"_But the prince or earl performed not, at all times, in person, the obligations of his office._ The enjoyment of ease and of pleasure, to which in Germany he had delivered himself over, when disengaged from war, and the mean idea he conceived of the drudgery of civil affairs, _made him often delegate to an inferior person the distribution of justice in his district_. The same sentiments were experienced by the Saxon nobility; and the service which they owed by their tenures, and the high employments they sustained, called them often from the management of their counties. The progress, too, of commerce, giving an intricacy to cases, and swelling the civil code, added to the difficulty of their office, and made them averse to its duties. _Sheriffs, therefore, or deputies, were frequently appointed to transact their business; and though these were at first under some subordination to the earls, they grew at length to be entirely independent of them. The connection of jurisdiction and territory ceasing to prevail, and the civil being separated from the ecclesiastical power, they became the sole and proper officers for the direction of justice in the counties._ "The _hundred_, however, and _county_ courts, were not equal of themselves for the purposes of jurisdiction and order. It was necessary that a court should be erected, of supreme authority, where the disputes of the great should be decided, where the disagreeing sentiments of judges should be reconciled, and where protection should be given to the people against their fraud and injustice. "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."--_Stuart on the Constitution of England_, p. 222 to 245.