He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous innovation by appointing special judges to administer a more regular justice than that which was administered in the local courts of the earls and bishops, or even in the national assembly. In this respect he was the imitator, probably the unconscious imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor of Henry II., the institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers and functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, lie at first enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king, or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assembly. It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary is separated from the rest. It is a great step also when uniformity of justice is introduced. Probably, however, these judges, like the itinerant justices of Henry II., were administrative as well as judicial officers; or, in the terms of our modern polity, they were delegates of the Home Office as well as of the Central Courts of Law. In his laws, Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which the statesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the character of an innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innovations might not be accepted by those who would come after him. His code, if so inartificial a document can be dignified with the name, is mainly a compilation from the laws of his Saxon predecessors. We trace, however, an advance from the barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and other crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. In totally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting that indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis of civilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primaeval codes. Alfred, in fact, incorporated an unusually large amount of the Mosaic and Christian elements, which blend with Germanic customs and the relics of Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the various codes of the early Middle Ages, called the Laws of the Barbarians. His code opens with the Ten Commandments, followed by extracts from Exodus, containing the Mosaic law respecting the relations between masters and servants, murder and other crimes, and the observance of holy days, and the Apostolic Epistle from Acts xv 23-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." "By this one Commandment," says Alfred, "a man shall know whether he does right, and he will then require no other law-book." This is not the form of a modern Act of Parliament, but legislation in those days was as much preaching as enactment; it often resembled in character the Royal Proclamation against Vice and Immorality.