roper place in this volume. But the institutions of three other European nations were for considerable periods dominant in certain p

rol. Although the most formal and permanent statutes were drawn up by the king with the consent of the cortes, or even at its request, yet the custom of issuing pragmatica, or ordinances enacted by royal authority, grew until their provisions filled a large sphere.

orted and extensively developed in the American possessions, where twelve independent audience existed. There, as at home, this court system gradually superseded the more individual and military rule of the adelantado, which had been characteristic of the early conquest period. [Footnote: Moses, Spanish Rule in America, 66, etc] The adelantado was the representative of the administrative powers of the crown. Five such officials in the fifteenth century governed respectively the provinces of Castile, Leon, Galicia, Andalusia, and Murcia; another was appointed over Granada when it was conquered; and still another administered the temporal affairs of the vast estates of the archbishopric of Toledo. Their duties were partly military, partly civil, and under them were subordinate royal officers with a great variety of titles such as sarjento mayor, alferez real, alcalde. The title of adelantado was naturally given to Columbus, Pizarro, and several of the other early conquistadores as the neare

e colonies conquered, settled, and Christianized under their influence they had a completeness of control, not only over appointments, but over the e

ve dukes, thirteen marquises, and thirty-six counts in Castile, some of whom had princely estates and power. The heads of such families as that of Mendoza or Gruzman or Lara or Haro or Medina Celi were among the greatest men in Europe. Yet the highest of these nob

se who took up their residence in a city newly conquered from the Moors, providing themselves with horse and arms without engaging in trade; those who lived without trade in certain provinces and cities which had that privilege. Whether rich or poor, those who belonged to the noble class had many privileges: they paid none of the general taxes; th

irable soldiers. With all their pride and all their indolence, Spanish gentlemen were not too proud to fight, even in the ranks and afoot; or too lazy to endure effort and privation when they were for a military end. The Spaniards as a race were then, as now, abstemious, and could make long marches on a slender commissariat. Many of them were used to the extremes of heat and cold of the mountainous regions of their native country, and were fitted for the most trying of long campaigns, All the material

nd ruled them; the colonists who occupied them-all drew their permission so to act from the king, or if they went beyond their commissions quickly legitimated their actions by an appeal to him for an act of indemnity and a more adequate commission. Foreigners were by the edict of the king excluded from the Spanish possessions, o

ople were firmly established as well as that of subserviency to the crown. Spain was the classic land of participation of all classes in government through the cortes; almost as old as the monarchy were the fueros, or franchises and

icipalities. Not only were they characteristic of Spain, but analogous institutions were established as a Spanish population grew up and was organize

ry and conceded the most extensive rights and privileges. Under them townsmen could surround themselves with a wall, organize a military force, elect their own magistrates, judge their own inhabitants, collect their

there was a certain similarity of organization which may be described as follows, and may be looked upon as the type o

both civil and criminal; the regidores had charge of the administrative work of the community; the corregidores of its oversight in the interest of the king; the alguazil mayor commanded the military forces; the mayor domo had the oversight of the town property. In some towns one or more of the alcaldes had the title of alcalde mayor, and held a presiding function. There were various lower officials, such as alarifes, ray

m. The provincial interests of the colonists also opposed the monarchy. The great distance of the colonies from Spain, the rigidity of official custom, the difference between the interests of the colonists and the desires of the government, and the lack

overnment. Slavery was a product of American conditions and was not general in the mother- country. A small number of Moorish slaves captured in war and of negroes imported

es is a long, sad history of kindly intentions and wise regulations on the part of the home government, made nugatory by the determined self-interest and heartless cruelty of the colonists. [Footnote: Lea, "The Indian Policy of Spain" (in Yale Review, August, 1899); Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xviii.] The fervor of Las Casas could readily obtain from

ere deprived of all wholesome local freedom, of all power of independent action, and of all deliberate choice of their own policy. They did not, therefore, develop during their colonial period a robust provi

on in the general direction of political development in France, and the system which Canada reflected in the seventeenth century was a more elaborate rather than a different system from that of the sixteenth. This development had, indeed, been in progress since the Hundred Years' War, and consisted in t

he years in which Canada was struggling into existence-that is to say, the reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., from 1589 to 1643. By the latter date, that of the accession of Louis XIV., the work was accomplished. France was, in theory and in practice, a despotism. It was so in theory, for Louis himself could declare, "All power, all authority, are in the hand of the king, and there can be none other in the kingdom than those which be established there." The epigram attributed to that monarch, "L'etat, c'est moi," was not an exaggerated description of the royal functions, according to the views of the king and of his most thoughtful ministers. "The ruler ought not to render accounts to any one of what he orda

me of which the king was direct ruler, of others only feudal lord, as had been his position in the fourteenth century, he was now king equally over every one of his subjects in every part of his dominions. Th

d these thirty- four officials exercised the real government over France. They were drawn not from the great nobility, as were the governors, but from the petty nobility or purely official class; they had no local connections or interests apart from the crown which they served; they could be removed at will; they exercised powers only by consent and direction of the crown; they were, therefore, absolutely dependent. On the other hand, they were habitually invested with powers of almost unbounded extent. They could withdraw cases fro

ame weak. The Estates General did not meet again after 1614; the parlements humbled themselves; provincial, municipal, and communal governments dropped into obscurity; the individual man, unless he was a functionary, lost all habit of

n the population, and the tolerance which might be expected from so enlightened a government, the Edict of Nantes was repealed in 1685, and, theoretically at least, all the population of France

ved to them their social privileges. This was done partly by giving them a favored position in the administration of the great machine of centralized royal government, partly by allowing the continuance of old feudal privileges. To the nobles were reserved all the hi

e had the privilege of hunting and fishing or of collecting a fee for granting the privilege to others; and he alone could keep a dove-cote or a rabbit-warren; he had the banalites-i.e., the right of requiring all tenants on his estates to grind their grain at his mill and to bake at his oven; he had corvees-the right to a certain amount of unpaid labor from his tenants; his land was exempt from the taille, the most burdensome of taxes; and he had many other and diverse seigneurial rights, often, indeed, more vexatious to the tenant than they were profitable to the seigneur. [Footnote: Rambaud, Hist. de la Civilisation Fr

self-governing colony. Yet, under the general control of the West India Company, municipal institutions were established at Manhattan, and in the form of the patroonship

aratively early period the towns and cities had obtained charters from their overlord, the count of Holland, or from lesser noblemen, granting them the most extensive rights and privileges. These rights had continued to be extended till the power of the count within the t

ne city having the right of veto in any proposed national action. [Footnote: Davies, History of Holland, I, 85.] Outside of the towns the open country was either domains of the count, or fiefs held from him by church corporations or nobles. On the latter many old feudal powers survived through the sixteenth century. The nobles exercised always low and sometimes high jurisdiction, they taxed their own tenants, they carried on private war with other nobles, and they enjoyed an exemption from the payment of taxes.