by degrees the
spirit of the English, and narrowed their conceptions. Everything was
new to them, and therefore everything was terrible; all activity,
boldness, enterprise, and invention died away. There may be a danger in
straining too strongly the bonds of government. As a life of absolute
license tends to turn men into savages, the other extreme of constraint
operates much in the same manner: it reduces them to the same ignorance,
but leaves them nothing of the savage spirit. These regulations helped
to keep the people of England the most backward in Europe; for though
the division into shires and hundreds and tithings was common to them
with the neighboring nations, yet the _frankpledge_ seems to be a
peculiarity in the English Constitution; and for good reasons they have
fallen into disuse, though still some traces of them are to be found in
our laws.

[Sidenote: Hundred Court.]

Ten of these tithings made an Hundred. Here in ordinary course they held
a monthly court for the centenary, when all the suitors of the
subordinate tithings attended. Here were determined causes concerning
breaches of the peace, small debts, and such matters as rather required
a speedy than a refined justice.

[Sidenote: County Court.]

[Sidenote: Ealdorman and Bishop.]

There was in the Saxon Constitution a great simplicity. The higher order
of courts were but the transcript of the lower, somewhat more extended
in their objects and in their power; and their power over the inferior
courts proceeded only from their being a collection of them all. The
County or Shire Court was the great resort for justice (for the four
great courts of record did not then exist). It served to unite all the
inferior districts with one another, and those with the private
jurisdiction of the thanes. This court had no fixed place. The alderman
of the shire appointed it. Hither came to account for their own conduct,
and that of those beneath them, the bailiffs of hundreds and tithings
and boroughs, with their people,--the thanes of either rank, with their
dependants,--a vast concourse of the clergy of all orders: in a word, of
all who sought or distributed justice. In this mixed assembly the
obligations contracted in the inferior courts were renewed, a general
oath of allegiance to the king was taken, and all debates between the
several inferior cooerdinate jurisdictions, as well as the causes of too
much weight for them, finally determined. In this court pr