The Struggle for Law
attack, not to restrict his action to the person of the accuser, but to work against the authorities also; and thus it was no longer only the legal rights of the complainant which were in question, but the law itself in the person of its representatives.
The object of these penalties was the same as that of the penalty in criminal law. It was, on the one hand, a purely practical object, to guard the interests of private life against such violations as did not fall under the head of crimes, and, on the other, a moral object, to afford satisfaction to the wounded feeling of legal right; not of the person directly concerned only, but of all those persons who have known of the case, and to reassert the authority of the law. The money was not the end had in view, but only the means to the end.[1]
- ↑ There is a very strong proof of what I have just said in the actiones vindictam spirantes. They show this ideal point of view very clearly, and that their object was not a sum of money or the restitution of a thing, but reparation for an attack on the feeling of legal right, and on the feeling of personality (magis vindictæ quam pecuniæ habet rationem). Hence these actions did not survive to the heirs, they could not be assigned, they could not be begun by the creditors in case of an assignment for their benefit, they were barred after a relatively short period of time, and hence they had no place where it was shown that the injured person had not felt the injustice done him (ad animum suum non revocaverit. de injur, 47, 10).
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