If opinion supports all government, it not only supported in the general sense, but it directed every minute part in the Saxon polity.

A man who did not seem to have the good opinion of those among whom he lived was judged to be guilty, or at least capable of being guilty, of every crime.

It was upon this principle that a man who could not find the security of some tithing or friborg for his behavior,[67] he that was upon account of this universal desertion called Friendless Man, was by our ancestors condemned to death,--a punishment which the lenity of the English laws in that time scarcely inflicted for any crime, however clearly proved: a circumstance which strongly marks the genius of the Saxon government.
[Sidenote: Trial by the Country.] On the same principle from which the trial by the oath of compurgators was derived, was derived also the Trial by the Country, which was the method of taking the sense of the neighborhood on any dubious fact.

If the matter was of great importance, it was put in the full Shiremote; and if the general voice acquitted or condemned, decided for one party or the other, this was final in the cause.

But then it was necessary that all should agree: for it does not appear that our ancestors, in those days, conceived how any assembly could be supposed to give an assent to a point concerning which several who composed that assembly thought differently.