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306 THE DECLINE AND FALL bition of their friends and favourites. But in the quarrel of the investitures they were deprived of their influence over the episcopal chapters ; the freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his firsf prayers, the recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church. The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers. In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to the duchy or county of his father was solicited as a favour ; it was gradually obtained as a custom and extorted as a right ; the lineal succession Avas often extended to the collateral or female branches ; the states of the empire (their popular, and at length their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by testament and sale ; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and extinction ; within the term of a year he was obliged to dispose of the vacant fief ; and in the choice of the candidate it was his duty to consult either the general or the provincial diet. Tiie Germanic After the death of Frederic the Second, German}- was left A.D. 1260 a monster with an hundred heads. A crowd oi pnnces and prelates disputed the ruins of the empire ; the lords of in- numei'able castles were less prone to obey than to imitate their superiors ; and, according to the measure of their strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and manners of Europe ; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered into fi'agments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian cities and French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor ; and these electors were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, the coimt palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of