure their new acquisitions, and to that end large districts or parcels of land were allotted by the conquering general to the superior officers of the army, and by them dealt out again in smaller parcels or allotments to the inferior officers and most deserving soldiers.' 'Scarce had these northern conquerors established themselves in their new dominions, when the wisdom of their constitutions, as well as their personal valour, alarmed all the princes of Europe. Wherefore most, if not all, of them thought it necessary to enter into the same or a similar plan of policy. And thus, in the compass of a very few years, the feudal constitution, or the doctrine of tenure, extended itself over all the western world.'