150 



HAEOLD M. WUJNER, M.A.^ LL.B., ON THE 



officials called by Mr. Johns gangers and constables. Tlie 

 property which such officials enjoyed by virtue of their office is 

 rendered inalienable (§§ o5-38). On the other hand they are 

 subjected to special provisions to secure their efficient attendance 

 to their duties. The details are not at present clear in trans- 

 lation : but the general purport of tlie rules appears sufficiently. 

 Hammurabi enacts that for the benefit of the state these men 

 shall enjoy special rights and be subject to special duties. 

 Clearly he protects their property in order to provide for 

 efficient public service. Similarly the law at present in force 

 in this country contains special provisions as to the effect of a 

 bankru]itcy on the pay of an officer of the army or navy or a 

 civil servant. 



The marriage laws give effect to two or three principles. 

 Generally die marriage lie is protected, but where the husband 

 has been taken in captivity, poverty is recognised as justifying 

 the wife in entering the house of another (§§ 134). The wdfe 

 is expected to be economical, attend to her household and be 

 dutiful to her husband (§ 142 ff.). The man is regarded as 

 having a right to obtain children. Various provisions 

 regulate divorce, and would apparently act in general as checks 

 on the exercise of that power. 



Of this and many departments of the law^ it may be said 

 genei'ally that there is evidence of that common sense without 

 which no code of this length could possibly have been devised 

 for a people of the material civilisation of the Babylonians, and 

 that they further testily to the well-developed economic 

 instincts of the people. Ethical considerations only play a 

 very small part. 



We have seen something of the legal machinery that w^as 

 inherited by the contemporaries of Hannnurabi from far more 

 primitive times. It is necessary also to notice the machinery 

 of a more modern type and the use that was made of it. The 

 general diffusion of writing made the duly authenticated deed 

 the best proof of commercial transactions. We find provisions 

 in the code which appear to be inspired by the same motive as 

 the English Statute of Frauds.* It was, no doubt, "for 

 prevention of many fraudulent practices " that the Babylonian 

 legislator enacted (§§ 104 ff.)that"a sealed memorandum of the 

 money he has given to the merchant " should be required in 

 certain disputes between " merchants " and " agents," and that 

 the depositor wdio effects his deposit without " witness and 



* 29 Car. I., c. iii. 



