of battle and the final surrender of Guthrum, Alfred, feeling that
the power was now in his hands, had had ample time to reflect on the
course which he should pursue with his subjugated enemies; and the
result to which he came, and the measure which he adopted, evince,
as much as any act of his life, the greatness, and originality, and
nobleness of his character. Here were two distinct and independent
races on the same island, that had been engaged for many years in a
most fierce and sanguinary struggle, each gaining at times a
temporary and partial victory, but neither able entirely to subdue or
exterminate the other. The Danes, it is true, might be considered as
the aggressors in this contest, and, as such, wholly in the wrong; but
then, on the other hand, it was to be remembered that the ancestors of
the Saxons had been guilty of precisely the same aggressions upon the
Britons, who held the island before them; so that the Danes were,
after all, only intruding upon intruders. It was, besides, the general
maxim of the age, that the territories of the world were prizes open
for competition, and that the right to possess and to govern vested
naturally and justly in those who could show themselves the strongest.
Then, moreover, the Danes had been now for many years in Britain. Vast
numbers had quietly settled on agricultural lands. They had become
peaceful inhabitants. They had established, in many cases, friendly
relations with the Saxons. They had intermarried with them; and the
two races, instead of appearing, as at first, simply as two hostile
armies of combatants contending on the field, had been, for some
years, acquiring the character of a mixed population, established and
settled, though heterogeneous, and, in some sense, antagonistic still.
To root out all these people, intruders though they were, and send
them back again across the German Ocean, to regions where they no
longer had friends or home, would have been a desperate--in fact, an
impossible undertaking.