the prejudices of mankind.

3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing an
injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right
and a legitimate action. If the property of another be intrusted to our
care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the
benefit which we derive from such temporary possession; we are seldom
made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a
voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. A Roman pursued
and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might
pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing less
than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original claim.
They were restored by the sentence of the praetor, and the injury was
compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as the
deed had been perpetrated by secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber
had been surprised in the fact, or detected by a subsequent research.
The Aquilian law defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves
and cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest price
was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment
of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was
granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal
injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the times and the
sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of a word or
blow cannot easily be appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent. The rude
jurisprudence of the decemvirs had confounded all hasty insults, which
did not amount to the fracture of a limb, by condemning the aggressor to
the common penalty of twenty-five _asses_. But the same denomination
of money was reduced, in three centuries, from a pound to the weight of
half an ounce: and the insolence of a wealthy Roman indulged himself
in the cheap amusement of breaking and satisfying the law of the twelve
tables. Veratius ran through the streets striking on the face the
inoffensive passengers, and his attendant purse-bearer immediately
silenced their clamors by the legal tender of twenty-five pieces of
copper, about the value of one shilling. The equity of the praetors
examined and estimated the distinct merits of each particular complaint.
In the adjudication of civil damages, the magistrate assumed a right
to consider the various circumstances of time and pla