"The princes accordingly, or chief nobility, in the German
communities, assembled together to judge of such matters. The
Saxon nobles continued this prerogative; and the king, or, in his
absence, the chief justiciary, watched over their deliberations.
But it was not on every trivial occasion that this court
interested itself. In smaller concerns, justice was refused
during three sessions of the hundred, and claimed without effect,
at four courts of the county, before there could lie an appeal to
it.
"So gradually were these arrangements established, and so
naturally did the varying circumstances in the situation of the
Germans and Anglo-Saxons direct those successive improvements
which the preservation of order, and the advantage of society,
called them to adopt. The admission of the people into the courts
of justice preserved, among the former, that equality of ranks
for which they were remarkable; and it helped to overturn, among
the latter, those envious distinctions which the feudal system
tended to introduce, and prevented that venality in judges, and
those arbitrary proceedings, which the growing attachment to
interest, and the influence of the crown, might otherwise have
occasioned.
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