VIII. 2. "If a man break the limb of another and do not compromise the injury, he shall be liable to retaliation."

VIII. 3. "For breaking the bone of a freeman the penalty shall be three hundred pounds of copper; of a slave, one hundred and fifty pounds."

VIII. 8. "A man shall not remove his neighbor's crops to another field by incantation, nor conjure away his corn." VIII. 17. “Title to property in stolen goods cannot be acquired by prescription."

VIII. 22. "If anyone, after consenting to be a witness of a contract, refuses to give his testimony in an action. based on the contract, he may be declared infamous, excluded from the witness stand, and deprived of the right of having evidence given on his behalf."

VIII. 25. "For practicing incantations, or administering poisons, the punishment is death.”

IX. I. "No law shall be passed to affect the rights of a single individual.”

IX. 2. "The centuriate assembly shall have exclusive authority to take away the life or franchise of a citizen."

IX. 4. "There shall be a right of appeal from every decision of an arbitrator, and from every penal sentence." X. 2. "The wood of the funeral pile shall not be smoothed with the axe."

X. 3. "Not more than three mourners wearing the mourning veil, one mourner wearing a purple tunic, and ten flute players may attend a funeral.”

X. 5. "Women shall not tear their cheeks, nor indulge in wailing at a funeral."

X. 7. "The bones of a person shall not be preserved for a later funeral unless he died in battle or in a foreign country."

X. 8. "No person shall have more than one funeral or more than one bier."

XI. I. “Patricians shall not intermarry with plebeians." XII. 4. "While a thing is in litigation it shall not be consecrated to religious purposes, under a penalty of double its value."

The twenty-seven paragraphs of the XII Tables above quoted are in number of words about one-fifth, and, in significance, the most important portions of all that have come down to us. It is supposed that the extracts now in our possession covered more than half the space on the original plates.

SEC. 438. Rude Justice. These passages from the XII Tables contain conclusive proof that in 450 B. C. the Romans were a very rude people, without extensive commerce, refined manners, well organized courts of record, or any high conception of human dignity. The powers of the creditor over the delinquent debtor, and of the father over the son, the money penalties for breaking bones, and the privilege of retaliating for a broken bone not compromised, are indications of barbarous rather than of civilized culture. Under this code there was no written complaint, no clerk required to issue a notice to the defendant, and no bailiff to serve such a notice or to summon witnesses. A lawsuit did not begin until both parties were in the presence of the magistrate. He who was not strong enough, with the aid of his friends or adherents, to drag his adversary to the Forum was not secure of getting a hearing. The force which the plaintiff might use lawfully in taking the defendant to the magistrate included not only the physical strength of his retinue, but the application of their weapons needed to overcome resistance. The law allowed each side to use its

power. The rich patrician, who never ventured into the street without a large troop of clients, could always force his adversary to trial, and never could be forced except by some other patrician who had a still larger retinue.

In a civil suit the judgment was rendered not against the property but against the person of the debtor. If the latter refused, or failed to satisfy the judgment, he could be sold, and he was allowed two months' time before a valid sale could be made. It was supposed that in that period he and his friends would do their utmost to pay the debt. If there were several creditors, the insolvent debtor might be cut to pieces, each taking what he considered his share; and even if he took more than his fair proportion, he was not held responsible for the error. This is the most barbarous provision in any written code of law preserved to our time, but we have no account that it was ever enforced. Some modern authors have asserted that the cutting of the body of the delinquent debtor meant merely the division of his estate, but this interpretation is rejected by the leading authorities. There would have been no serious difficulty in dividing the estate in proportion to the various debts; and the law would not have permitted one creditor to take more than his share of money or land.

As the defendant was dragged to the court, so, after the judgment against him, he was dragged away by the creditor, who, in his own house, and in his own manner, imprisoned, and, if he saw fit, enchained his victim. There was no public prison for the delinquent debtor, no official supervision of the method in which he was treated, during the sixty days which must elapse after judgment before he could be legally enslaved or executed.

The right of appeal from a judicial sentence of death

was equivalent to the abolition of capital punishment for citizens. Never was a tribunal less fit to hear lawsuits attentively, and to decide them with a proper regard to the public welfare, than the popular assembly of Rome, acting through its timocratic groups. The great majority of the voters, who numbered more than 80,000, if Livy be correct, could not hear any witness or advocate, and they were too coarse to care much for any case in which they had not some pecuniary or partisan interest. Neither consuls nor people wanted to be bothered with trials of ordinary murders. If appeals were taken in such cases, they usually never came to a hearing, and the accused was not noticed afterwards by the officers of the law, on account of the sentence hanging over him. The judges, seeing that they were unable to inflict capital punishment, condemned the worst criminals to banishment from Rome.

The exemption of the Romans from capital punishment had a demoralizing influence on them. Assassinations were frequent. Since the law would not punish murder adequately, relatives and friends made a practice of using their daggers. There was no efficient police. Wealthy men and influential politicians, usually, went about the streets accompanied by armed dependants, ready for the fray, and when engaged in angry controversy, their meetings with enemies frequently led to riots.

Persons not citizens, whether aliens or allies, had no. right of appeal; and their inferiority in legal privileges stimulated the ruder class of Romans to treat them with habitual insolence and with frequent outrage. The rights of citizens were declared to be sacred, but were very inadequately protected because there was no efficient punishment for those Romans who committed crime,

Still more inadequate was the protection accorded to allies and aliens.

The provision in regard to retaliation for the breaking of the limb makes no exception for unintentional injury, as the law of retaliation among savages makes none; but it is possible that the paragraph as we now have it is incomplete or that judicial interpretation supplied the defect in the phraseology. Severe personal injury inflicted maliciously might be compromised, and so might theft. The state did not concern itself with such matters except upon complaint.

The provisions in relation to funerals are of sumptuary character, and indicate that the Roman people in the Vth century B. C. made extravagant shows of their pretended mourning. The methods of instituting civil suits, of delivering the insolvent debtor into the custody of the creditor to be imprisoned for two months and then sold into slavery or slain, and of treating mayhem and theft as private and not public offenses, are very remarkable features in a code of written law, which was praised by some of the Latin authors (who, as a class, knew little about the laws and cared little about the rights of other countries) as "the source of all public and private justice," as Livy styles it; and as the statement of "the soundest principles of government and morals,” according to the extravagance of Cicero. The latter author lauds their superiority over the “rude and almost ridiculous jurisprudence" of Solon, a comparison that furnishes one of the most signal proofs of the untrustworthiness of the great Latin orator as lawyer and historian.

Among the new principles introduced into the Roman law by the XII Tables, were the provisions that property might be conveyed by will; that a son became his own