ssible
to carry them into execution_. To many charters (laws) we have the
signatures of the Witan. _They seldom exceed thirty in number; they
never amount to sixty._"--_1 Lingard_, 486.

It is ridiculous to suppose that the assent of such an assembly gave any
_authority_ to the laws of the king, or had any influence in securing
obedience to them, otherwise than by way of persuasion. If this body had
had any real legislative authority, such as is accorded to legislative
bodies of the present day, they would have made themselves at once the
most conspicuous portion of the government, and would have left behind
them abundant evidence of their power, instead of the evidence simply of
their assent to a few laws passed by the king.

More than this. If this body had had any real legislative authority,
they would have constituted an aristocracy, having, in conjunction with
the king, absolute power over the people. Assembling voluntarily, merely
on the invitation of the king; deputed by nobody but themselves;
representing nobody but themselves; responsible to nobody but
themselves; their legislative authority, if they had had any, would of
necessity have made the government the government of an aristocracy
merely, _and the people slaves, of course_. And this would necessarily
have been the picture that history would have given us of the
Anglo-Saxon government, _and of Anglo-Saxon liberty_.

The fact that the people had no representation in this assembly, and the
further fact that, through their juries alone, they nevertheless
maintained that noble freedom, the very tradition of which (after the
substance of the thing itself has ceased to exist) has constituted the
greatest pride and glory of the nation to this day, _prove_ that this
assembly exercised no authority which juries of the people acknowledged,
except at their own discretion.[37]

There is not a more palpable truth, in the history of the Anglo-Saxon
government, than that stated in the Introduction to Gilbert's History of
the Common Pleas,[38] viz., "_that the County and Hundred Courts_," (to
which should have been added the other courts in which juries sat, the
courts-baron and court-leet,) "_in those times were the real and only
Parliaments of the kingdom_." And why were they the real and only
parliaments of the kingdom? Solely because, as will be hereafter shown,
the juries in those courts tried causes on their intrinsic merits,
according to their own id