THE ANATOMY OF AN OLD ANECDOTE. 371 



history of many races, preceded in order of development the pledging 

 of property the right to legal process against the person likewise 

 becoming established as a means of collection before process against 

 property was known to the law. It was so with the Romans. The 

 persons, the lives, of the debtor and his family were long considered 

 by them as the creditor's normal security. It was fully four centuries 

 from the foundation of the city before the Roman creditor was entitled 

 to resort, without the debtor's consent, to any portion of the lattcr's 

 property except such as had been delivered to the creditor in pledge. 

 It would be interesting to inquire why remedies against the person 

 thus preceded those against property ; and, though too remote and 

 obscure a problem for treatment here, we may hazard, in passing, the 

 conjecture that the explanation is to be found in the generally com- 

 munistic form of primitive property. When all property was vested 

 in the village tribe or gens, the individual really had nothing he could 

 call his own except himself and his family. The idea that the credit- 

 or's remedy was exclusively against the person, being thus engendered, 

 would, through the sluggishness of the primitive intellect, continue to 

 subsist long after its original cause had been removed by the institu- 

 tion of individual property. Again, the whole structure and theory of 

 early society was such as to give credit and currency to measures 

 which, while perhaps not legally charging the minor social and propri- 

 etary organisms with debts contracted by their constituent individuals, 

 might yet be employed by the creditor of an individual to force the 

 organization to aid its defaulting members. Such was doubtless one 

 theory upon which the unconscionable power of the creditor over his 

 debtor was upheld. It operated as a harsh and awkward leverage by 

 which the creditor could reach the property, not only of the debtor, 

 but of his sympathizing relatives and friends. However this may be, 

 the power of the creditor was habitually pushed to such merciless 

 extremity that indescribable hardships befell the debtor class in all the 

 early civilizations. It is true that within historic times the creditor, 

 in many instances, derived the authority for his atrocities, not from 

 the stipulations of his contract, but from general provisions of law. 

 The Roman law, under which a creditor could, at his option, put his 

 defaulting debtor to death or sell him as a slave into a foreign land, 

 and the several creditors of an insolvent could hew his body in pieces 

 and divide it between them, is a fair example of the almost incredi- 

 ble inhumanity of the early law toward this unfortunate class. 



The traits of character and the social conditions which led to the 

 toleration of such laws, it would not be difficult to specify, for, though 

 numerous, they are by no means obscure. But in this instance, as with 

 all irrational customs, laws, or beliefs, the secret of their maintenance 

 is a very simple matter compared with the mystery of their first cause. 

 Assuredly it is hard to distinguish in the mere fact of indebtedness, in 

 the simple relation of debtor and creditor, anything which could have 



