Such a regular distribution of the people, with such a strict
confinement in their habitation, may not be necessary in times when
men are more inured to obedience and justice; and it might, perhaps, be
regarded as destructive of liberty and commerce in a polished state; but
it was well calculated to reduce that fierce and licentious people under
the salutary restraint of law and government. But Alfred took care to
temper these rigors by other institutions favorable to the freedom of
the citizens; and nothing could be more popular and liberal than his
plan for the administration of justice. The borsholder summoned together
his whole decennary to assist him in deciding any lesser differences
which occurred among the members of this small community. In affairs
of greater moment, in appeals from the decennary, or in controversies
arising between members of different decennaries, the cause was brought
before the hundred, which consisted of ten decennaries, or a hundred
families of freemen, and which was regularly assembled once in four
weeks, for the deciding of causes.[*] Their method of decision deserves
to be noted, as being the origin of juries; an institution admirable in
itself, and the best calculated for the preservation of liberty and
the administration of justice that ever was devised by the wit of man.
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