Page:The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes.djvu/24

Rh he puts at risk,― a principle similar to that on which corporations have been so largely created in America during the last fifty years.

It has been a rule of criminal pleading in England down into the present century, that an indictment for homicide must set forth the value of the instrument causing the death, in order that the king or his grantee might claim forfeiture of the deodand, “as an accursed thing,” in the language of Blackstone.

I might go on multiplying examples; but these are enough to show the remoteness of the points to be brought together.— As a first step towards a generalization, it will be necessary to consider what is to be found in ancient and independent systems of law.

There is a well-known passage in Exodus, which we shall have to remember later: “If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die : then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.” When we turn from the Jews to the Greeks, we find the principle of the passage just quoted erected into a system. Plutarch, in his Solon, tells us that a dog that had bitten a man was to be delivered up bound to a log four cubits long. Plato made elaborate provisions in his Laws for many such cases. If a slave killed a man, he was to be given up to the relatives of the deceased. If he wounded a man, he was to be given up to the injured party to use him as he pleased. So if he did damage to which the injured party did not contribute as a joint cause. In either case, if the owner