of violence and disorder. It is more than doubtful whether it was either conceived or maintained with a view to the discouragement of crime. It had its origin in natural feelings of resentment, and afterward became a matter of honor. But, though vicious in its operation, the system had become so deeply rooted in the habits, the passions, the pride, the sense of honor, and the almost religious convictions of mankind, as to be among the most obstinate of institutions. Thus, among the Israelites, even after the Mosaic dispensation, the avenger was by public opinion so obligated to retaliation that in the words of Michaelis "the neglect thereof drew after it the greatest possible infamy, and subjected the man who avenged not the death of his relative to unceasing reproaches of cowardice or avarice." Among the Arabs, in the language of the same author, the avengement of blood constitutes "the prevailing point of honor among the whole nation"; and the acceptance of pecuniary compensation is, notwithstanding its recommendation by the Koran, considered vulgar. Writing of the Swedes, Geiger says—and his words apply with equal force to nearly all the early German nations—"Revenge for blood was a sacred obligation. It was at once the dearest heritage and the condition of every other, for in the olden time, if the father lay slain, the son could not inherit until he had avenged him." The old Salic laws likewise so linked the feuds of the family with its inheritances that a renunciation of the one worked an incapacity for the other. The loss of reputation which among the American Indians and other existing barbarians is universally incurred by failure to avenge blood is a matter of general notoriety. The difficulty experienced in some modern States in suppressing the duel is a faint illustration of the incorrigibility of blood-avengement; it being borne in mind that the modern code of honor is the conventionality of one class of society, while the old principle of retaliation rested on a universal passion and inflamed all classes alike, and that, while the modern duelist can forego his personal remedies, assured of the advantage of a matured system of law, the avenger was obliged to choose between his vengeance and a pecuniary composition, with the third alternative, in some instances, of a crude and inefficient judicial proceeding.
When King Alfred, outstripping the age in which he lived, and probably inspired by the example of Moses, denounced against willful murderers the punishment of death, his law was a dead-letter, and remained unexecuted during his own reign and those of several of his successors. The people preferred to redress their own grievances. Even long after pecuniary compositions for felonies had been abandoned, the laws of England continuing to provide two concurrent methods of prosecution for murder, one by indictment in the name of the king, and the other by appeal of felony at the suit of the kindred of the deceased, the latter was so confessedly the more favored remedy that, lest it might be barred by an acquittal under an indict-
