be three; afterwards five were required; in process of time twelve became necessary.[66] As a man might be charged by the opinion of the country, so he might also be discharged by it:  twelve men were necessary to find him guilty, twelve might have acquitted him.  If opinion supports all government, it not only supported in the general sense, but it directed every minute part in the Saxon polity.  A man who did not seem to have the good opinion of those among whom he lived was judged to be guilty, or at least capable of being guilty, of every crime.  It was upon this principle that a man who could not find the security of some tithing or friborg for his behavior,[67] he that was upon account of this universal desertion called Friendless Man, was by our ancestors condemned to death,—­a punishment which the lenity of the English laws in that time scarcely inflicted for any crime, however clearly proved:  a circumstance which strongly marks the genius of the Saxon government.

[Sidenote:  Trial by the Country.]

On the same principle from which the trial by the oath of compurgators was derived, was derived also the Trial by the Country, which was the method of taking the sense of the neighborhood on any dubious fact.  If the matter was of great importance, it was put in the full Shiremote; and if the general voice acquitted or condemned, decided for one party or the other, this was final in the cause.  But then it was necessary that all should agree:  for it does not appear that our ancestors, in those days, conceived how any assembly could be supposed to give an assent to a point concerning which several who composed that assembly thought differently.  They had no idea that a body composed of several could act by the opinion of a small majority.  But experience having shown that this method of trial was tumultuary and uncertain, they corrected it by the idea of compurgation.  The party concerned was no longer put to his oath,—­he simply pleaded; the compurgators swore as before in ancient times; therefore the jury were strictly from the neighborhood, and were supposed to have a personal knowledge of the man and the fact.  They were rather a sort of evidence than judges:  and from hence is derived that singularity in our laws, that most of our judgments are given upon verdict, and not upon evidence, contrary to the laws of most other countries.  Neither are our juries bound, except by one particular statute, and in particular cases, to observe any positive testimony, but are at liberty to judge upon presumptions.  These are the first rude chalkings-out of our jurisprudence.  The Saxons were extremely imperfect in their ideas of law,—­the civil institutions of the Romans, who were the legislators of mankind, having never reached them.  The order of our courts, the discipline of our jury, by which it is become so elaborate a contrivance, and the introduction of a sort of scientific reason in the law, have been the work of ages.