man 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 repugnant to gratitude or prudence, had
been already sanctified by the judgment of his country. The barbarous
practice of wearing arms in the midst of peace, and the bloody maxims of
honor were unknown to the Romans; and during the two purest ages, from
the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars, the
city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted with atrocious
crimes. The failure of penal laws was more sensibly felt, when every
vice was inflamed by faction at home and dominion abroad. In the time of
Cicero each private citizen enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each
minister of the republic was exalted to the temptations of regal power,
and their virtues are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous
fruits of nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust,
rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be sued
for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling;
and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and perhaps the accuser
himself, that on refunding a thirteenth part of his plunder Verres
could retire to an easy and luxurious exile.[37]

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and
punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his
sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license rather than to
oppress the liberty of the Romans. He gloried