We must conceive that the ancient Germans were little removed from the original state of nature: the social confederacy among them was more martial than civil: they had chiefly in view the means of attack or defence against public enemies, not those of protection against their fellow-citizens: their possessions were so slender and so equal, that they were not exposed to great danger; and the natural bravery of the people made every man trust to himself and to his particular friends for his defence or vengeance. This defect in the political union drew much closer the knot of particular confederacies: an insult upon any man was regarded by all his relations and associates as a common injury: they were bound by honor, as well as by a sense of common interest, to revenge his death, or any violence which he had suffered: they retaliated on the aggressor by like acts of violence; and if he were protected, as was natural and usual, by his own clan, the quarrel was spread still wider, and bred endless disorders in the nation. The Frisians, a tribe of the Germans, had never advanced beyond this wild and imperfect state of society; and the right of private revenge still remained among them unlimited and uncontrolled.[*] But the other German nations, in the age of Tacitus, had made one step farther towards completing the political or civil union. Though it still continued to be an indispensable point of honor for every clan to revenge the death or injury of a member, the magistrate had acquired a right of interposing in the quarrel, and of accommodating the difference. He obliged the person maimed or injured, and the relations of one killed, to accept of a present from the aggressor and his relations,[**] as a compensation for the injury.[***] and to drop all farther prosecution of revenge. That the accommodation of one quarrel might not be the source of more, this present was fixed and certain according to the rank of the person killed or injured, and was commonly paid in cattle, the chief property of those rude and uncultivated nations. [* LL. Fris. tit. 2, apud Lindenbrog. p. 491.] [** LL. Æthelb, sect. 23. LL. Ælf. sect. 27] [*** Called by the Saxons “maegbota.”] A present of this kind gratified the revenge of the injured family by the loss which the aggressor suffered: it satisfied then pride by the submission which it expressed: it diminished their regret for the loss or injury of a kinsman by their acquisition of new property; and thus general peace was for a moment restored to the society.[*]