If people so barbarous as the Germans have no laws, they have yet customs that serve in their room; and these customs operate amongst them better than laws, because they become a sort of Nature both to the governors and the governed. This circumstance in some measure removed all fear of the abuse of authority, and induced the Germans to permit their chiefs[49] to decide upon matters of lesser moment, their private differences,--for so Tacitus explains the _minores res_. These chiefs were a sort of judges, but not legislators; nor do they appear to have had a share in the superior branches of the executive part of government,--the business of peace and war, and everything of a public nature, being determined, as we have before remarked, by the whole body of the people, according to a maxim general among the Germans, that what concerned all ought to be handled by all. Thus were delineated the faint and incorrect outlines of our Constitution, which has since been so nobly fashioned and so highly finished. This fine system, says Montesquieu, was invented in the woods; but whilst it remained in the woods, and for a long time after, it was far from being a fine one,--no more, indeed, than a very imperfect attempt at government, a system for a rude and barbarous people, calculated to maintain them in their barbarity. The ancient state of the Germans was military: so that the orders into which they were distributed, their subordination, their courts, and every part of their government, must be deduced from an attention to a military principle.