Without breaking down the warlike spirit of the people, he by a salutary law checked the thirst of personal revenge, permitting no man to slay his enemy in secret, not even if he knew that that enemy was seated at home beside his own hearth, he was not allowed to fight with him until he had publicly demanded redress. If the body of a murdered man was found, the penalty, which, considering the value of money in those times, was heavy, fell upon the whole hundred or tything in which the dead body was discovered. By this means, the innocent had the powerful motive of self-interest to induce them to give up the murderer. Rude and primitive as such a system may at first appear, these laws were well adapted to the spirit of the barbarous age in which he lived, when a pagan Dane considered it a meritorious work to slay a Saxon Christian, and the latter thought that he was doing Heaven service when he sent the spoiler of its monasteries, and the slayer of its priests, to revel in the halls of the blood-stained gods he worshipped. Elders were appointed over each hundred, and were answerable for the conduct of all who belonged to them. If a crime was committed, the roll was called over, and suspicion naturally fell upon the missing man who had fled. No other hundred could register his name until he had dwelt a given time amongst them; and through this strict system of espionage, pardonable only in such turbulent times, the land, as it were, was engirded with a continuous chain, not a link of which could be broken without the gap becoming visible. Alfred not only introduced the decalogue into his laws, but so adapted the Mosaic code to the habits of the age in which he lived, as to render it as effective amongst the Anglo-Saxons as it had been with the Israelites of old. His witena-gemot, or assembly of nobles, or parliament, or by whatever name we choose to designate the council of the land, was called upon to give its consent to these enactments, before they were put into operation, and such clauses as it objected to, Alfred blotted out from his Dom-boc. He first drew the bold outline of our present mode of government; and limned with his hand, though rudely, the grand form of our glorious constitution. He was proverbially known amongst his subjects by the title of the "Truth-teller;" and it was a saying during his reign, that golden bracelets might be hung upon the landmarks beside the common highways without a fear of their removal, such a vigorous watch did the law keep.