The Struggle for Law
The old Roman law affords an interesting confirmation of what I have just now said. This mistrust of the peasant, which, in every conflict of law, supposes an evil intention in one’s opponent, finds expression in that law in the form of legal principles. Everywhere, even where there is question of a conflict of law in which each of the contending parties may be in good faith, the defeated party has to pay a penalty for his resistance. The simple restoration to a person of his rights is no satisfaction to the outraged feeling of right. The defeated party, whether innocent or guilty, had to make satisfaction for having opposed the law.[1] If our peasants to-day had the making of the law, it would, we may conjecture, be very like that of their old Roman predecessors. But even in Rome, this mistrust in law was in principle overcome by civilization, inasmuch as two sorts of injustice were distinguished, the guilty and the innocent, or the subjective and objective (in the language of Hegel, the ingenuous wrong).
- ↑ I shall return to this later.
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