rian was guarded by a
heavy fine; and the slightest aid was afforded to the most defenceless
subjects. Time insensibly abated the pride of the conquerors and the
patience of the vanquished; and the boldest citizen was taught, by
experience, that he might suffer more injuries than he could inflict.
As the manners of the Franks became less ferocious, their laws were
rendered more severe; and the Merovingian kings attempted to imitate the
impartial rigor of the Visigoths and Burgundians. [75] Under the empire
of Charlemagne, murder was universally punished with death; and the
use of capital punishments has been liberally multiplied in the
jurisprudence of modern Europe. [76]

[Footnote 72: In the heroic times of Greece, the guilt of murder was
expiated by a pecuniary satisfaction to the family of the deceased,
(Feithius Antiquitat. Homeric. l. ii. c. 8.) Heineccius, in his preface
to the Elements of Germanic Law, favorably suggests, that at Rome and
Athens homicide was only punished with exile. It is true: but exile was
a capital punishment for a citizen of Rome or Athens.]

[Footnote 73: This proportion is fixed by the Salic (tit. xliv. in tom.
iv. p. 147) and the Ripuarian (tit. vii. xi. xxxvi. in tom. iv. p. 237,
241) laws: but the latter does not distinguish any difference of Romans.
Yet the orders of the clergy are placed above the Franks themselves, and
the Burgundians and Alemanni between the Franks and the Romans.]

[Footnote 74: The Antrustiones, qui in truste Dominica sunt, leudi,
fideles, undoubtedly represent the first order of Franks; but it is
a question whether their rank was personal or hereditary. The Abbe de
Mably (tom. i. p. 334-347) is not displeased to mortify the pride
of birth (Esprit, l. xxx. c. 25) by dating the origin of the French
nobility from the reign Clotaire II. (A.D. 615.)]

[Footnote 75: See the Burgundian laws, (tit. ii. in tom. iv. p. 257,)
the code of the Visigoths, (l. vi. tit. v. in tom. p. 384,) and
the constitution of Childebert, not of Paris, but most evidently of
Austrasia, (in tom. iv. p. 112.) Their premature severity was sometimes
rash, and excessive. Childebert condemned not only murderers but
robbers; quomodo sine lege involavit, sine lege moriatur; and even
the negligent judge was involved in the same sentence. The Visigoths
abandoned an unsuccessful surgeon to the family of his deceased patient,
ut quod de eo facere voluerint habeant potestatem, (l. xi. tit. i. in
tom.