habits and necessities. The same or similar causes might have existed in England; but the time of its commencement, or the positive causes which brought forth this system, cannot be ascertained with historical certainty. When the Norman barons called the cities, the inferior knighthood, and the yeomanry, to participate in a limited manner in the administration of the State, the cities, which were incorporated bodies, and the country gentry, very naturally could not appear in mass, but only by their mandataries or representatives, as some centuries before was practised in France under Charlemagne, and perhaps even earlier. The subdivisions into privileged classes was even more strongly marked among the Anglo-Saxons than among the other Germans. The social body was composed of the high aristocracy or Ealdorman, wherefrom the earls, of gentry or Thanes or Thegons, of the free yeomanry, who stood under the patronage of the powerful, called Hlaford or bread-giving patrons, and the slaves. All these classes were separated and distinct from each other, by a proportional gradation of the rights which they enjoyed. The composition or weregild existed among the Anglo-Saxons, and was proportioned to the social order of the victim. The same was the case among other German tribes. The oath of an earl was equal to that of six Thanes, and so down proportionally. An offence committed against a woman of noble birth was punished sometimes with death, which same offence against one of lower origin was atoned for by a proportional fine. So much for Anglo-Saxon democracy. Feudality was the cement of Anglo-Saxon conquest, and of the division of the subdued lands.

The constitutional liberty of England is the work of the Norman barons, who could no longer endure the oppression exercised over them by the kings. The move

ment originated not with the Anglo-Saxon part of the population, nor was it an outburst of a higher principle. The kings injured, in various ways, the rights, the material interests of the barons, and they rose to defend them, but not because they were moved by an abstract love of freedom, or urged to action by preconcerted ideas. The agencies in the English movement of the 13th century were wholly different from those which previously acted throughout the continent. On the continent, burghers and even villains united with kings against the nobles; in England the nobles were the first to strike against tyranny, and called in and admitted the commons. This was a stroke of good policy, by which the king was prevented from drawing the cities to his side, a policy taught to the barons by the events of the continent. The movement for emancipation on the continent was effected when the Anglo-Saxons, that is, the mass of the people, trembled at the bidding of Norman barons and sovereigns. These barons are the fathers of the English liberties. After the battle of Lewes, Simon Montfort, a French nobleman, and the other barons called the commons to their parliament; they did it in order to strengthen themselves against the arbitrary action of the king. For a long period those commons-the only genuine Anglo-Saxon element, if there be any-the knights, the gentry and yeomanry; all of them very reluctantly and even against their will participated in the parliaments. This is illustrated by the fines which were continually imposed upon them for non-appearance. So much for the innate Anglo-Saxon love of self-government and of liberty.

The movement against King John originated in the lesion of interests. The barons wished to submit no longer to arbitrary taxation, to the arbitrary disposition and administration of feudal estates, to unlawful wardships over minors, and above all they wished to have the free

use of forests. The rest of the nation, who were equally injured in property and security, responded to their appeal. All this is perfectly in accordance with the common course of human affairs, and no proof of a special predestined exclusive mission.

The division of the districts or counties into the thungs and hundreds, was the result of organic necessity in a population principally living on scattered farms and country-seats, in a land having then few and poor boroughs rather than cities. In the necessity of organizing origi nated the division of the population and of the city under the Roman, Athenian and other republics and municipalities. The tens and hundreds might likewise have been made in imitation of the Slavic communes, as the Anglo-Saxons were of old the neighbors of the Slavi. A continual intercourse existed between the two tribes; they united in predatory excursions, and some of the Slavi very probably participated in the conquest of Britain. The division of the Slavic communes into tens and hundreds, for administrative purposes, can be said to be immemorial. It still prevails in Russia, and no traces of such a division are to be detected in Germany the fountain head of the Anglo-Saxons.

The emancipation of cities is thus described by Hallam: "The progress of towns in several continental countries, from a condition bordering upon servitude to wealth and liberty, attracts attention. Their growth

in England, both from general causes and imitative policy, was very similar and nearly coincident. Under the Anglo-Saxon line of sovereigns we scarcely can discover in our scanty records, the condition of their inhabitants. But the burghers of some towns were already a distinct class from the ceorls and rustics, though hardly free according to our estimation."

The cities in England were oppressed, and in England, as every where else in the ancient and the modern world, it was oppression and arbitrariness which evoked emancipation. The oppression of the feeble and poor by the rich and powerful gave birth to the laws of Solon; the same causes produced the Tribune in Rome, gave power to the crushed plebeians, and were the principal agencies in framing and developing the immortal jus civile. Oppression, as has been pointed out already, aroused Italy, Spain, France, brought the Norman barons into arms against royalty, and resulted in the initiation of the commons into political life. Material interests were at the bottom of all these movements, and Hallam says with truth, "that in the further development of English liberties, these liberties were purchased by money." If any special characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons is perpetuated in the Englishman, it is the deferential respect paid to aristocracy, a feeling which penetrates the English people to the core. Events evolving from new combinations, different from those of the Anglo-Saxon epoch, framed out the English institutions. The conquest of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans, is one of the easiest recorded in history. What history calls the Norman times, gave and marks the mettle of the English character.

The institution of the jury is claimed to be specially Anglo-Saxon. If so it is specially German. As such it ought to have existed in Germany as well as among the original Anglo-Saxons on the Elbe, and other northern branches of the same stem. It cannot be expected that the contact with the Roman civilization destroyed there the original German judicial habits. Such an assertion can be applied with some plausibility to the Franks, Goths, Burgundians, Longobards-but is of no avail in respect to the immense majority of the German race.

The method of settling disputes and litigations by councils, composed of the oldest of the tribe or of the community is, it may be said, inherent in the rudest social state. It has prevailed from time immemorial, and among various nations, and to it can be traced with certainty the origin of what is called juries. Thus the Amphictyons were a kind of jury. The Roman law, nearly from the beginning of its development, used a kind of jurors in civil matters, jurors whose opinion on a given case was submitted to the prætor. How this judicial custom became obliterated does not belong to the present discussion. In criminal matters, in Athens and Rome, nearly the whole people composed the jury and the judge.

The primitive Germans had certain judicial observances for the investigation of material truth, more or less resembling those of other tribes. The so-called jurors of the Anglo-Saxons served as means to investigate and find out the material facts of the case, but, not to give any opinion about its validity. The circuit judge or functionary, an earl, or a count, called the nearest neighbors of the litigants to give evidence according to their knowledge of facts. Under the Saxon kings no criminal cases were submitted to the deliberation of such witnesses, or to that of any body of jurors selected from among knights or yeomen. The kings themselves, or their mandataries decided all such cases. Not the Saxon epoch therefore can alone be considered as having been pregnant with the great judicial institution. The historical development of the institution of the jury in England, out of Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Roman judicial elements is very complicated. It took place under various political and social combinations and conditions, which it is impossible to compress within a brief outline. A jury in criminal cases, and above all for political offences against the monarchy and