444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



allow the relatives of the wrong-doer to withdraw themselves from his ■ 

 feud on condition that they should entirely abandon him. If, after I 

 taking advantage of this law, they gave the wrong-doer assistance, 

 they not only forfeited the protection which the law guaranteed them, 

 and so were involved in the feud, but they so obviously sinned against 

 the dignity of the state and its law that they were finable to the king. 

 Such was the law of King Edmund of England. So, if, after the law 

 had guaranteed the relatives of the culprit immunity from the feud in 

 consideration of their abandonment of him, the injured party still 

 took revenge on them, all his property was forfeited, and he was de- 

 clared to be an enemy to the king and all his friends. In like man- 

 ner, government in some instances undertook to give legal force to 

 customs, many of which occur among our Indian tribes, which sought 

 to discourage feuds by limiting the time within which revenge could 

 be taken, or to restrictions uj^on the mode or measure of redress sug- 

 gested by considerations of humanity. Although Mohammed, in the 

 Koran, adheres to the law of personal retaliation for bloodshed, he 

 counsels forgiveness or composition on the part of the aggrieved per- 

 sons. But, against the person who, after receiving composition money 

 as contemplated by his law, still proceeds to take his revenge, he de- 

 nounces a "grievous punishment." The process of enforcing these 

 and other limitations upon parties at feud resulted in developing and 

 illustrating the idea of regulating by criminal laws the conduct of 

 citizens toward one another, and thereby paved the way for the sub- 

 sequent more general application of the same principle. There was 

 another class of measures which tended to the same end by serving 

 especially to mature a judicial machinery, and to familiarize the peo- 

 ple with its operation. Next to its total abolition, the most effective 

 remedy for the evils of blood-avengement was to forbid its exercise 

 until the accused person should have had an opportunity to submit 

 the question of his guilt to investigation in court. Under such cir- 

 cumstances a court was not a bar of justice at which accused persons 

 were arraigned, but a place of refuge to which ihej fled. The Israel- 

 ites had under the Mosaic laws in one respect passed this stage of 

 development, since the public had undertaken to execute judgment 

 against offenders when the avenger so desired. Yet an accused per- 

 son only became entitled to a hearing in court after reaching a city of 

 refuge, up to which time the avenger was at liberty to take his own 

 redress without legal intervention. Having arrived at the city of 

 refuge, the fugitive was entitled to have the question of his guilt in- 

 vestigated. If found guilty, he was either delivered into the hands 

 of the avenger, or at the option of the latter was publicly executed, 

 the prosecuting witnesses casting the first stones. That among the 

 Germans, also, the first entertainment by courts of criminal charges 

 was in the interest of the accused, is, as already remarked, settled be- 

 yond controversy by Montesquieu. Additional and curious illustra- 



