22 George E. Hozuard, 



penalty must be paid if he neglect for more then twelve 

 months to offer satisfaction.^ By these and various other 

 devices, many of them resting upon such simple principles 

 of justice ani humanity as would most readily gain the as- 

 sent of primitive men, was the clan-feud circumscribed, and 

 the habit of appeal to a higher jurisdiction gradually estab- 

 lished. 



A more important means for the attainment of the same 

 end was found in the differentiation of classes of offences. 

 The first class comprised minor violations of right, for which 

 the state began to insist on the acceptance of composition in 

 all cases, — a custom which public sentiment had, doubtless, 

 long encouraged. In the second class were embraced graver 

 offences against the peace, such as blood-guiltiness. The 

 offender in such cases was regarded as an outlaw ; private 

 vengeance was not forbidden, but the feud gained a new sanc- 

 tion from the state, which gave its aid to the clan in the prose- 

 cution. A third class comprehended crimes, such as treason, 

 which especially imperilled the existence of the state herself. 

 These offences she insisted on taking entirely into her own 

 hands, leaving to the clansmen only the duty of aiding in the 

 apprehension of the transgressor.^ This classification, which 

 gradually came into existence, determined the course of future 

 development : when the first class had absorbed all of the 

 cases originally contained in the second, and the third had 

 absorbed the first, then was the system of self-help entirely 

 superseded by public law ; private wrongs or delicts had 

 become public crimes. 



Finally, by a third process, co-operating with those already 

 described, the surviving jurisdiction of the clan was broken 

 up, and, in the end, handed over, as it were piecemeal, to the 

 control of the state. This process, beginning in a very early 



1 Wilda, Strafrecht, 182. 



2 For this classification and a masterly discussion of the Fchde, see Konrad 

 Maurer in Kritische Ueberschau, III, 26 ff. Compare the differentiation of crimes 

 and offences as seen in the ancient Indie laws : Leist, Alt-Arisches yiis Gentium, 

 276-384. Especially interesting is his discussion of the evolution of murder from 

 the original crime oi parricide : lb., 323, 443, 445, etc. 



256 



