bail, lest by this means he should escape. The prosecutor could then offer to the accused a _sponsio_, a sort of wager, which consisted on the part of the prosecutor of a sum of money (_sacramentum_) staked against the personal liberty of his opponent. The prosecutor said, Thou hast deprived a citizen of his liberty; the defendant denied it: if the judge, elected for this purpose, decided for the prosecutor, no further judgment was needed, but the culprit was at once taken before the magistrate and executed; if he decided against the prosecutor, the latter lost the _sacramentum_. But, if the defendant would have nothing to do with the _sponsio_, he was thrown into prison. The question now was, whether the prosecutor should be obliged to drop the charge, or to accept bail. The passages which prove this are to be found in Livy and Cicero. It was only until the court-day that the culprit remained in prison, which accounts for the _Carcer_ being so exceedingly small. The staying there, as also its darkness, was already a foretaste of death: he who entered it was lost. Cicero says, _carcerem vindicem nefariorum ac manifestorum scelerum majores esse voluerunt_; either his neck was broken there, or he was led out and executed. The Greek custom with regard to imprisonment was much nearer our own. Yet one remark remains to be added. If one had a charge against a _filius familias_, the father was judge; in causes against the clients, the patron. Another part of the Roman criminal law which is likewise utterly at variance with ours, is that which takes cognizance of political delinquencies. For many of them no penalty was fixed, as in such cases it was the decided opinion of the ancients, and held by them as a general rule, that the state ought to look to its own preservation (_salus publica suprema lex esto_). They were well aware that offences against the state might, when taken severally, have the most varied shades: the same act outwardly may either spring from error, or it may be the offshoot of the darkest crime, and it is therefore impossible to assign a distinct penalty for every single case. Hence the Greeks and Romans had for all the _judicia publica_ this most important right, that the prosecutor could sue for a certain penalty in proportion to the matter in question, even though a different degree of punishment might have been inflicted for the same act in another instance. The same privilege was applicable, it seems, even to _judicia privata_, whenever the criminal code was insufficient; instead of which, in modern times, the foolish notion was entertained that punishment must only proceed from a distinct law, a wretched opinion which has really got the upperhand every where. The ancients held just the opposite principle. The boy who tortured an animal was doomed to die by the popular assembly of the Athenians, although the laws contained nothing for the protection of animals. Hence a man might also be condemned to