risprudence as giving to _criminal_ law a
priority unknown in a later age. The expression has been
used for convenience' sake, but in fact the inspection of ancient
codes shows that the law which they exhibit in unusual quantities is
not true criminal law. All civilised systems agree in drawing a
distinction between offences against the State or Community and
offences against the Individual, and the two classes of injuries, thus
kept apart, I may here, without pretending that the terms have always
been employed consistently in jurisprudence, call Crimes and Wrongs,
_crimina_ and _delicta_. Now the penal law of ancient communities is
not the law of Crimes; it is the law of Wrongs, or, to use the English
technical word, of Torts. The person injured proceeds against the
wrong-doer by an ordinary civil action, and recovers compensation in
the shape of money-damages if he succeeds. If the Commentaries of
Gaius be opened at the place where the writer treats of the penal
jurisprudence founded on the Twelve Tables, it will be seen that at
the head of the civil wrongs recognised by the Roman law stood
_Furtum_ or _Theft_. Offences which we are accustomed to regard
exclusively as _crimes_ are exclusively treated as _torts_, and not
theft only, but assault and violent robbery, are associated by the
jurisconsult with trespass, libel and slander. All alike gave rise to
an Obligation or _vinculum juris_, and were all requited by a payment
of money. This peculiarity, however, is most strongly brought out in
the consolidated Laws of the Germanic tribes. Without an exception,
they describe an immense system of money compensations for homicide,
and with few exceptions, as large a scheme of compensations for minor
injuries. "Under Anglo-Saxon law," writes Mr. Kemble (_Anglo-Saxons_,
i. 177), "a sum was placed on the life of every free man, according to
his rank, and a corresponding sum on every wound that could be
inflicted on his person, for nearly every injury that could be done to
his civil rights, honour or peace; the sum being aggravated according
to adventitious circumstances." These compositions are evidently
regarded as a valuable source of income; highly complex rules regulate
the title to them and the responsibility for them; and, as I have
already had occasion to state, they often follow a very peculiar line
of devolution, if they have not been acquitted at the decease of the
person to whom they belong. If therefore the criterio