through the almost total vanishing of small independent freeholds, was necessarily placed in a very different position. ----- Footnote 473: The freeman is a member of an aristocracy in respect of _all_ the unfree, whether these be temporarily so, as his children and guests, or permanently so, as his serfs. To be in the πολίτευμα, which others are not, to have the franchise which others have not, to have the freedom of a city which others have not, all these are forms of aristocracy,—the aristocracy of Greece, Rome and England. The Peers in England are not themselves exclusively an aristocracy: they are the born leaders of one, which consists now of ten-pound householders, freemen in towns, and county tenants under the Chandos clause. ----- It now remains only to bestow a few words upon the manner in which the original obligations of the family bond were gradually brought to bear upon the artificial organization. Upon a careful consideration of the latter it appears that its principal object was gained when either offences were prevented, or the offender presented to justice: the consequences of crime, in all but a few excepted cases, fell not upon the gegyldan (if they could clear themselves of participation) but upon the mǽgas or relatives[474]. The laws of Æðelberht, Wihtræd and Hloðhere know nothing of gegyldan: with them the mǽgas are still wholly responsible, and even their intervention is noticed in three cases only: Æðelberht provided that in the event of a manslayer flying the country, the family should pay half the wergyld of the slain[475]. Again he enacts, that if a married woman die without bearing children, the property she brought her husband, and that which he settled upon her after consummation, shall return to her paternal relatives[476]. According to the legislation of Hloðhere, if a man died, leaving a wife and child, the mother was to have the custody of the child till his tenth year, but the paternal kinsmen were to administer his property, under satisfactory pledge for due discharge of their duty[477]. The regulations of Ini allow us to enter still further into the nature of the family engagement. He enacted that if a stranger came through the wood out of the highway, and attempted to slink through in secret, without shouting or blowing his horn, he should be taken to be a thief, and might be slain or forced to pay according to his presumed crime: and if the slayer were then pursued for his wergyld, he might make oath that he slew him for a thief, and the lord and the gegyldan of the dead man should not be allowed to make oath to the contrary: but if the slayer had at the time concealed the deed, and it was only afterwards discovered, a presumption of unfair dealing was raised against him, and the kindred of the dead man were entitled to make oath of his innocence[478]. Again if a stranger were slain, the king was to have two parts of his wergyld, the son or relatives of the