was matter for the priest—­because it was regarded under the doctrines of the Bible as a sin.  This notion prevailed down to the early legislation of the colony of Massachusetts, though doubtless many things which were then considered sins would now be regarded as crimes, such as bigamy, for instance.  The distinction is, nevertheless, a valid one, and we shall have occasion frequently to refer to it.  We shall find that the defect of much of our modern legislation—­prohibition laws, for instance—­is that they attempt to treat as crimes, as offences against the state, matters which are merely sins, offences against the conscience or the individual who commits them.

To-day, the American constitutions all say that a militia is the natural defence of a state of free men.  It is interesting; therefore, to find, hardly a century after the Norman Conquest.  In 1181, the Assize of Arms, which revived the ancient Saxon “Fyrd,” the word for what we now call militia; and, twenty years before that, “scutage” replaced military service.  To the burdens of the feudal system, compulsory military service and standing armies, our ancestors objected from the very beginning.  In a sense, scutage was the beginning of taxation; but it was only a commutation for military service, much as a man to-day might pay a substitute to go to war in times of draft.  General taxation first appears in 1188 in the famous Saladin tithe, the first historical instance of the taxation of personal property as distinct from a feudal burden laid upon land.  The object of this tax was to raise money for the crusade against the Sultan Saladin.  It was followed, five years later, by a tax of one-fourth of every person’s revenue or goods to ransom the king, Richard I having gone to this crusade against Saladin, and been captured on his return by his good friend and Christian ally, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  It is interesting to note that the worth of the king in those days was considered exactly one-fourth of the common wealth of England.  John was less expensive; but he was not captured.  He levied a tax ten years later of one-seventh part on the barons, and one-thirteenth on every man.

In 1213 two important things happened.  The high-water mark of domination by the Roman Church is reached when King John surrendered England to the pope, and took it back as a fief of the pope for a tribute of one thousand marks.  The same year the other early method of trial of lawsuits was abolished by the Lateran Council—­trial by ordeal.  This was the only remaining Saxon method.  The Norman trial by battle had already been superseded by trial by jury; and from this time on, in practice, no other method than a jury remains, though trial by battle was not abolished by statute until the nineteenth century.