weakness, that the two racial elements lacked cohesion, and therefore they could not make head against the foreign invaders. But our information proves that they were much more closely united than has generally been supposed. Moreover, the most fruitful cause of antagonism between Visigoths and Romans — the distribution of lands, houses, and slaves — was not as widely enforced in the Peninsula as in Gaul, where, nevertheless, it did not prevent the fusion of the two elements. Concerning the way in which this distribution was made in the territories ceded by Honorius to the Visigoths, by the application of the law of tenancy (de metatis), contained in the code of Theodosius, we now possess exact information shewing that the distribution did not apply to all the Gallo-Roman possessores. With regard to Spain, we know for a fact that the Sueves applied this law, and we have good reason to suppose that, touching the arable land and part of the forests, the Visigoths did the same, after the conquests of Euric, in the districts which they acquired. We have various data in support of this; amongst others, the fact that the laws of consortes remained in force. It is also probable that they made distribution of the houses, the slaves engaged to cultivate the fields, and the agricultural implements; but, in any case, the private property of the Spanish-Romans seems to have suffered less than that of their neighbours in Gaul.
Moreover — notwithstanding the statement apparently contained in the military law of Wamba — the fact that, up to the time of Roderick, the Visigoths were constantly engaged in warfare, seems to confute the accusation of effeminacy and military decadence which has been brought against them. The Arabs before they came to Spain had been victorious in other countries where these conditions did not prevail. The fact that they were able to effect the conquest of the Peninsula in the comparatively short space of seven years is due — apart from the prowess of the Muslims — to the political disagreements of the Visigoths, to the indifference of the enslaved classes who found it profitable to submit to the victorious Arabs, to the support of the Jews — the only element really estranged from the bulk of the nation by persecution — and lastly, to the selfishness of some of the nobles — one more proof of the political unsoundness of the State — who preferred their personal advantage to concerted action on behalf of a monarch. The internal history, the history of the Visigothic kingdom, is one long struggle between the nobility and the monarchy. The kings were supported by the clergy in their efforts to consolidate the royal power and transmit it from father to son, while the nobles strove to keep it elective, and held themselves free to depose the elected king by violence. Nevertheless, the kings gained a certain strength, especially those endowed with great personal qualities, such as Leovigild, Chindaswinth, Receswinth, and Wamba. The Visigothic king was an absolute monarch, at times despotic, notwithstanding the principle of submission to the law which, from the contemporary works on
