Be it a senate of patricians that reigns, it cannot govern so capriciously, so arbitrarily, as an individual.

There are differences and discussions in the very bosom of the government; there may be, nay, there always are, formed factions, parties which, in order to arrive at their own ends, strive to conciliate the favor of the people, sometimes take in hand its interests, and, however bad may be its condition, the people, by sharing in its masters' rivalries, exercises some sort of influence over its own destiny.
Feudalism was not, properly speaking, an aristocratic government, a senate of kings--to use the language used by Cineas to Pyrrhus; it was a collection of individual despotisms, exercised by isolated aristocrats, each of whom, being sovereign in his own domains, had to give no account to another, and asked nobody's opinion about his conduct towards his subjects.
Is it astonishing that such a system incurred, on the part of the peoples, more hatred than even those which had reduced them to a more monotonous and more lasting servitude?
There was despotism, just as in pure monarchies, and there was privilege, just as in the very closest aristocracies.

And both obtruded themselves in the most offensive, and, so to speak, crude form.

Despotism was not tapered off by means of the distant and elevation of a throne; and privilege did not veil itself behind the majesty of a large body.

Both were the appurtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever at his subjects' doors, and never called upon, in dealing with their lot, to gather his peers around him.
And now we will leave the subjects in the case of feudalism, and consider the masters, the owners of fiefs, and their relations one with another.
We here behold quite a different spectacle; we see liberties, rights, and guarantees, which not only give protection and honor to those who enjoy them, but of which the tendency and effect are to open to the subject population an outlet towards a better future.
It could not, in fact, be otherwise: for, on the one hand, feudal society was not wanting in dignity and glory; and, on the other, the feudal system did not, as the theocracy of Egypt or the despotism of Asia did, condemn its subjects irretrievably to slavery.