n a series of
laws for the people at large which seem very curious in this enlightened
age. It must suffice to give the leading features of this ancient code.

It began by sustaining the right of private vengeance. The law was for
the weak alone, the strong being left to avenge their own wrongs. The
punishment of crime was provided for by judicial combats, which the law
did not even regulate. Every strong man was a law unto himself.

Where no avengers of crime appeared, murder was to be settled by fines.
For the murder of a boyar eighty grivnas were to be paid, and forty for
the murder of a free Russian, but only half as much if the victim was a
woman. Here we have a standard of value for the women of that age.

Nothing was paid into the treasury for the murder of a slave, but his
master had to be paid his value, unless he had been slain for insulting
a freeman. His value was reckoned according to his occupation, and
ranged from twelve to five grivnas.

If it be asked what was the value of a grivna, it may be said that at
that time there was little coined money, perhaps none at all, in Russia.
Gold and silver were circulated by weight, and the common currency was
composed of pieces of skin, called _kuni_. A grivna was a certain number
of kunis equal in value to half a pound of silver, but the kuni often
varied in value.

All prisoners of war and all persons bought from foreigners were
condemned to perpetual slavery. Others became slaves for limited
periods,--freemen who married slaves, insolvent debtors, servants out of
employment, and various other classes. As the legal interest of money
was forty per cent., the enslavement of debtors must have been very
common, and Russia was even then largely a land of slaves.

The loss of a limb was fined almost as severely as that of a life. To
pluck out part of the beard cost four times as much as to cut off a
finger, and insults in general were fined four times as heavily as
wounds. Horse-stealing was punished by slavery. In discovering the
guilty the ordeals of red-hot iron and boiling water were in use, as in
the countries of the West.

There were three classes in the nation,--slaves, freemen, and boyars, or
nobles, the last being probably the descendants of Rurik's warriors. The
prince was the heir of all citizens who died without male children,
except of boyars and the officers of his guard.

These laws, which were little more primitive than those of Western
Europe a