It was not unusual to add to the
deed an imprecation on all such as should be guilty of that crime.[*]
[* Hickes, Dissert, epist.]
Among a people who lived in so simple a manner as the Anglo-Saxons, the
judicial power is always of greater importance than the legislative.
There were few or no taxes imposed by the states; there were few
statutes enacted; and the nation was less governed by laws, than by
customs, which admitted a great latitude of interpretation. Though it
should, therefore, be allowed, that the wittenagemot was altogether
composed of the principal nobility, the county courts, where all the
freeholders were admitted, and which regulated all the daily
occurrences of life, formed a wide basis for the government, and were no
contemptible checks on the aristocracy. But there is another power still
more important than either the judicial or legislative; to wit, the
power of injuring or serving by immediate force and violence, for which
it is difficult to obtain redress in courts of justice. In all extensive
governments, where the execution of the laws is feeble, this power
naturally falls into the hands of the principal nobility; and the
degree of it which prevails, cannot be determined so much by the public
statutes, as by small incidents in history, by particular customs, and
sometimes by the reason and nature of things.
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