It is not, then, of statutes such as are passed year by year in our Parliament that we are speaking, when we say that the law of the land was the chief code of morals existing in heathen States. Quite distinct from anything of this kind, and more answering to our 'common law,' there were certain great principles of the constitution which had come down to the Romans of the historical period by an immemorial tradition, and which all men believed to have in them something sacred. To touch them was to touch the very life of the Roman people. Such principles there were in all the ancient heathen States, and their sacredness was in each State a fundamental principle as long as it retained any fundamental principles at all. This was, in fact, a necessary part of heathenism itself; for the very essence of polytheism is the belief that each people has its own gods, and, therefore, springing from them, its own traditions of right and wrong. From its own gods each people hoped for blessings and prosperity in its national and corporate capacity. To offend or alienate them was to risk the existence of the civil community, and what was the will of the gods of any particular nation was to be learned from the primitive original tradition of that nation. Thus, the great principles of the ancient Roman morality, such for instance as the sanctity of marriage, parental authority, and the like, were, in the earlier days of the Republic, so mingled in the notions of a Roman with patriotism, that it was impossible to separate them. Adultery in a Roman matron, incontinence in a vestal virgin, was an act of high treason against the common weal of the Roman people. As such, it was monstrous and terrible to the whole people. Every man, every woman, every child, felt it as much a personal injury, as each would have felt the violation of the temples of their country's gods, or the taking away of the palladium or the ancilia. The instance we have selected was that upon which the Romans themselves felt that the whole stability of their country rested. The sanctity of marriage was the principle of the life of the Roman State. In the worst times a poet, himself licentious, recognised corruption on that point as the main cause of the ruin of the country-- 'Fecunda culpæ sæcula nuptias Primùm inquinavere, et genus, et domos Hoc fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit.' But it would have been easy to mention other moral offences which in their judgment directly threatened the safety of the common country. Such, for instance, was the breach of a treaty, any outrage offered to the sacred person of an ambassador, or even the removal of ancient landmarks.