nstitution, or of discussing the nice
theory of political government. Such crimes as threatened the life
of the sovereign, or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of
death; but their attention was principally confined to the defence
of the person and property of the subject. According to the strange
jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed by a
fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold declares a
just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less atrocious injuries,
a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word, were measured with
scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the prudence of the
legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honor and
revenge for a pecuniary compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in
the state of Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice
and mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century
might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rotharis, who
derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims of
popular or judicial cruelty. The same spirit of a legislator, superior
to his age and country, may be ascribed to Luitprand, who condemns,
while he tolerates, the impious and inveterate abuse of duels,
observing, from his own experience, that the juster cause had often been
oppressed by successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered in
the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of
the Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in
their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is marked
with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their annals is adorned
with fair intervals of peace, order, and domestic happiness; and the
Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government, than any of
the other kingdoms which had been founded on the ruins of the Western
empire.

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks,
we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the
close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the
removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces,
the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted: the lofty
tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was
deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to
wither on the ground. The ministers of command, a