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the growth of the Constitution as a concentration of local self-government, the other leads from the original and fundamental distinction between a privileged class and a servile peasantry to the original organisation of the township under a lord. There can be no question as to the remarkable power displayed in Palgrave's work, or as to the value of his results. He had an enormous and varied store of erudition at his command, and the keenest eye for observation. No wonder that many of his theories on particular subjects have been eagerly taken up and worked out by later scholars. But apart from such successful solutions of questions, his whole conception of development was undoubtedly very novel and fruitful. One of Palgrave's main positions -- the intimate connexion between the external history of the Constitution and the working of private law in the courts -- opened a wholly new perspective for the study of social history. But naturally enough the first cast turned out rather rough and distorted. Palgrave is as conspicuous for his arbitrary and fanciful treatment of his matter, as for his learning and ingenuity. He does not try to get his data into order or completeness, and has no notion of the methods of systematic work. Comparisons of English facts with all kinds of phenomena in the history of kindred and distant peoples sometimes give rise to suggestive combinations, but, in most cases, out of this medley of incongruous things they lead only to confusion of thought. In consequence of all these drawbacks, Palgrave's attempt only started the inquiry in most directions, but could not exhaust it in any. The two great elements of Western civilisation -- Roman tradition and Teutonic tendencies -- were more or less peacefully brought together in the books of Savigny, Eichhorn, and Palgrave. But in process of time they diverged into a position of antagonism. Their contrast not only came out as a result of more attention and developed study. It became acute, because in the keen competition of French and German scholarship, historians, consciously and unconsciously, took up the standpoint of national predilection, and followed their bias back into ancient times. Aug. Thierry, while protesting against the exaggerations of eighteenth-century systems, considered the development of European nations almost entirely as a national struggle culminating in conquest, but underlying most facts in the history of institutions. He began, for the sake of method, by tracing the conflict on English ground where everything resolved itself to his eye into open or hidden strife between Norman and Saxon. But William the Bastard's invasion led him by a circuitous way to the real object of his interest -- to the gradual rise of Gallo-Roman civilisation against the Teutonic conquest in France: historical tendencies towards centralised monarchy and municipal bourgeoisie were connected by him with the present political condition of France as the abiding legacy of Gallo-Roman culture Men of great power and note, from Raynouard and B. Guerard down to Fustel de Coulanges in our own days, have followed the same track with more or less violence and exaggeration. They are all at one in their animosity towards Teutonic influence in the past, all at one in lessening its effects, and in trying to collect the scattered traces of Romanism in principle and application. The Germans did not submit meekly to the onslaught, but went as far as the Romanists on the other side. Lobell, Waitz, and Roth -- to speak only of the heads of the school -- have held forth about the mighty part which the Teutons have played in Europe; they have enhanced the beneficial value of Germanic principles, and tried to show that there is no reason for laying to their account certain dark facts in the history of Europe. The Germanist school had to fight its way not only against Romanism, but against divers tenets of the Romantic school as represented by Savigny and Eichhorn, of which Romanists had availed themselves. The whole doctrine was to be reconsidered in the light of two