22

HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

chap, tyranny of nation over nation, and that revolution which, a

-few generations later, put an end to the property of man in

man, were silently and imperceptibly effected. They struckcontemporary observers with no surprise, and have receivedfrom historians a very scanty measure of attention. Theywere brought about neither by legislative regulation nor byphysical force. Moral causes noiselessly effaced first thedistinction between Norman and Saxon, and then the distinc-tion between master and slave. None can venture to fix theprecise moment at which either distinction ceased. Somefaint traces of the old Norman feeling might perhaps havebeen found late in the fourteenth century. Some faint tracesof the institution of villenage were detected by the curious solate as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever,to this hour, been abolished by statute.

Beneficial It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chiefoperautm a g en (- ; n these t w0 great deliverances was religion; and it mayCathohc perhaps be doubted whether a purer religion might not havereligion, been found a less efficient agent. The benevolent spirit ofthe Christian morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctionsof caste. But to the Church of Rome such distinctions arepeculiarly odious; for they are incompatible with other dis-tinctions which are essential to her system. She ascribes toevery priest a mysterious dignity which entitles him to thereverence of every layman; and she does not consider anyman as disqualified, by reason of his nation or of his family,for the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the sacerdotalcharacter, however erroneous they may be, have repeatedlymitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society.That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxiouswhich, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race,creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, invertsthe relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, andcompels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual