Above all, the rights of the people were assured to them. At the beginning of the century probably the most striking thing among the population of the various towns, if a modern had a chance to visit them, would be the number of the maimed and the halt and the blind. We would be apt to wonder where were the industrial and manufacturing plants responsible for all this maiming of the people, and look in vain for the belching chimneys of factories or trains. It was {420} another form of selfishness that produced cripples in the twelfth century. Punishment was by maiming. For offences against property a man lost an eye, or a hand, or a leg. Very often the offences were of a kind that we would resent punishment for in the modern time. If a man were caught poaching on a nobleman's preserves of game, and sometimes it was the hunger of his children that drove him to it, he lost a hand. For a second offence, he lost an eye. For failures to pay various taxes, if the offence were repeated, maiming was likely to be the consequence. All this was in as perfect accordance with law as our fellow-servant or contributory-negligence doctrines. So that the sight of the maimed person might deter others from following this example of recalcitrancy, it was hoped that these cripples would not die, though in the imperfect surgery of the time they often did. Always the selfish pleasures of the upper classes so-called, when they are thoughtless, mean the loss of all possibilities of happiness for the lower classes. The ways of it all may be different from age to age, the results and the responsibility are always the same.