Kings Peace ami EiiglisJi Peace-Magistracy. 25 



symbols constitutes a strange and ever present contradiction. 

 The conception of a wrong to the individual as primarily a 

 crime against the state, implies an immense mental stride on 

 the part of the clansman. 



An illustration of this tendency to the concrete is found in 

 the history of the king's relation to the National Peace. For 

 everywhere throughout the Aryan world may be discerned 

 two tendencies, often overlapping and gradually supplement- 

 ing each other. The first is the tendency already described : 

 with the dissolution of the gentile bond and the consequent 

 expansion of the state's dominion, the clan-peace slowly 

 yields to the common peace of the folk — the w;/;/<^ becomes 

 absorbed in the/)'////. On the other hand, as the source of 

 all power is vested more and more in the magistrate, in a 

 monarch, the frith becomes transformed into the peace of the 

 king.i Nowhere can the operation and results of this dual 

 process be more instructively studied than in the growth of 

 the English kingdom. Previous to the West Saxon empire 

 of the tenth century, the people themselves, and not the 

 king, were the source of justice. The peace was the peo- 

 ple's peace ; the king was only its guardian and executor. 

 But the position of the king as the dispenser of justice and 

 guardian of the peace was from a very early period important 

 and distinctly recognized. At least a portion of the tuite 

 belonged to him ; ^ and it rested with him to accept a com- 

 mutation in money for even the most heinous crimes against 

 the state.^ Moreover, from the very beginning, there was a 

 tendency to confound the state with the personality of the 

 king ; to make him a visible symbol of the commonwealth. 



By degrees, as the petty tribal states were absorbed in the 



1' - 



1 In this connection should be read the section in Sohm's Reichs- tind Gerichts- 

 verfassung, I, 102-46, on " Volksrecht und Amtsgewalt." He holds that the 

 process by which the administration of the peace was vested in the king or magis- 

 trate was a part of the tendency by which the customary law,y«i- civile, was super- 

 seded or supplemented by the law of the magistrate, Amtsrecht or jus honorarium. 



2 See, for example, /Ethelberht, 6, 9; Hlothar and Eadric, 11, 12, 13, 14; 

 Ine, 23, 27: Schmid, Gesetze, 2, 12, 14, 30, 32. 



3 Stubbs, Const. Hist., I,. 179-81; Konrad Maurer, Krit. Ucb., Ill, 51. 



259 



