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136 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxviii officer assumed, within his district, the command of the troops and the administration of justice. 83 But the fierce and illiterate chieftain was seldom qualified to discharge the duties of a judge, which require all the faculties of a philosophic mind, laboriously cultivated by experience and study ; and his rude ignorance was compelled to embrace some simple and visible methods of ascertaining the cause of justice. In every religion, the Deity has been invoked to confirm the truth, or to punish the false- hood, of human testimony ; but this powerful instrument was misapplied and abused by the simplicity of the German legis- lators. The party accused might justify his innocence by pro- ducing before their tribunal a number of friendly witnesses, who solemnly declared their belief, or assurance, that he was not guilty. According to the weight of the charge this legal number of compurgators was multiplied ; seventy-two voices were required to absolve an incendiary or assassin ; and, when the chastity of a queen of France was suspected, three hundred gallant nobles swore, without hesitation, that the infant prince had been actually begotten by her deceased husband. 84 The sin and scandal of manifest and frequent perjuries engaged the magistrates to remove these dangerous temptations ; and to supply the defects of human testimony by the famous experi- ments of fire and water. These extraordinary trials were so capriciously contrived that in some cases guilt, and innocence or gerefa (German graf, English reeve) ; no satisfactory derivation of the name has yet been found, and it was not common to all the German peoples. Thus among the Lombards we do not find reeves, but gastalds. The opposition which we meet in England between the reeve and ealdorman, in the Lombard kingdom between the gastald and duke, is not found among the Merovingian Franks. In the Frank kingdom the duke disappears (except in the case of Bavaria) and the count has undivided authority over the Gau. The dukes whom we do find in Merovingian i history have a totally different origin from that of the Lombard dukes. Several provinces (Gaue) were sometimes temporarily united to form a single government, under a royal officer, to whom the title dux was given, and to whom the counts of the provinces were subordinate. For the title praefectus see below, note 121.] 83 The whole subject of the Germanic judges and their jurisdiction is copi- ously treated by Heineccius (Element. Jur. Germ. 1. iii. No. 1-72). I cannot find any proof that, under the Merovingian race, the scabini, or assessors, were chosen by the people. [The name does not appear till Carolingian times.] 84 Gregor. Turon. 1. viii. c. 9, in torn. ii. p. 316. Montesquieu observes (Esprit des Loix, 1. xxviii. c. 13) that the Salic law did not admit these negative proofs so universally established in the Barbaric codes. Yet this obscure conoubine (Fredegundis) who became the wife of the grandson of Clovis must have followed the Salic law.