(M313) There were certain local liabilities of a public nature. Thus the Code shows that the magistrate and his district were held responsible for highway robbery or brigandage in their midst.(241) It may be assumed that the funds to meet such liabilities were furnished by the city temple, for we note that if an official were captured, and his private means were not sufficient for his ransom, his city temple had to furnish the money.(242) (M314) The whole question of taxation is full of difficulties. There were certain persons who paid tribute, that is, some proportionate part of their produce, others did personal service. There is frequent mention of dues of various sorts, at ferries, market-places and the like. Demands were made on the stock or crops of the farmers. But we are not yet in a position even to sketch the system of taxation. VIII. Criminal Law (M315) Cases concerned with criminal law were naturally not embodied in contracts. Some cases doubtless may be inferred from the legal decisions, but these are only where the penalty had already been commuted from death or punishment to payment or restitution. They are better taken as examples of civil law. But this distinction is not the cause of their rarity or absence. When a man had to be put to death, scourged, or exiled, there was no need for a written bond. Hence the only references which we have outside the Code and the phrase-books, are the penalties set down in marriage-contracts for conjugal infidelity, or for breach of contract voluntarily agreed to by the parties to it. (M316) We have one case from Assyrian times of the assignment of a slave-girl, as composition for manslaughter. Atarkâmu, a scribe, had caused the death of Samaku, whose son Shamash-ukîn-aḫi had the right to exact vengeance. Whether as the result of a legal decision or not, Atarkâmu hands over a slave-girl to Shamash-ukîn-aḫi and they agree to be at peace. The name of Ashurbânipal occurs in a position which strongly suggests that the king himself sat in judgment upon the case. The tablet is so fragmentary that little else can be made out, but it seems to have been stipulated that the slave should be handed over “at the grave.”(243) (M317) In later Babylonian times we have a reference to imprisonment arising out of a case of guarantee.(244) The priest of Shamash at Sippara had put A in prison in fetters; B, a fellow-official of his of the same standing, bails him out, giving guarantee to the priests and _šibûtu_ that A shall not go away, or if he does, that B will do his work.