e, the hereditary
transmission of property and the trial by jury, which originated with the
Jews, for, by the law of Moses, the succession in the descending line was
to the sons, the oldest having a double portion. If the son died in his
father's lifetime, the grandson heired the portion of his father. Trial by
jury was first suggested in the administration of penal justice among the
Jews. Such trials came off publicly in the gates of the city, and their
judges were elders and Levites, taken from the general mass of the
citizens. "A part of the common law, as it now stands, was first collected
by Alfred the Great, youngest son of Athelwolf, or Ethelwolf, King of the
West Saxons, who took the crown in 871. It is asserted by Sismondi, in his
history of the fall of the Roman Empire, that when the above named prince
caused a republication of the Saxon laws he inserted several laws taken
from the Judaical ritual into his statutes to give new strength and
cogency to the principles of morality. So it is a common thing in the
early English reports to find frequent references to the Mosaic law.
Sismondi also states that one of the first acts of the clergy under Pepin
and Charlemagne, of France, was to introduce into the legislation of the
Franks several of the Mosaic laws found in the books of Deuteronomy and
Leviticus. It is truthfully said that the entire code of civil and
judicial statutes throughout New England, and throughout the States first
settled by the descendants of New England, were the judicial laws of God
as they were delivered by Moses. From God himself one nation, and one
only, received their laws, and they are worthy of being regarded as models
for all succeeding ages. The learned Michaelis, who was professor of law
in the University of Gottingen, says that a man who considers laws
philosophically, who would survey them with the eye of a Montesquieu,
would never overlook the laws of Moses."

Goguet, in his learned treatise upon the origin of laws, says: The more we
meditate on the laws of Moses the more we shall perceive their wisdom and
inspiration. They alone have undergone no changes, amendments or
retrenchments for more than three thousand years, while all others have
been receiving amendments and additions.

Milman, in his history of the Jews, says: The Hebrew law-giver exercised a
more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of mankind than
any other individual in the annals of the world. The