The advocates for this savage law have insisted that it must strongly
operate in deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which
they were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this
salutary terror by proving that no creditor could be found to exact this
unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners of Rome were
insensibly polished, the criminal code of the decemvirs was abolished by
the humanity of accusers, witnesses, and judges; and impunity became the
consequence of immoderate rigor. The Porcian and Valerian laws
prohibited the magistrates from inflicting on a free citizen any
capital, or even corporal, punishment, and the obsolete statutes of
blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to the spirit, not of
patrician but of regal tyranny.
In the absence of penal laws and the insufficiency of civil actions, the
peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the private
jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our jails
are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer may be
commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite.
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