Let us trace the course of one of the lines of political movement. In a primitive society, as among the ancient Germans, each individual has the right of avenging himself, of taking justice into his own hands, and determining what the measure of satisfaction shall be. The right of private war, derived from rude society, remained for a long time in Western Europe, and pertained to the clergy as well as to laymen--a custom which was withal not very Christian-like. A step beyond this, and there was recognized a regular method of determining the amount of satisfaction due for an injury: composition for crime became fixed. We observe here a development from absolute individuality in the matter of determining justice to the recognition of a conventionalism--a law which was the product of the sense of many individuals acting, it may have been, in some cases, without conscious concert, yet in a social and coöperative way. As mankind grew out of their original rude conditions, they relinquished the individual prerogative of taking justice into their own hands, and appealed therefore to a tribunal which was recognized as adequate to this end, and the jurisdiction of which seems to have had a constant tendency to enlarge its territorial limits. Thus, for a time, the feudal barons claimed the final adjudication of all difficulties among their own vassals; but, gradually, dissatisfied clients appealed to the king, who encouraged them to do so, and at length the throne became the universally recognized centre and source of all formal justice.
This was a movement occupying centuries for its consummation, a movement which extended the jurisdiction of the tribunal of justice from the territory of a private individual to the territory of an entire kingdom, collecting the isolated jurisdictions of every individual in barbarian society, and uniting them all together in the recognized sovereign of a consolidated nation.
Now, while it is true that 'the history of progress is the history of successful struggles against coercion and authoritative direction, and in favor of human spontaneity and free motion' (Slack); it is also true, as we have seen in tracing the course of the administration of justice, that 'the progress of civilization consists in the substitution of the general for the individual will, of legal for individual resistance.' (Guizot.)