As a parallel case, he instances the Peers of France,
an order with whose existence every body is acquainted, while of the
date of the establishment nothing is known. It is surprising, that so
clear-sighted a writer did not perceive that he was doing nothing more
than illustrating, as the logicians say, _obscurum per obscurius_, or,
rather, making darkness more dark; as if it were not considerably more
probable, that so strange a circumstance should have taken place in the
sixth century, and have been left unrecorded, when society was unformed,
anomalies frequent, and historians few, than that it should have
happened in the fourteenth, a period when the government of France was
completely settled in a regular form, under one monarch, when literature
was generally diffused, and when every remarkable event was chronicled.
Besides which, the inhabitants of the little kingdom continued, in some
measure, independent of his Most Christian Majesty, even until the
revolution. At least, they paid not a sou of taxes, neither _aides_, nor
_tenth-penny_, nor _gabelle_.
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