126 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



chief or committee executes the law in obedience to «. few equally 

 simple rules. In higher nations, where the legislature, the ruler, 

 and the court appear, government law is greatly elaborated. The 

 legislature is organized by processes provided bylaw, and controlled 

 by organic, or constitutional, law, and a body of parliamentary law 

 is developed regulating its method of procedure. The executive 

 department is governed by organic law, by law emanating from the 

 legislature, and by a large body of rules originating within itself. 

 The judicial department is also controlled by organic law, by 

 directory laws emanating from the legislature, and by the rules of 

 the court, involving a complex system of procedure. 



From such simplicity to such complexity do we arrive by the 

 processes of evolution. 



CRIMINAL LAW. 



Of crimes resulting from the regulation of the relations of the 

 sexes, marriage within the proscribed group is held to be the most 

 heinous in primitive society. It is never condoned, never com- 

 pounded. Infidelity after marriage may be condoned or com- 

 pounded. 



Crimes relating to personal injuries include murder, maiming, 

 and slander. Murder may be punished by the taking of life — not 

 necessarily the life of the murderer, but one of his clan. But 

 murder may be compounded, and primitive law fixes the value of 

 individuals according to sex and rank. Murder may be atoned for 

 by substitution, that is, the murderer may be expatriated, driven 

 from his family, and thus become dead to his own people, 

 and then he may be adopted by the injured family and made to 

 replace the murdered person. Thus the wife of the murdered man 

 may adopt the murderer for her husband, and, in this adoption he 

 loses his own name and all relations of kinship, and accepts the 

 name and kinship relations of the murdered man. 



Maiming is punished by maiming — " an eye for an eye and a 

 tooth for a tooth" — and maiming maybe compounded, and the 

 value of the several parts of the body is specified by law. 



