Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/128

 of judging in their own affairs is there, and is let loose; for such an assembly is in effect a parliament, in which public opinion will make itself heard; and coming from the only military force of those ages, the mass of the people, and, in the North, of a people without military subordination to a feudal aristocracy in civil affairs, must predominate over the will of the king supported only by his court retinue. The concurrence of a few great nobles could not here give effect to the royal command, law, or will; because the few, the intermediate link of a powerful aristocracy, which to this day chains the Anglo-Saxon race on the Continent, was from physical causes—the poverty of the soil—totally wanting among the Northmen, and the kings had to deal direct with the people in great general assemblies or Things. The necessity of holding such general meetings or Things for announcing to the people the levies of men, ships, and provisions required of them, and for all public business, and the check given by the Things to all measures not approved of by the public judgment, appear in every page of the Heimskringla, and constitute its great value, in fact, to us, as a record of the state of social arrangement among our ancestors. The necessity of assembling the people was so well established, that we find no public act whatsoever undertaken without the deliberation of a Thing; and the principle was so engrafted in the spirit of the people, that even the attack of an enemy, the course to be taken in dangerous circumstances, to retreat or advance, were laid before a Thing of all the people in the fleet or army; and they often referred it to the king's own judgment, that is, the king took authority from the Thing to act in the emergency on his own plan and judgment. A reference to the people in all that concerned them was interwoven with the daily life of the Northmen, in peace and in war. We read of House Things, of