Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/470

444 allow the relatives of the wrong-doer to withdraw themselves from his feud on condition that they should entirely abandon him. If, after taking advantage of this law, they gave the wrong-doer assistance, they not only forfeited the protection which the law guaranteed them, and so were involved in the feud, but they so obviously sinned against the dignity of the state and its law that they were finable to the king. Such was the law of King Edmund of England. So, if, after the law had guaranteed the relatives of the culprit immunity from the feud in consideration of their abandonment of him, the injured party still took revenge on them, all his property was forfeited, and he was declared to be an enemy to the king and all his friends. In like manner, government in some instances undertook to give legal force to customs, many of which occur among our Indian tribes, which sought to discourage feuds by limiting the time within which revenge could be taken, or to restrictions upon the mode or measure of redress suggested by considerations of humanity. Although Mohammed, in the Koran, adheres to the law of personal retaliation for bloodshed, he counsels forgiveness or composition on the part of the aggrieved persons. But, against the person who, after receiving composition money as contemplated by his law, still proceeds to take his revenge, he denounces a "grievous punishment." The process of enforcing these and other limitations upon parties at feud resulted in developing and illustrating the idea of regulating by criminal laws the conduct of citizens toward one another, and thereby paved the way for the subsequent more general application of the same principle. There was another class of measures which tended to the same end by serving especially to mature a judicial machinery, and to familiarize the people with its operation. Next to its total abolition, the most effective remedy for the evils of blood-avengement was to forbid its exercise until the accused person should have had an opportunity to submit the question of his guilt to investigation in court. Under such circumstances a court was not a bar of justice at which accused persons were arraigned, but a place of refuge to which they fled. The Israelites had under the Mosaic laws in one respect passed this stage of development, since the public had undertaken to execute judgment against offenders when the avenger so desired. Yet an accused person only became entitled to a hearing in court after reaching a city of refuge, up to which time the avenger was at liberty to take his own redress without legal intervention. Having arrived at the city of refuge, the fugitive was entitled to have the question of his guilt investigated. If found guilty, he was either delivered into the hands of the avenger, or at the option of the latter was publicly executed, the prosecuting witnesses casting the first stones. That among the Germans, also, the first entertainment by courts of criminal charges was in the interest of the accused, is, as already remarked, settled beyond controversy by Montesquieu. Additional and curious