escape unless popular opinion was in favour of the judge's decision. A sentence to be carried out by the public must always be largely dependent on public opinion.

And

One provision of the law of Moses-though there may be some doubt as to whether it was limited to capital cases or universal in its extent-was that which required the testimony of two or three witnesses for a conviction. If the judge neglected this provision the public would probably have refused to carry out his sentence. in these primitive times what is now called circumstantial evidence was probably unknown. I find no trace of it in the Bible. Two or three witnesses were required to swear that they had seen the offence committed; though probably in a case of robbery it would suffice for two or three witnesses to swear that the goods which were found in the possession of A. belonged to B. I do not find in the Mosaic law, or in the Bible generally, any trace of witnesses for the defence. Two or three witnesses for the prosecution swearing to the fact, not to some suspicious circumstances, were considered sufficient. And this is perhaps the reason why the Mosaic law contains no prohibition of false swearing in favour of one's neighbour, and no punishment for false swearing, unless against him. Modern theologians turn and twist the Commandments of the Decalogue in a manner that in all probability Moses never dreamt of. That the ninth commandment only applied to giving false testimony against one's neighbour is clear from the punishment which Moses attached to the violation of it. The perjurer was to undergo the punishment which he sought to bring upon his innocent neighbour by his perjury. This is a much more rational rule than that of the English law, under which murder by perjury-the worst kind of murder-is only punishable by a term of penal servitude, though the penalty for all other kinds of murder is death. But the reason why Moses

imposed no penalty on giving false evidence in favour of one's neighbour, and did not even forbid such evidence, was probably that under the Mosaic law evidence in favour of the prisoner was inadmissible. The prisoner seems to have been allowed to speak for himself, but his real security lay in the necessity of having two or three witnesses to give direct testimony against him, together with the fact that the carrying out of the sentence was so largely left to the public.

Turning now to the part of the Decalogue which deals with crimes as distinct from religious offences, persistent breaches of the fifth commandment were punishable by death, but only in case both parents claimed the infliction of the penalty. No duty was imposed on any one else with regard to the prosecution or infliction, and even with the parents it was not a duty but a power. This power, I may remark, explains some passages in the Proverbs of Solomon on which the advocates of flogging young people lay great stress. Solomon writes, "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beat him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from the grave "1 (see marginal reading); and again, "Chasten thy son, seeing there is hope, and set not thy heart on causing him to die "2 (I again adopt the marginal reading of the R. V.). Beat your son, says Solomon, instead of bringing him before the elders of the city and asking to have him stoned. Solomon could not interfere with the law of Moses, but he urges parents not to avail themselves of the stringency of its provisions as regards disobedient children. Passing on to the sixth. commandment, the "avenger of blood" could slay the manslayer wherever he found him, unless he fled to one of the cities of refuge; but even there he was not safe unless the crime was reducible to manslaughter. (The English 2 Prov. xix, 18.

1 Prov. xxiii, 13, 14.

translators of these books ought not to have substituted "Thou shalt do no murder for "thou shalt not kill"; but they were probably unaware of the niceties of the English law of murder). Death by stoning was also the penalty for breaches of the seventh commandment—at least by the woman; but no obligation seems to have been cast on any one to carry it out. The narrative of the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of St. John illustrates this. Though probably not written by John himself, this passage is of early date, and was of such a nature as to convey nothing incredible to the Jews. That the woman's fate might have depended on the words of Christ was quite possible, owing to the fact that the Mosaic law did not enjoin anybody to cast the first stone. Breaches of the eighth commandment were not punishable by death or stripes. Multiple restitution was the penalty enforced, and if the thief could not make it he was for a time reduced to slavery. But the conditions of slavery, when the slave was a Hebrew, were not severe. One form of theft, however, was punishable by death-man-stealing. This seems to have meant stealing a Hebrew man (or child) and selling him into slavery; for stealing a Gentile or a slave would apparently have come under a different head. Breaches of the ninth commandment were punished by inflicting on the culprit the same penalty which he sought to bring on another by his false evidence; while breaches of the tenth commandment were not crimes and did not involve any punishment.

After giving all reasonable extensions to the sixth and eighth commandments, however, there remain two large classes of criminal offences-recognised as such by Moses as well as ourselves—which are not dealt with in the Decalogue. The first of these is assaults not resulting in, or aiming at, death; and the second is malicious injuries. to property which, as the perpetrator gains nothing by

them, cannot be brought under the head of dishonesty. To the first of these Moses applied the same principle as to murder, viz., retaliation—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, wounding for wounding, stripe for stripe." The analogy between this principle and that of restitution in the case of stolen property will at once strike the reader; but there was this difference, that retaliation was always simple, while restitution was always multiple, except in some cases that belong rather to the Civil than to the Criminal law. Now this principle of simple retaliation was probably in the days of Moses a change in the direction of leniency; and even still, in the parts of our Statute law in which the retaliation principle is adopted, the sentences passed often consist of multiple retaliation-of giving the offender much more than he gave. But I do not think that Moses ever spoke of retaliation as the proper punishment under all circumstances and in all ages for what we now call crimes of violence. He found it a good rule to adopt—especially with a view to preventing excessive punishments-among a people situated as the Israelites were in the Wilderness and even in the land of Canaan. It was a rough-and-ready rule for establishing among a primitive people a system of punishments which were likely to prove deterrent without being unduly severe; but the meaning which it conveyed to most people in the days of Moses probably was, "Don't take two eyes for one eye or a dozen teeth for one tooth." The principle, however, was not applied in its strict literal sense in the Mosaic code any more than in our own. The ordinary punishment for crimes of violence consisted of stripes; and here Moses imposed another restriction on excessive punishment. Forty stripes was not to be exceeded "lest thy brother should appear vile unto thee." And as the Jews understood it, this rule was not to be evaded by using a whip with several lashes instead of one with a single lash. The punishment was in fact usually

inflicted with a three-corded whip when the number of strokes was limited to thirteen, because fourteen strokes would mean forty-two stripes. Forty stripes thus became in practice "forty stripes save one." forty stripes save one." I need hardly say that this number is still often exceeded in practice in this country; and it may be added that the reason "lest thy brother should appear vile unto thee," is in such cases wholly disregarded. Moses was more humane than many Christians in this twentieth century-just as Solomon was more humane than many of those who profess to follow his precepts. The narrative of Solomon's life, however, indicates that he was a man of harsher temperament than Moses. If the story of Joseph is from the pen of Moses, the Jewish legislator was a man of a very different type from what many persons think. The writer's admiration for Joseph is manifest in every line of it, and it could hardly have been written by one who had not himself felt the sentiments which he describes.

The Civil law of Moses will, I think, be found in general just and well suited to a primitive people who require clear and simple rules for their guidance. The land laws form an important part of it, and I think his system may be described as one of peasant proprietors. But in the Wilderness there was not much opportunity for enforcing a system of land laws. We have a curse on the man who removes his neighbour's land-mark (so needlessly repeated now when the offence in question has become almost impossible), and we have his decision in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad. But land seems to have been held in fee simple, leaseholds being unknown, and each occupant managed his own farm. He could sell it but apparently not dispose of it by will. It descended. to his sons if he did not dispose of it in his life-time. But even from the first the distribution of land seems to have been uneven, and we sometimes read of men having