with a hundred _Comites_ to administer justice amongst the confederated clans. Aristocratic confederacies, occasionally united under the rule of one head, or _Heretoga_, prevailed amongst the continental Saxons in the days of Beda, and probably of Charlemagne; a judge, perhaps elective, still governed the Visigoths at the close of the fourth century, when an infant king was the hereditary ruler of the Ostragoths; whilst Maraboduus is an example that the authority of a permanent magistrate had occasionally prevailed over the elective principle amongst the Germans, even before the days of Tacitus, when the government of a king was not unknown amongst that people.[25] The true peculiarity of the Celtic system, the “balance of power,” is to be found in that singular principle of divided authority, which is surely traceable to the original separation of the two leading classes, and their mutual jealousy of encroachment, a jealousy which seems to have settled into a fixed principle of policy in the Celtic system of government long after its probable cause had been forgotten. Every state, every group of clans, every family even, was thus divided; _two_ confederacies took the lead amongst the whole people; and if the Ædui or the Sequani lost their pre-eminence, the Rhemi or the Arverni stept into the vacant place; for the undivided supremacy of _one_ confederacy--_un_balanced power--would have been totally contrary to all Celtic precedent.[26] Three leading characters are traceable amongst the Gauls,--one hereditary, the _Princeps_ or head of the race, the _Cen-Cinnitd_ or _Pen-Cenedl_ of later times; two elective, the _Judex_, supreme magistrate or _Vergobreith_, and the _Dux_ or _Toshach_, the leader of the host. These characters are equally recognisable amongst the early Germans, amongst whom they were probably known as the _Cyning_ or _Konung_, the head of the kindred--the _Lagaman_ and the _Heretoga_; and they existed to a recent date in every Celtic clan long after the elective had given place to the hereditary principle, as the chief, the _Toshach_, and the judge, _Brehon_ or _Deempster_. As amongst the Germans so amongst the Gauls, the head of the lineage was not necessarily the leader of the host, though the offices were not unfrequently united in the same person. Sedulius was _dux et princeps_ (captain and chief) of the Lemovices; and Vertiscus “_princeps_,” or chief of the confederacy of the Rhemi, was also “_præfectus_” (captain or _toshach_) of their cavalry.[27] But here the resemblance ceases, for the German _Lagaman_--the _princeps_ who was elected in the assembly, and dispatched with a hundred _Gasinds_ or _Comites_ to judge the people--never appears to have necessarily laid aside his military authority. Athanaric was _Dux_ as well as _Judex_ of the Visigoths; and the Frank Gasind of a later period united in his own person both military and judicial functions, as _Graf_, _Count_ or _Judex Fiscalis_. Such was not the case amongst