Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. How the Angles and Saxons loved freedom, but made laws to punish those who did wrong. I AM sure you wish to hear something more about the Angles and Saxons, now that I have told you that they had become Christians like the Britons, and had left off fighting with them. There was one thing that they loved above all others, and that was freedom; that is, they liked that every man should do what he pleased as long as he did not hurt any body else. And they liked that when a man went into his own house and shut the door he should be safe, and that nobody should go into his house without his leave. Besides that, they liked wicked people to be punished; but if a man killed another, on purpose, they did not always kill him too, as we do, for fear he should do more mischief; they only made him give money to the relations of the man he had killed, or perhaps they put him in prison for a little while, to teach him to be more careful. And the Saxons and Angles liked that when a thief stole an) thing, he should be made to give it back, and that he should be punished. Rules like these are called laws, and they are needful, to keep men from doing wrong. All laws are meant to do good; and the Saxons and Angles would not let anybody be punished without taking time to find out what was right, as it would not be right to let anybody who saw a man killed go and kill the man who had done it directly, because he would not have time to ask whether it was done on purpose ; and he would be very sorry afterwards ifhe found out that he had punished another person when he ought not to have done so. So there were noblemen set over different parts of each kingdom called Aldermen (which means the same as Elder) to hold courts with the bishop and the lesser nobles, who were call...
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