only to the duchy of Rome; it afterwards found its way into the
Lombard code. Savigny. p. 138.--M.]

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.--Part III.

When justice inexorably requires the death of a murderer, each private
citizen is fortified by the assurance, that the laws, the magistrate,
and the whole community, are the guardians of his personal safety. But
in the loose society of the Germans, revenge was always honorable, and
often meritorious: the independent warrior chastised, or vindicated,
with his own hand, the injuries which he had offered or received; and he
had only to dread the resentment of the sons and kinsmen of the enemy,
whom he had sacrificed to his selfish or angry passions. The magistrate,
conscious of his weakness, interposed, not to punish, but to reconcile;
and he was satisfied if he could persuade or compel the contending
parties to pay and to accept the moderate fine which had been
ascertained as the price of blood. [72] The fierce spirit of the
Franks would have opposed a more rigorous sentence; the same fierceness
despised these ineffectual restraints; and, when their simple manners
had been corrupted by the wealth of Gaul, the public peace was
continually violated by acts of hasty or deliberate guilt. In every just
government the same penalty is inflicted, or at least is imposed,
for the murder of a peasant or a prince. But the national inequality
established by the Franks, in their criminal proceedings, was the last
insult and abuse of conquest. [73] In the calm moments of legislation,
they solemnly pronounced, that the life of a Roman was of smaller value
than that of a Barbarian. The Antrustion, [74] a name expressive of the
most illustrious birth or dignity among the Franks, was appreciated at
the sum of six hundred pieces of gold; while the noble provincial,
who was admitted to the king's table, might be legally murdered at the
expense of three hundred pieces.

Two hundred were deemed sufficient for a Frank of ordinary condition;
but the meaner Romans were exposed to disgrace and danger by a trifling
compensation of one hundred, or even fifty, pieces of gold. Had these
laws been regulated by any principle of equity or reason, the public
protection should have supplied, in just proportion, the want of
personal strength. But the legislator had weighed in the scale, not of
justice, but of policy, the loss of a soldier against that of a slave:
the head of an insolent and rapacious Barba