Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/181

 after death, or hanged on a tree, as a pirate is hung in chains on a gibbet. Sometimes a heap of stones was thrown over his grave, as over the grave of Absalom.

But while a wretch might be exposed to these posthumous indignities, still, however enormous his crime, its penalty stopped with himself. It was a first principle of the law of Moses, that no child should suffer for a father's crime: a declaration unnecessary in our codes, since no one thinks of punishing a murderer's child, but very necessary in the old Asiatic world, where high crimes were commonly avenged not only by the death of the criminal, but by the extermination of his family. But the law of Moses struck the head of the guilty, and there stopped. No son or daughter was ruined: no hopeless attainder perpetuated the curse to those unborn.

Still further: a ruler who delights in cruelty, will seek, where he does not inflict death, at least to inflict lasting infamy. Despots have often regaled themselves with putting out the eyes of malefactors, or of prisoners of war, or with cutting off their arms or legs, or branding them with a hot iron, so that they should carry a mark of degradation to the grave. But of all this not a trace appears in the laws of Moses. No torture, no branding, no infamous punishment! Stripes were inflicted for petty offences. But this punishment implied no lasting dishonor, as we may be sure from the fact that it was often imposed on the proud Roman soldiers for slight breaches of discipline. Moses limited the number of stripes to forty, for the express reason, that there should not attach to this chastisement too great ignominy: "If the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him,