This course alone is consistent with the attainment of the just idea of government, by the judicial department, and peculiarly of this department, because the ideals of the unskilled are not always consistent with the standards of scientific jurisprudence. A subservient judiciary, dependent upon the vacillating ebullitions of an unstable public sentiment would bring about a subversion of the important functions of this department of government, just as it did when popular sentiment controlled the incumbents of the judgment seat, in ancient Babylon, in Greece and in the England of old Anglo-Saxon days. “Trial by Ordeal,” “Trial by Battle,” the dreadful “_Peine forte et dure_,” and “Wager of Law,” are all instructive procedures of a past civilization, from which important lessons can be drawn. “Trial by Ordeal,” “Trial by Battle” and “Wager of Law,” as institutions of a primitive people, struggling for right, are but expressions of a misguided and abortive effort to attain correct judicial ideals, by false and inaccurate standards. Before the evolution of the race had attained to the ideals, when tribunals for the trial of questions of right and wrong, according to the actual facts in each concrete case, had been established, such issues were determined by the ability of the accused, in criminal cases, or the appellee, in civil suits, of a certain character to accomplish certain ordeals, requiring almost superhuman strength or fortitude, or to withstand, by individual combat, the strength of the opposite party to the issue waged. Of course, with such ideals, might alone controled the right and by the “Wager of Law,” the other alternative used in the quest for right, the popularity of the principal or his ability to secure oath-helpers, to assist him in swearing away the given crime or debt, resolved the conclusion upon a given issue, into a simple question of the elasticity of the consciences of the principal and his friends, who were always able to win their cause, after issue waged, by a sufficiently strong and an adequate number of oaths.