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: PART L Social auU ilocal liebtlopmtnt of % Constitution. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS. Sources of our Institutions.—The political and social institutions of the people of England, which together make up what is called the Constitution, derive their origin mainly from two sources—(1) The laws and customs of the Teutonic tribes, who in the time of the old Roman Empire occupied the central parts of Europe; and (2) The feudal system, which grew out of those laws and customs at a period subsequent to the settlement of the Angles and Saxons in Britain, and which was imported into this country at the Norman Conquest. In Continental Europe the Teutonic tribes, when they overran and subjugated the countries previously under the sway of Eome, adopted in great part the institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, of the population among whom they settled as conquerors,—institutions which were established by the authority of Eome, and were based on her civil law. Hence we find that Eoman law remains to this day the groundwork of all the legal systems of Western Europe, except the English. The Angles and Saxons, on the contrary, when ENG. 1UST. A they invaded Britain, swept away all traces of Eoman civilisation and institutions from the districts which they occupied. The constitution, therefore, which first developed itself as that of Wessex, Mercia, and the other kingdoms of the so-called Heptarchy,1 and which, when the West-Saxon kingdom absorbed its rivals, became, with various local modifications, the constitution of all England, was almost entirely Teutonic in its origin and growth. Early Teutonic Institutions.—The early political and social condition of the German tribes is described by Tacitus in his Germania.' Among its essential features, we notice the natur...