... institutions of those fierce invaders, has flowed down in the stream of time, and still mingles with our modern jurisprudence. The subject, it is conceived, is interesting to every Briton. In the manners of the Germans, the reader will see our present frame of government, as it were, in its cradle, gentis cunabula nostrae! in the Germans themselves, a fierce and warlike people, to whom this country owes that spirit of liberty, which, through so many centuries, has preserved our excellent form of government, and raised the glory ... — Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus