Note 17 — PREFACE

Amidst all the tumult and confusions of civil and foreign wars; throughout religious and political revolutions; from the days of Arminius to those of Harald; from the days of Harald to our own; the successions of the landowners and the relations arising out of these successions, are the running comment upon the events in our national history: they are at once the causes and the criteria of facts, and upon them has depended the development and settlement of principles, in laws which still survive, in institutions which we cling to with reverence, in feelings which make up the complex of our national character.17