bitrary and rigid administration of justice; the
freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish
malefactor, who claimed the privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the
command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. Occasional rescripts
issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty
or importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of
a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for honorable
persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burnt, or buried in the
mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Armed robbers
were pursued and extirpated as the enemies of society; the driving
away horses or cattle was made a capital offence; but simple theft was
uniformly considered as a mere civil and private injury. The degrees
of guilt, and the modes of punishment, were too often determined by the
discretion of the rulers, and the subject was left in ignorance of the
legal danger which he might incur by every action of his life.

A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate each
other; but, as often as they differ, a prudent legislator appreciates
the guilt and punishment according to the measure of social injury. On
this principle, the most daring attack on the life and property of a
private citizen is judged less atrocious than the crime of treason or
rebellion, which invades the _majesty_ of the republic: the obsequious
civilians unanimously pronounced, that the republic is contained in the
person of its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by
the incessant diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the
sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source
of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of
the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The
wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of revenge, applied to
this domestic offence the animadversion of the laws: and the guilty
parties, after the payment of heavy forfeitures and fines, were
condemned to long or perpetual exile in two separate islands. Religion
pronounces an equal censure against the infidelity of the husband; but,
as it is not accompanied by the same civil effects, the wife was never
permitted to vindicate her wrongs; and the distinction of simple or
double adultery, so familiar and so impor