ere are few of
them who have not left us some collection more or less complete.

When the Danes had established their empire, they showed themselves no
less solicitous than the English to collect and enforce the laws:
seeming desirous to repair all the injuries they had formerly committed
against them. The code of Canute the Great is one of the most moderate,
equitable, and full, of any of the old collections. There was no
material change, if any at all, made in their general system by the
Danish conquest. They were of the original country of the Saxons, and
could not have differed from them in the groundwork of their policy. It
appears by the league between Alfred and Guthrum, that the Danes took
their laws from the English, and accepted them as a favor. They were
more newly come out of the Northern barbarism, and wanted the
regulations necessary to a civil society. But under Canute the English
law received considerable improvement. Many of the old English customs,
which, as that monarch justly observes, were truly odious, were
abrogated; and, indeed, that code is the last we have that belongs to
the period before the Conquest. That monument called the Laws of Edward
the Confessor is certainly of a much later date; and what is
extraordinary, though the historians after the Conquest continually
speak of the Laws of King Edward, it does not appear that he ever made a
collection, or that any such laws existed at that time. It appears by
the preface to the Laws of St. Edward, that these written constitutions
were continually falling into disuse. Although these laws had
undoubtedly their authority, it was, notwithstanding, by traditionary
customs that the people were for the most part governed, which, as they
varied somewhat in different provinces, were distinguished accordingly
by the names of the West Saxon, the Mercian, and the Danish Law; but
this produced no very remarkable inconvenience, as those customs seemed
to differ from each other, and from the written laws, rather in the
quantity and nature of their pecuniary mulcts than in anything
essential.

If we take a review of these ancient constitutions, we shall observe
that their sanctions are mostly confined to the following objects.

1st. The preservation of the peace. This is one of the largest titles;
and it shows the ancient Saxons to have been a people extremely prone to
quarrelling and violence. In some cases the law ventures only to put
this disposition und