Book III: Chapter 4 - Page 2

introduced order
and good government, and with them the liberty and security of individuals,
among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a
continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon
their superiors. This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the
most important of all their effects. Mr Hume is the only writer who, so far
as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it.

In a country which has neither foreign commerce nor any of the finer
manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange
the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the
maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at
home. If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a
thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a
hundred or a thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a
multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in
return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must
obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays
them. Before the extension of commerce and manufactures in Europe, the
hospitality of the rich and the great, from the sovereign down to the
smallest baron, exceeded every thing which, in the present times, we can
easily form a notion of Westminster-hall was the dining-room of William
Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company. It
was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he strewed the
floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that the
knights and squires, who could not get seats, might not spoil their fine
clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. The great Earl
of Warwick is said to have entertained every day, at his different manors,
30,000 people ; and though the number here may have been exaggerated, it
must, however, have been very great to admit of such exaggeration. A
hospitality nearly of the same kind was exercised not many years ago in many
different parts of the Highlands of Scotland. It seems to be common in all
nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known. I have seen,
says Doctor Pocock, an Arabian chief dine in the streets of a town where he
had come to sell his cattle, and invite all passengers, even common
beggars, to sit down with him and partake of his banquet.

The occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great
proprietor as his retainers. Even such of them as were not in a state of
villanage, were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect equivalent to
the subsistence which the land afforded them. A crown, half a