Mr. J. S. Mill observes that historians, travellers, and all who write or speak concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are unacquainted, are apt to confound in their descriptions things wholly diverse. Having but a scanty vocabulary of words relating to such phenomena, and never having analyzed the facts to which these words correspond in their own country, they apply them to other facts to which they are more or less inapplicable. Thus, as I have before briefly stated, the first English conquerors of Bengal carried with them the phrase “landed proprietor” into a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of things, to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right; from another, because he had not an absolute right, they took away all right; drove whole classes of men to ruin and despair; filled the country with banditti; created a feeling that nothing was secure; and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders.[33]
How often, in reading ancient history, are we misled by the application of modern terms to past institutions and events! Guizot, in speaking of the towns of Europe between the fifth and tenth centuries, cautions his readers against concluding that their state was one either of positive servitude or of positive freedom. He observes that when a society and its language have lasted a considerable time, its words acquire a complete, determinate, and precise meaning,--a kind of legal official signification. Time has introduced into the signification of every term a thousand ideas, which are suggested to us every time we hear it pronounced, but which, as they do not all bear the same date, are not all suitable at the same time. Thus the terms “servitude” and “freedom” recall to our minds ideas far more precise and definite than the facts of the eighth, ninth, or tenth centuries, to which they relate. Whether we say that the towns in the eighth century were in a state of “freedom” or in a state of “servitude,” we say, in either case, too much; for they were a prey to the rapacity of the strong, and yet maintained a certain degree of independence and importance.