The advocates for this savage law have
insisted, that it must strongly operate in deterring idleness and
fraud from contracting debts which they were unable to discharge; but
experience would dissipate this salutary terror, by proving that no
creditor could be found to exact this unprofitable penalty of life or
limb. As the manners of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code
of the decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses,
and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate rigor. The
Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates from inflicting
on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal, punishment; and the
obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to
the spirit, not of patrician, but of regal, tyranny.

[Footnote 171: The narrative of Livy (i. 28) is weighty and solemn.
At tu, Albane, maneres, is a harsh reflection, unworthy of Virgil's
humanity, (Aeneid, viii. 643.) Heyne, with his usual good taste,
observes that the subject was too horrid for the shield of Aencas, (tom.
iii. p. 229.)]

[Footnote 172: The age of Draco (Olympiad xxxix. l) is fixed by Sir John
Marsham (Canon Chronicus, p. 593--596) and Corsini, (Fasti Attici, tom.
iii. p. 62.) For his laws, see the writers on the government of Athens,
Sigonius, Meursius, Potter, &c.]

[Footnote 173: The viith, de delictis, of the xii. tables is delineated
by Gravina, (Opp. p. 292, 293, with a commentary, p. 214--230.) Aulus
Gellius (xx. 1) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum afford
much original information.]

[Footnote 174: Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious aeras, of
3000 persons accused, and of 190 noble matrons convicted, of the crime
of poisoning, (xl. 43, viii. 18.) Mr. Hume discriminates the ages of
private and public virtue, (Essays, vol. i. p. 22, 23.) I would rather
say that such ebullitions of mischief (as in France in the year 1680)
are accidents and prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a
nation.]

[Footnote 175: The xii. tables and Cicero (pro Roscio Amerino, c. 25,
26) are content with the sack; Seneca (Excerpt. Controvers. v 4)
adorns it with serpents; Juvenal pities the guiltless monkey (innoxia
simia--156.) Adrian (apud Dositheum Magistrum, l. iii. c. p. 874--876,
with Schulting's Note,) Modestinus, (Pandect. xlviii. tit. ix. leg. 9,)
Constantine, (Cod. l. ix. tit. xvii.,) and Justinian, (Institut. l. iv.
tit. xviii.,) enumerate all the