Richardson, Oliver Huntington: The national movement in the reign of Henry III. and its culmination in the barons' war: erster Theil (Heidelberg, 1897)

CHAPTER I

THE FORCES WHICH MADE ENGLAND A NA TION
IN THE REIGN OF HENRY III.
-^o.-
PART I
Introduction: Primary Forces
The reconciliation of individual freedom with social
order is an ever-recurring problem whose solution has
varied with each stage in the world's evolution and
with the peculiar factors which constitute the life of
different social groups. At the time of its inception,
at least, feudalism was a form of government which
allowed to the individual the maximum of personal
liberty compatible with the maintenance of even toler-
able order within the limits of the state and protection
from foes outside its borders. It was the spontane-
ous and inevitable creation of the liberty-loving Teuton
when confronted with forms of life more complex than
those of his ancestral forests. Liberty tended to de-
generate into license; the centrifugal forces of the
social world to overcome the centripetal; and the
natural outcome of unrestrained feudalism was prac-
tical social anarchy. Frequently, however, the force
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