640 Sh- Henry S. Maine [April 1, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 1, 1881. 



Joseph Brown, Esq. Q.C. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir Henry S. Maine, K.C.S.I. F.E.S. &c. 



The King in Ms Belation to Early Civil Justice. 



Wherever, in the records of very ancient societies belonging to races 

 with which we have some affinity, we come upon the personage whom 

 we call the king, he is almost always associated with the administra- 

 tion of justice. He is much more than a judge. He is all but inva- 

 riably a military chief, and constantly a priest. But he rarely fails 

 to be a judge, though his relation to justice is not exactly that with 

 which we are familiar. 



The law books claiming the highest antiquity are those of the 

 Hindoos, of which one, and not the oldest, has long been known 

 vaguely to Europeans as the code of Manu. These books only 

 became law books by a process of specialisation, having at first dealt 

 with all things human and divine ; but they always assume a king to 

 administer justice, who sits with learned Brahmans for assessors. 

 This order of ideas may be traced in the westerly wing of the Aryan 

 race, where the great Brehons who declared the ancient Irish law are 

 kings or kings' sons, and where it is expressly laid down that a king, 

 though of right a judge, may have an assessor to advise him. Still 

 older is the conception of the king's relation to justice found in the 

 poems attributed to Homer. There the king, as judge, pronounces 

 judgments or " dooms," but though they are doubtless based on pre- 

 existing usage, they are supposed to be divinely and directly dictated 

 to the king from on high. 



The judges of the Hebrews represent an old form of kingship, 

 but independently of the etymology of the name, they are clearly 

 exponents of the law and administrators of justice. Deborah, who is 

 counted among them, judged Israel in Mount Ephraim ; Eli, the last 

 but one of them, had judged Israel forty years; and Samuel, the 

 last, expressly claims credit in his old age for the purity of his 

 judgments. The decline of the system is marked by the misconduct 

 of their children. Under the later hereditary kingship, the judicial 

 function scarcely appears in Saul and David, but revives in Solomon. 



By the side of the king there was another fountain of law and 

 justice, the popular assembly. It is not necessary to enter on the 



