any despotic act would have shocked the only principle by which that authority was supported, the general good opinion.  On the other hand, it could not have been bounded by any positive laws, because laws can hardly subsist amongst a people who have not the use of letters.  It was a species of arbitrary power, softened by the popularity from whence it arose.  It came from popular opinion, and by popular opinion it was corrected.

If people so barbarous as the Germans have no laws, they have yet customs that serve in their room; and these customs operate amongst them better than laws, because they become a sort of Nature both to the governors and the governed.  This circumstance in some measure removed all fear of the abuse of authority, and induced the Germans to permit their chiefs[49] to decide upon matters of lesser moment, their private differences,—­for so Tacitus explains the minores res.  These chiefs were a sort of judges, but not legislators; nor do they appear to have had a share in the superior branches of the executive part of government,—­the business of peace and war, and everything of a public nature, being determined, as we have before remarked, by the whole body of the people, according to a maxim general among the Germans, that what concerned all ought to be handled by all.  Thus were delineated the faint and incorrect outlines of our Constitution, which has since been so nobly fashioned and so highly finished.  This fine system, says Montesquieu, was invented in the woods; but whilst it remained in the woods, and for a long time after, it was far from being a fine one,—­no more, indeed, than a very imperfect attempt at government, a system for a rude and barbarous people, calculated to maintain them in their barbarity.

The ancient state of the Germans was military:  so that the orders into which they were distributed, their subordination, their courts, and every part of their government, must be deduced from an attention to a military principle.

The ancient German people, as all the other Northern tribes, consisted of freemen and slaves:  the freemen professed arms, the slaves cultivated the ground.  But men were not allowed to profess arms at their own will, nor until they were admitted to that dignity by an established order, which at a certain age separated the boys from men.  For when a young man approached to virility,[50] he was not yet admitted as a member of the state, which was quite military, until he had been invested with a spear in the public assembly of his tribe; and then he was adjudged proper to carry arms, and also to assist in the public deliberations, which were always held armed.[51] This spear he generally received from the hand of some old and respected chief, under whom he commonly entered himself, and was admitted among his followers.[52] No man could stand out as an independent individual, but must have enlisted in one of these military fraternities; and as soon as