The Hebrew Law guards against this by providing that the fugitive shall be required to remain in the city of refuge only till the death of the high priest, after which he may leave it with impunity. “If the slayer shall at any time come without the border of the city of his refuge, whither he was fled; and the revenger of blood find him without the borders of the city of his refuge, and the revenger of blood kill the slayer; he shall not be guilty of blood: because he should have remained in the city of his refuge until the death of the high priest: but after the death of the high priest the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.”[1]
Again, in Patriarchal times, the family being the State, and the only government being that of the father of the family, the father, as supreme ruler, had the power of life and death over his child. Among the Romans, tenacious of all old institutions and full of the lust of dominion abroad and at home, this power, under the name of patria potestas, was retained long after the state of society by which alone it was justified had passed away. It remained a hideous and disgraceful relic of barbarism amidst the meridian light of Roman jurisprudence; and Erixon, a Roman knight, put his son to death in the time of Seneca. The power extended over the wife as well as over the child. It was exercised by the Roman father arbitrarily and privately; so that till public feeling at last put it down, there was no check on it whatever.
Now the law of Moses, coming at a time when a national government had not been completely formed,
