[68] In Egypt the same penalty was attached to the murder of a slave as to that of a freeman. (Ibid., lib. 1, sec. 77.) Robertson speaks of a class of slaves held so cheap in the eye of the Mexican law that one might kill them with impunity. (History of America (ed. London, 1776), vol. iii. p. 164.) This, however, was not in Mexico, but in Nicaragua (see his own authority, Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 4, cap. 2), a distant country, not incorporated in the Mexican empire, and with laws and institutions very different from those of the latter. [69] [A “collared” slave was fastened at night to a wall by his wooden collar.--M.] [70] Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 15; lib. 14, cap. 16, 17.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 14.--Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 134-136. [71] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38, and Relaciones, MS.--The Tezcucan code, indeed, as digested under the great Nezahualcoyotl, formed the basis of the Mexican, in the latter days of the empire. Zurita, Rapport, p. 95. [72] In this, at least, they did not resemble the Romans; of whom their countryman could boast, “Gloriari licet, nulli gentium mitiores placuisse pœnas.” Livy, Hist., lib. 1, cap. 28. [73] [For “crown lands” read “subject tribes”; for “king’s palaces,” “communal houses.”--M.] [74] The Tezcucan revenues were, in like manner, paid in the produce of the country. The various branches of the royal expenditure were defrayed by specified towns and districts; and the whole arrangements here, and in Mexico, bore a remarkable resemblance to the financial regulations of the Persian empire, as reported by the Greek writers (see Herodotus, Clio, sec. 192); with this difference, however, that the towns of Persia proper were not burdened with tributes, like the conquered cities. Idem, Thalia, sec. 97. [75] Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 172.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 89; lib. 14, cap. 7.--Boturini, Idea, p. 166.--Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.--Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 13.--The people of the provinces were distributed into _calpulli_, or tribes, who held the lands of the neighborhood in common. Officers of their own appointment parcelled out these lands among the several families of the _calpulli_; and on the extinction or removal of a family its lands reverted to the common stock, to be again distributed. The individual proprietor had no power to alienate them. The laws regulating these matters were very precise, and had existed ever since the occupation of the country by the Aztecs. Zurita, Rapport, pp. 51-62.