known or considered in Europe. Their situation, their domestic
calamities, and their ignorance circumscribed the views and politics of
the English within the bounds of their own island. But the Norman
conqueror threw down all these barriers. The English laws, manners, and
maxims were suddenly changed; the scene was enlarged; and the
communication with the rest of Europe, being thus opened, has been
preserved ever since in a continued series of wars and negotiations.
That we may, therefore, enter more fully into the matters which lie
before us, it is necessary that we understand the state of the
neighboring continent at the time when this island first came to be
interested in its affairs.

The Northern nations who had overran the Roman Empire were at first
rather actuated by avarice than ambition, and were more intent upon
plunder than conquest; they were carried beyond their original purposes,
when they began, to form regular governments, for which they had been
prepared by no just ideas of legislation. For a long time, therefore,
there was little of order in their affairs or foresight in their
designs. The Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Vandals, the Suevi,
after they had prevailed over the Roman Empire, by turns prevailed over
each other in continual wars, which were carried on upon no principles
of a determinate policy, entered into upon motives of brutality and
caprice, and ended as fortune and rude violence chanced to prevail.
Tumult, anarchy, confusion, overspread the face of Europe; and an
obscurity rests upon the transactions of that time which suffers us to
discover nothing but its extreme barbarity.

Before this cloud could be dispersed, the Saracens, another body of
barbarians from the South, animated by a fury not unlike that which gave
strength to the Northern irruptions, but heightened by enthusiasm, and