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.
Alfred saw all these things.

He took, in fact, a general, and comprehensive, and impartial view of the whole subject, instead of regarding it, as most conquerors in his situation would have done, in a _partisan_, that is, an exclusively _Saxon_ point of view.

He saw how impossible it was to undo what had been done, and wisely determined to take things as they were, and make the best of the present situation of affairs, leaving the past, and aiming only at accomplishing the best that was now attainable for the future.