with tenfold affection to the institutions that can boast the dignity of barbarian origin; and blessed is the man who can prove to our satisfaction that we are living under laws framed by the philosophy of our halfclad Saxon ancestors in the contemplative retirement of their bogs and fastnesses. The persevering efforts of the learned to show that we are indebted to the wisdom of the dark ages for our trial by jury are well known. The attempt was laudable, although not quite successful. But if the pedigree of juries be involved in some doubt, there have been other judicial forms the claims of which to Teutonic origin may be established without even the aid of strained interpretation or far fetched surmise. Of this number is Wager of Law, or Trial by Compurgation, — a species of trial which maintained its ground in the English courts until a comparatively recent date. Our ancestors considering that there were many cases in which an innocent man of good credit might be overborne by a mul titude of false witnesses, established this species of trial, by the oath of the defendant himself; for if he absolutely swore that he was not chargeable and appeared to be a person of reputation, he went free and for ever acquitted of the debt or other cause of action. The manner of waging and making law was this: The defendant having given secur ity to make his law, — that is, take the bene fit which the law has allowed him, — brought with him into the court-room eleven of his neighbors. The defendant, then standing at the end of the bar, was admonished by the judges of the nature and danger of a false oath. If he still ' persisted, he was made to repeat an oath in substance as fol lows : " Hear this, ye justices, that I do not owe unto Richard Jones the sum of ten pounds, nor any penny thereof, in manner and form as the said Richard hath declared against me. So help me, God!" And thereupon his eleven neighbors, or com purgators, were made to avow upon their
oaths that they believed in their consciences that the defendant spoke the truth. The result of wager of law was to per petually bar the claim of the plaintiff, and it was never permitted except where the defendant bore a fair and unreproachable character; and it was also confined, in Eng land, to such cases where a debt might be supposed to be discharged, or satisfaction made, in private without any witnesses to attest it. Trial by compurgation was in general use among the northern tribes that overran the Roman Empire; it was one of many ex pedients for eliciting truth which prevailed in an age rather remarkable for active energy than for intellectual acuteness and subtle distinctions. In those days religion was not unfrequently called in aid of law; in mod ern times law is but too often called to the assistance of religion. Repeated mention is made of trial by compurgation in the codes of the northern nations, in old charters, and by the earlier historians. In his valuable work on the "Origin of the Laws and Institutions of Modern Europe," Mr. Spence observes that the system of com purgation, so far as putting the party himself to his oath, evidently had its origin from the decisory oath of the Romans. In the same spirit we might assert that the system of trial by jury, so far as regards judges and witnesses, evidently had its origin in the proceedings before a Turkish cadi. The fact is, that scarcely a single instance occurs in the whole of the barbarian codes where the decision of any question was left to the unsupported oath of either of the parties. Besides, the decisory oath itself differed most materially from the oath of purgation : the former was tendered by one of the par ties to the other, as the means of abridging a civil suit; the latter was prescribed by the law as a specific defence to a criminal charge or a civil claim. The number of compurgators varied con siderably, according to the importance of the subject, the character of the person, or the
