Even superstition, though more prevalent among ignorant nations, is but a poor supply for the defects in knowledge and education; our European ancestors, who employed every moment the expedient of swearing on extraordinary crosses and relics, were less honorable in all engagements than their posterity, who from experience have omitted those ineffectual securities.

This general proneness to assumed perjury was much increased by the usual want of discernment in judges, who could not discuss an intricate evidence, and were obliged to number, not weigh, the testimony of the witnesses,[*] Hence the ridiculous practice of obliging men to bring compurgators, who, as they did not pretend to know any thing of the fact, expressed upon oath, that they believed the person spoke true; and these compurgators were in some cases multiplied to the number of three hundred.[**] The practice also of single combat was employed by most nations on the continent as a remedy against false evidence;[***] and though it was frequently dropped, from the opposition of the clergy, it was continually revived, from experience of the falsehood attending the testimony of witnesses.[****] It became at last a species of jurisprudence: the cases were determined by law, in which the party might challenge his adversary or the witnesses, or the judge himself;[*****] and though these customs were absurd, they were rather an improvement on the methods of trial which had formerly been practised among those barbarous nations, and which still prevailed among the Anglo-Saxons.
[* Praef.Nicol.ad Wilkins, p.

11.] [** LL.Burgund.cap.45.LL.

Lomb.lib.ii.

tit.
55, cap.