e says, was the
continual wearying of the poor, and the superfluous exactions, and even
violence, of the strong against those who were weak. They are the 'laws
of our fathers, as far as we have learnt them from ancient men, and are
published with the counsel and consent of our princes, judges, and all
our most prosperous army,' i.e. the barons, or freemen capable of bearing
arms; 'and are confirmed according to the custom of our nation by
garathinx,' that is, as far as I can ascertain from Grimm's German Law,
by giving an earnest, garant, or warrant of the bargain.

Among these Lombards, as among our English forefathers, when a man
thingavit, i.e. donavit, a gift or bequest to any one, it was necessary,
according to law CLXXII., to do it before gisiles, witnesses, and to give
a garathinx, or earnest, of his bequest--a halm of straw, a turf, a cup
of drink, a piece of money--as to this day a drover seals his bargain
with a shilling, and a commercial traveller with a glass of liquor.
Whether Rothar gave the garathinx to his barons, or his barons to him, I
do not understand: but at least it is clear from the use of this one word
that the publication of these laws was a 'social contract'--a distinct
compact between king and people. From all which you will perceive at
once that these Lombards, like all Teutons, were a free people, under a
rough kind of constitutional monarchy. They would have greeted with
laughter the modern fable of the divine right of kings, if by that they
were expected to understand that the will of the king was law, or that
the eldest son of a certain family had any God-given ipso-facto right to
succeed his father. Sixteen kings, says the preface, had reigned from
Agilmund to Rothar; and seven times had the royal race been changed. That
the king should belong to one of the families who derived their pedigree
from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were
old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of
crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero,
and the elder an 'arga'--a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make
of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would
do their business best. The king was, as this preface and these laws
shew, the commander in chief of the exercitus, the militia, and therefore
of every free man in the state; (for all were bound to fight when
required). He was also the suprem