Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/245

1539.] stronger than law. The constables still respected the boundaries traced by superstition; felons were still 'saved by their book;' the English, like the Romans, were a people with whom legislation became strong only when it had. stiffened into habit, and had entered slowly and formally into possession of their hearts and understandings.

So many anomalies have at all times existed among English institutions, that the nation has been practised in correcting them; and, even at their worst, the old arrangements may have worked better in reality than under the naked theory might appear to be possible. In a free country each definite instinct or tendency represents itself in the general structure of society. When tendencies, as frequently happens, contradict each other, common sense comes in to the rescue, and, on the whole, justice is done, though at the price of consistency.

But at the period at which this history has now arrived, the evils of the system had obtained a conclusive preponderance. Superstition had become powerless to deter from violence, retaining only the means of preventing the punishment of it: I shall proceed to illustrate the actual condition of the criminal administration between the years 1535 and 1540, by specimens, not indeed selected at random, but such as exhibit, in a marked form, a condition of things which may be