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494th OEDINAEY GENERAL MEETING. 

 MONDAY, MAECH 15th, 1909. 



Frederic S. Bishop, Esq., M.A., J.P., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The following candidates were then elected to the Victoria Institute : — 



Member.— Miss M. D. McEwan. 



Associates. — H. H. L. Chichester, Esq. ; George Evans, Esq. 

 The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



THE LEGISLATIONS OF ISRAEL AND BABYLONIA, 

 By Harold M. Wiener, M.A., LL.B. 



IN" the year 1902, M. de Morgan discovered a black diorite 

 stele on which were inscribed "the judgments of 

 righteousness which Hammurabi the mighty king confirmed." 

 Some 35 sections had been erased, apparently with a view to 

 engraving a fresh inscription on the portion of the monument 

 they occupied, but the rest of the code was practically intact. 

 While there are many points in the translation, history and 

 interpretation on which uncertainty must long prevail, we 

 have sufficient materials to form some general conceptions of 

 the legal civilisation of the subjects of " the mighty king." 



The subject matter of jural laws is human life in its social 

 aspect. It deals with the acts and omissions of human 

 beings in their relations to one another, and as a necessary 

 result the influences that mould any given legislation are both 

 manifold and diverse. Nowhere does the student realise more 

 vividly that the roots of the present lie deep in the past, and 

 accordingly the first task in taking a general view of the 

 Babylonian code must be to distinguish the primitive ideas that 

 Hammurabi and his contemporaries brought from a remote 

 past. We must next consider the geographical and other 

 conditions of their task, the means of which they could dispose. 



