On the other hand, if the lord shall omit to make this demand, the lady can serve a warning upon him, that he must, within three times fourteen days, present her three eligible candidates for her choice in marriage, and if he shall fail to do so, she can then choose for herself. If the lord had failed, however, because he could not find the men who were willing to run the risks of this candidacy, it is difficult to perceive what additional inducements the lady's efforts could furnish. So much for the law of the chivalry of the kingdom, I now pass to that of the burghers. The assizes of the burghers' court offer neither in matter nor in form so complete a system as that already noticed. On the contrary, it is but a motley and confused jumble, more like a collection of decisions in concrete cases than a proper law book. They are, however, exceedingly rich in interesting matter. The character of this burgher class, and indeed its very existence, is a most remarkable phenomenon; for this respectable class, occupying a position almost on a level with that of the nobility, was several centuries later in making its appearance in the Occident. The burgher who struck a nobleman lost his hand, while the nobleman who struck a burgher lost his horse, and must pay one hundred sols. Later, however, the burgher could commute his punishment with a fine of one thousand sols, and must pay one hundred sols as an indemnity, thus making the two cases nearly equal. The term burgher has generally been understood to designate the inhabitant of a city, whose quiet and orderly life was passed in occupations of trade and industry; but _such_ burghers were surely not to be found in the kingdom of Jerusalem; for the burghers sprang from the common people, of which the accounts of the Crusades made the chief portion of the army of the Crusaders to have consisted; and when we remember how little respect these showed for the princes in the army--that they once chose Godfrey Burel out of their own number as their leader--we shall not be astonished that there arose from this class of warriors a population who were not to be subjected to a humiliating position in relation to the chivalry. A free and vigorous life shows itself in the whole system of law which governed these burghers. Here we meet, for the first time in the middle ages, the principles of marine and commercial law, rising above the then rather limited views of the Roman law on those subjects, which in the German law books are not mentioned at all. We find among other things strict personal arrest of delinquent debtors--a very ingenious provision against fraud--and a settlement of those cases of intervention which have so troubled our jurists, by an application of the rule, 'The hand must defend the hand,' as follows: