The name is absent

the almost irresistible power with which, like the
Turks of more recent times, the Teutons of old burst
upon the nations exposed to their onset¹. The wer-
gyld, or price of blood, the earliest institution of
this race, only becomes perfectly intelligible when
considered from this point of view : the gens or fa-
mily at large are injured by the loss of their asso-
ciate, and to them compensation must be made;
so they, in turn, must make compensation for him,
since rights and duties are commensurate. This
principle, however darkly, is still involved in the
theory of our civil actions for seduction.

¹ Weight and momentum combined are the secret of modern tactics,
and morally speaking (i. e. the appearance in superior force on certain
points), of modern strategics also. Cavalry charging in successive eche-
lons would always break infantry but for the check which man and
horse experience in their speed from the file-firing of the squares : the
mere weight of the Inmefalling dead into the first rank would break
it if he reached it. If the weight of the advancing body be greater than
that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. A successful charge of
cavalry won the battle of Marengo, an unsuccessful one lost that of
Waterloo. Modern warfare was more changed by the substitution of
iron for wooden ramrods, by which the momentum of musket-balls was
increased, than by almost any other mere change of detail. Steam-
carriages and scythe-chariots, the Macedonian phalanx—nay, even
squadrons of horse, are only larger bullets, which may be launched
with more or less success : all these are mechanical discoveries conse-
quent upon the fact that the individuals of which armies are composed
are lower in the scale of moral dignity than of old. Once group men
in masses, and they become subject, more or less, according as disci-
pline has destroyed their individuality, to the mechanical laws which
govern the relations of all masses. No doubt a stone wall will turn
any charge of cavalry ; and so will a regiment of infantry, in exact pro-
portion as you teach it to stand like a stone wall, that is, as you destroy
the individual action of each soldier. The Romans stood above two
feet apart ; our men touch each other at the elbows. Our armies
are fitter perhaps for aggressive movements. The Germans probably
charged tumultuously ; but the scyldburh, or wall of shields, was hardly
less capable of receiving a charge than our own squares.

It lies in the very nature of things that this, al-
beit a natural, cannot be an enduring system. Its
principal condition is neighbourhood, the concen-
tration of the family upon one spot : as population
increases, and with it emigration, the family bond
gradually becomes weaker, and at last perishes as
a positive and substantive institution, surviving
only fragmentarily in the traces which it leaves
upon the latter order that replaces it. War, com-
merce, cultivation,—the effect and cause of in-
creasing population,—gradually disperse the mem-
bers of the sibsceaft or cognation, and a time arrives
when neighbours are no longer kinsmen. At this
point the old organization ceases to be effective,
and a new one becomes necessary, unless the an-
cient principle is to be entirely abandoned. But
principles are not easily abandoned in early stages
of society ; a young nation finds it easier to adopt
artificial arrangements founded upon the ancient
form : nor is it necessary that the later should have
totally superseded its predecessor; it is enough
that when the earlier ceases to fulfil its object, the
latter should be directed to supply its obvious de-
ficiency, and be united with it, as circumstances
best permit.

Throughout the earliest legislation of the Teu-
tonic nations, and especially in our own, we find
arrangements, based upon two distinct principles,
in active operation. The responsibility of the fa-
mily lies ever in the background, the ultimate
resort of the state against the individual, of the in-
dividual against the state. But we also find small

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