The reader must figure to himself, not a mere change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors, but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the _status_ merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of records and deeds, _a clothing of the soil_.

He must not picture to himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting England, and consequently all English.

He must bear in mind that there were two distinct nations--the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman invaders, dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might contemplate two countries--the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax--the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles--the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation.

This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles--that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans.

On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy--not the envy of the poor at the sight of opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on looking upon the spoilers.