As the manners of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code
of the decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses,
and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate rigor. The
Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates from inflicting
on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal, punishment; and the
obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to
the spirit, not of patrician, but of regal, tyranny.

In the absence of penal laws, and the insufficiency of civil actions,
the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the
private jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our
jails are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer
may be commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For
the perpetration of similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim
and abuse the sacred character of a member of the republic: but, on the
proof or suspicion of guilt, the slave, or the stranger, was nailed to
a cross; and this strict and summary justice might be exercised without
restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome. Each family
contained a domestic tribunal, which was not confined, like that of the
praetor, to the cognizance of external actions: virtuous principles and
habits were inculcated by the discipline of education; and the Roman
father was accountable to the state for the manners of his children,
since he disposed, without appeal, of their life, their liberty,
and their inheritance. In some pressing emergencies, the citizen was
authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The consent of the
Jewish, the Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the slaughter of the
nocturnal thief; though in open daylight a robber could not be slain
without some previous evidence of danger and complaint. Whoever
surprised an adulterer in his nuptial bed might freely exercise
his revenge; the most bloody and wanton outrage was excused by the
provocation; nor was it before the reign of Augustus that the husband
was reduced to weigh the rank of the offender, or that the parent was
condemned to sacrifice his daughter with her guilty seducer. After the
expulsion of the kings, the ambitious Roman, who should dare to assume
their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted to the infernal gods:
each of his fellow-citizens was armed with the sword of justice; and
the act of Brutus, however repugna