The seventy-five years from the Second Punic War to the legislation of Tiberius Gracchus were critical years in the history of Rome. Within this period Rome imposed her will on the Hellenistic world and brought the West under her sway. The foundations of the Empire were laid in these years. Yet the period closes with violence and blood-shed in Rome herself and the seeds of civil war in Italy. The strain of conquest and the immensity of success disturbed the stability which had made the victory possible. Imperial rule called for changes in administration; deep economic movements began to touch the life of the people; but the strength of tradition, political and social, and the dominance of the Senate limited their range of vision. The result was to provoke, whether or not it was justified, an attempt at revolutionary reform.

A Number of important studies have been published in recent years on the subject of benefice and vassalage during the early Middle Ages, and it may consequently be worth while to re-examine some of the problems raised by the origin and early development of these two institutions. I have dealt elsewhere with, the circumstances which tended towards their union early in the eighth, century, under the early Carolingians, In this article I hope to indicate at least the principal features of the history of benefice and vassalage during the reign of Charlemagne. The Influence which Charles exercised on the public and private institutions of the Frankish state was so definite and far-reaching as fully to justify the limitation of the subject-matter of my inquiry to the space of a single reign. Unfortunately the lack of adequate sources, though less serious than for the preceding period, renders the task of tracing their history a somewhat difficult one. Although the capitularies contain a relatively large number of provisions that deal specifically with these institutions, we have very little information as to how they worked in practice. The narrative sources, with the exception of two or three texts, tell us little or nothing. We have to fall back on the evidence of charters, though even these only rarely, when dealing with a dispute or legal proceeding, throw some light on the subject. This is what we might in any case expect, for the essential feature of the entry of a person into vassalage or of the gift of a benefice was the oral act, and not any embodiment of it in writing.

The Spanish and the Sicilian Constitutions of 1812 have been justly criticized as unskilful attempts of minorities to graft foreign models upon native traditions of obsolete or anachronistic feudal Parliaments. Yet the authors of both aimed in part at preserving by new methods some of the changes begun and abandoned by eighteenth-century monarchs, and they used in each case the name of a King who for different reasons could not openly repudiate them. Many who doubted the wisdom of their methods had sympathy for their reforming projects. The Constitution of Sicily was based avowedly on the English model; it has naturally attracted more attention in England and is still worth investigating afresh. That of Cadiz, though deriving almost surreptitiously from the French Constitution of 1791, was also produced in a sense under English auspices. The Cortes were summoned under English pressure, and were protected by English armed forces. Their doings have been described mostly in relation to the military and diplomatic history of the period; but the conflict of French and English influences in Cadiz deserves a short investigation: the material is abundant, both contemporary and later.

In the preamble, Ferdinand, King by God's grace and by the constitution of the Spanish monarchy, and in his absence the Regency nominated by the General and Extraordinary Cortes, made known that these Cortes decreed the following Constitution. In Title I, sovereignty is said to reside in the Spanish nation, which cannot be the patrimony of any family or individual and consists of all Spaniards (as defined) of both hemispheres. In Title II, the territory is defined, subject to a more convenient division of provinces to be made later; the religion “is and always shall be the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, the only true one”, protected by wise and just laws and excluding the exercise of any other; the government, whose object is the happiness and welfare of individuals, is a hereditary limited monarchy, the executive power belonging to the King, the legislative to the Cortes with the King and the judicial to tribunals established by law; the citizens are defined, excluding “Spaniards of African descent” but leaving open “the path of virtue and merit for them to aspire to be citizens” by grant from the Cortes; after 1830, illiteracy would be a ground for suspension of citizenship.