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 Singular Punishments.

SINGULAR

545

PUNISHMENTS.

THE variability of human morality is curi ously reflected in the penal laws of vari ous ages and countries. In Holland, for in stance, it was once a capital offence to kill a stork; and, in England, to cut down another man's cherry tree. Idleness was punishable in Athens, but commendable in Sparta; and in Mexico, while a slanderer was only de prived of his ears or his lips, a drunken man or woman was stoned to death. Plato and Aristotle commended infanticide as a valu able social custom, and Plutarch, Seneca, and other ancient moralists advocated sui cide under certain given circumstances. Modern moralists conde-rm both practices without exception; and, according to English law, if two persons agree to commit suicide together, and only one of them succeeds, the survivor is liable to be tried and executed for murder. In England, before the Con quest, slaves suffered mutilation or death for very trifling offences; while the nobles could commit even murder and be quit of their of fence for a fine to the Church and some paltry compensation to the family of the mur dered man. At the present day it is our boast that we have one law for rich and poor alike, and that we do not mutilate nor, except in cases of murder, do we kill our criminals. On the contrary, we provide them with excellent sanitary dwellings and sufficient food, and endeavor to teach them useful trades, or at any rate, give them plenty of laborious work. Whether such treatment tends to the preven tion of future crime, however, or to foster in the criminal a love of useful and honest work, is a problem on which opinions widely differ. It is now beginning to be suspected that there is very little relation between the sever ity of punishment inflicted and the amount of crime committed in any country, but from the earliest times until quite recently there

appears to have been no doubt about the matter, and whenever a given punishment failed to repress a particular class of crime, the demand was always for more punish ment. Among the early Saxons and Danes almost every punishment could be commuted for a money payment; but those offenders who were poor were very barbarously treated. They were branded and deprived of hands, and feet, and tongue, their eyes were plucked out, nose, ears, and upper lips were cut off, scalps were torn away, and some times the whole body was flayed alive. In the early part of the tenth century, a female slave who had committed theft was burned alive, and a free woman was either thrown over a precipice, or drowned. A man slave was stoned to death by eighty other slaves, and when a female slave was burnt for steal ing from any but her own lord, eighty other female slaves attended the execution, each bearing a log for the fire. By Ethelbert's laws, not only did every man have his price, but every part of a man had its specified price. The wergild, or price of the corpse, of a ceorl was two hundred shillings; of a lesser thane, six hundred shill ings; of a royal thane, twelve hundred shill ings. It appears to have been a common practice for many in those days to settle their disputes by knocking one another's teeth out, and the law laid down a scale of com pensation, according to which a front or canine tooth cost six shillings, while a molar might be knocked out for one shilling, until Alfred was considerate enough to raise the price to fifteen. If a man could be satisfied with breaking an opponent's ribs, he was only fined three shillings, but a broken thigh would cost him twelve; while, singularly enough, the loss of a beard was estimated at no less than twenty shillings. The last seems