ion for the dignities of
the state than an actual designation to them. The Saxon ranks are
chiefly designed to ascertain the quantity of the composition for
personal injuries against them.

But though this hereditary relation was created very early, it must not
be mistaken for such a regular inheritance as we see at this day: it was
an inheritance only according to the principles from whence it was
derived; by them it was modified. It was originally a military
connection; and if a father loft his son under a military age, so as
that he could neither lead nor judge his people, nor qualify the young
men who came up under him to take arms,--in order to continue the
cliental bond, and not to break up an old and strong confederacy, and
thereby disperse the tribe, who should be pitched upon to head the
whole, but the worthiest of blood of the deceased leader, he that ranked
next to him in his life?[54] And this is Tanistry, which is a succession
made up of inheritance and election, a succession in which blood is
inviolably regarded, so far as it was consistent with military purposes.
It was thus that our kings succeeded to the throne throughout the whole
time of the Anglo-Saxon, empire. The first kings of the Franks succeeded
in the same manner, and without all doubt the succession of all the
inferior chieftains was regulated by a similar law. Very frequent
examples occur in the Saxon times, where the son of the deceased king,
if under age, was entirely passed over, and his uncle, or some remoter
relation, raised to the crown; but there is not a single instance where
the election has carried it out of the blood. So that, in truth, the
controversy, which has been managed with such heat, whether in the Saxon
times the crown was hereditary or elective, must be determined in some
degree favorably for the litigants on either side; for it was certainly
both hereditary and elective within the bounds, which we have mentioned.
This order prevailed in Ireland, where the Northern customs were
retained some hundreds of years after the rest of Europe had in a great
measure receded from them. Tanistry continued in force there until the
beginning of the last century. And we have greatly to regret the narrow
notions of our lawyers, who abolished the authority of the Brehon law,
and at the same time kept no monuments of it,--which if they had done,
there is no doubt but many things of great value towards determining
many questions relative to